Farmer’s walk

[Dominique]

Now that we’re starting to get warmer weather, I’ve added a new exercise to my routine: outdoors farmer’s walk. I’m using two 12 kg kettlebells (= a lot lighter than the barbells used in the previous link) and walking the alley that leads to my house twice back and forth (that’s about 375 steps / 2m40s), pausing for 1m30s and repeating five times. That’s a total of 19 minutes.

This is what the workout stats look like (as recorded by my Surge):

and the cardio part of it:

It’s a great exercise combining both cardio and resistance training (works your shoulders, back, arms and grip) and burns a decent amount of calories in a relatively short time.

I wasn’t sure whether I should record it as "Weights" or "Workout" (and whether that would have any major impact on calories), so I recorded it as "Weights" yesterday on both my Surge and my Charge 2, and repeated it today (some intervals, same duration) today, recording it as "Workout". Surge said I burned 136 calories (weights) and 137 calories (workout), while Charge 2 said I burned 131 (weights) and 145 (workout). Most likely my Charge 2 was a bit loose yesterday and didn’t fully pick up my HR (avg HR for session yesterday: 109,  today: 117). So it looks like the exercise selected doesn’t have a big impact on calories in this case, and it was only 19 minutes anyway.

Is anyone else doing farmer’s walk? Or maybe there are real farmers among us 

[Esya]

That reminds me of the yearly event of bringing the hay in at my parents place (if lucky only once a year, it is hard work and always during very hot weather). This is the first year I am actually looking forward to it. Last year I noticed how much more I could help being more strong and more fit and I want to see if I improved even further than that. It is nothing like the farmer's walk you linked and are doing though. Looks like a great workout, but not one I can easily do around my place.

[WavyDavey]

You're a pretty cool dude, @Dominique! I do farmer's walks with dumbbells or kettlebells, at a shorter distance. I feel they are almost up to par with squats and deadlifts in terms of overall effect on the body. Very taxing, especially to the nervous system and forearms.

How are you wearing your tracker? I have trouble with losing heart rate signal during the farmer's walks that I attribute to the wrists and forearms being in a constant state of tension.

[GershonSurge]

@Dominique,

Frederick Taylor did some experiments back in the late 1800's or early 1900's with men moving pig iron. He found the could almost quadruple their production by having them work no more than 42% of the time and resting during the remaining time. Unfortunately, he didn't publish the intervals, but I suspect they worked for a minute and rested for about 1:24. 

They went from moving 12 1/2 long tons (2,200 x 12.5 pounds) to moving 47 long tons a day. Back then, the days were twelve hours. The "pigs" weight about 92 pounds.

You might try varying your intervals to see which one works the best to get the most distance. Also, get some bib overalls. 🙂

[emili]

I do this at the gym with 25 pound weights each arm and walk the perimeter of the gym twice. do a different set and then do it again. But I do not get cardio results like you. I am going to try it your way Friday. Just walk steady carrying that weight for a set time. I will go for 10 minutes and see how it goes. Thank you for sharing this..but why is it called a farmer's walk? I can look it up, but I am sure you know and I like your stories 🙂

[Dominique]

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@WavyDavey wrote:

How are you wearing your tracker? I have trouble with losing heart rate signal during the farmer's walks that I attribute to the wrists and forearms being in a constant state of tension.

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@WavyDavey: I don’t have particular issues with any of my trackers (I’m currently wearing three: Surge, Charge 2, Alta HR) when performing farmer’s walk, as you could see from the HR graph (I’m getting a very similar graph with Charge 2). I tend to slightly tighten the band before starting any workout. I agree with you farmer’s walk is taxing, even with good cardio fitness!

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@GershonSurge wrote:

You might try varying your intervals to see which one works the best to get the most distance. Also, get some bib overalls. 🙂

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@GershonSurge: I’ll try to divide the length of each walk interval by two (about 1m20s instead of 2m40s) and reduce rests to 1m (instead of 1m30s). The problem is I tend to need long enough bouts of efforts to elevate my HR, and it falls quite fast when I stop, so I’m not getting the same cardio benefits.

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@emili wrote:

I do this at the gym with 25 pound weights each arm and walk the perimeter of the gym twice. do a different set and then do it again. But I do not get cardio results like you.

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@emili: a couple of things come to mind: first of all, being outdoors in an unencumbered environment helps, as I don’t have to worry about bumping into someone and I can move in a straight line for longer; secondly, the alley leading to my house is not flat, so I get a slight downhill on one way and an uphill on the way back; the incline does make it more challenging, especially when carrying some heavy objects. As to the origin of the name: I guess it’s based on the assumption farmers do need (or at least used to, before mechanization) to carry heavy things as part of their work.

[Amanda_UK]

I had never heard of this, but I guess I do a bit of the farmer's walk every morning. I carry feed down to the chickens and a three gallon chicken waterer. They are heavy so I walk a bit and stop, walk a bit and stop. I might start being a bit more conscious of these daily activities and how I can maximize their potential. I'm not a farmer but I have a two acre homestead with animals and always something needing lifting, or moving!

[Tj_Gaona]

Same here, by the time I lift the feed and feed all the horses, pigs, sheep and goats. I am exhausted.  That does not even include cleaning pastures, and stalls.  I should see if any fitbitters what to come and workout with me.:

[Vallen]

Farmer walks are great!

I think that a lot of people tend to shy away from them, for one because they're tough and often uncomfortable. Not only will they earn you some extra steps, but they teach you to breathe while struggling; a skill that carries over into every other type of exercise.

I add a lot of variations into my workouts, different weights, objects, positions. You can really get creative, which for me keeps things from getting stale after a while.

[WavyDavey]

I totally agree with them being unpopular because of their difficulty. Here's my farmer's walk story. I do them in the gym, laps around a small track that sits in front of the cardio equipment, with 70lb dumbbells. After one particular grueling set, the manager of the gym came up to talk with me. He was trying to discourage me from doing farmer's walk. After a few minutes of questioning him, he says, "they look uncomfortable, and that makes the people doing cardio uncomfortable to watch". I reminded him it was a gym, not a spa, and that I'm quite comfortable with my discomfort. Since then, the manager has left me alone. 🙂

Anyone doing these heavy who has trouble with grip, I recommend looking into the olympic-style hook grip. Since switching to it, grip has become a non-issue on my farmer's walks.

[bcalvanese]

I never heard of the farmers walk, but back when I was in the army we were on a field exercise. I was in charge of the generators and keeping them fueled. I had to take all the 5 gallon fuel cans in a truck to get them filled at the fueling point, and the closest I could get the truck was about an 8th of a mile from the pump.

I had to carry 2 cans at a time that far to fill them and carry them full 2 at a time back to the truck. I think we had about 16 cans total.

Needless to say, by the time I got done I could tie my boots while standing fully upright...:)

[Dominique]

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@GershonSurge wrote:

You might try varying your intervals to see which one works the best to get the most distance. 

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This other topic prompted me to revert. Instead of five longer intervals with 1m30s rests in between, I did ten shorter intervals with 45s rests. The total time was the same (19 minutes) and so were the weights I was carrying (12 kg kettlebelts).

My avg HR was higher (127 vs. 111), I burned more calories (158 vs. 137) and I spend more time in cardio zone (100% vs. 44%):

 This is what the intervals looked like:

So, yes, experimenting with interval and rest length is worthwile.

[Dominique]

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@WavyDavey wrote:

Here's my farmer's walk story. I do them in the gym, laps around a small track that sits in front of the cardio equipment, with 70lb dumbbells.

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70 lb dumbbells (32 kg) is insane! I tried the same routine as above with 16.6 kg dumbbells. I could only do it for five intervals / 9 minutes:

The limiting factor wasn’t cardio fitness, it was grip strength: holding on 2 x 16.6 kg for more than one minute while walking just was too much for me.

[EmjayH]

My trainer has me do farmers walks but she has me use 2 different sized kettle bells. 

[WavyDavey]

Dominique, look into hook grip, it makes holding those weights a lot easier. It's what the Olympic lifters use when they put 250kg overhead.

I'm actually the baby of the gym. Most of the walkers I see use the 90-120lb dumbbells. There's a big strongman gym in town, so farmer's walks are fairly common here. At higher weight, it's a real challenge to stay upright and stabilize. Sometimes I do them as static holds, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE6IfCbbe2g&t=423s

[WavyDavey]

Hey @Dominique,

Was thinking about this thread today. I started a short stint at a strongman gym. They have the plate-loaded farmer's walk implements. which makes loading and increasing weight easy. The downside is it takes some effort to keep the two front plates from hitting each other, so it's a good core workout also!

Each bar is 20kg (45 pounds), and the plates are 11kg (25 pounds) each, for 42kg (95 pounds) per hand. 

And for the "big boys and girls", here's contest-grade farmer's walk implements. Kind of looks like they made it out of a sub torpedo... Yes, that's 64kg (140 pounds) EACH without any weight added.