Farmer’s Walk
A true test of grip strength, posterior chain power, hip stability, and bracing endurance, the farmer’s walk involves picking up implements at your sides and walking with them.
Table of Contents
Warming up
Setup
Pick
Walk
Speed
Turning
Distance
Grip slipping
Tips dipping and digging
Handles crossing
Thigh interference
Specs
Brands and Differences
Frequency
Speed
Volume
Accessories
Energy systems
Recovery
History
The first known instance of what we think of as the Farmer’s Walk was at the 1983 World’s Strongest Man competition. It was called the Fergus Walk, and the athletes had 90 seconds to walk as far as they could around an oval track with 175 lb logs in each hand. The winner of this event was JP Sigmarsson who came in second overall that year.
Photo credit: World’s Strongest Man
While this weight is substantially lower than that typically used today for the open class, it is not entirely due to the fact that today’s strongmen are bigger, stronger, faster, and more practiced. The handles were rather wide and difficult to grip which caused many more problems than picking up the weight itself.
Another example of early Farmer’s Walks would be in the sport of Txinga (weight carrying). This is a Basque Rural Sport event in which athletes carry weights in each hand for a max distance around a roughly 90 foot track. These weights aren’t standardized but can weigh as much as 110lbs. This particular event is said to have come from dairy farmer’s who had to carry full milk churns.
https://festival.si.edu/blog/2016/a-guide-to-basque-rural-sports/
Basic Execution
Warming up
Most athletes prefer to do several partial runs with a ramping weight and returning it to the starting line. It’s best to save your full distance energy for your working sets.
Prior to training you want to make sure your hips and knees are warm and mobile. There is a lot of explosive stepping, balancing, and rapid deceleration that can occur during this event. Arms and lats should be at least slightly warm and ready to operate. Some examples might be:
Leg swings (forward and side)
Lunges/split jumps
Light pulldowns or pullups
Deadlifts/RDLs
Setup
Handle positioning
To determine optimal handle width, do a light pick of the handles, steady them, then put them down. That is your optimal width. The main thing you want to avoid is having them too far apart, or beyond shoulder width as they will swing into you as you stand up which can mess up your stride or worse.
Note the wide pick causing the handles to lean in. When you stand up, you’ll know why this is a bad idea.
Body Positioning
Setup depends on your anatomy as well as personal preference, but generally you should start with feet between hip and shoulder-width apart. You might think where your feet would be if you were about to jump as high as you can.
Front-to-back positioning is also important. Ideally you want your body to be centered with your grip, so that your arms are perpendicular to the ground.
A slightly forward body position may be favorable to some athletes. It will make the pick more of a hack squat-type movement and will generate some forward momentum.
Centered Backward Forward
Note the hip heights in the pictures above. A central or forward positioning allows for lower hips and more leg involvement with your pick.
Grip types
Standard - As you would grip a barbell for a general lift
Hook Grip - Wrap your thumb around first, and then squeeze it with the rest of your fingers. Your thumb joint ends up carrying most of the load, and thus these take practice and conditioning.
Over Grip - Also called “Monkey Grip”, Where you wrap your hand around the handle so more of the pressure is put into your palm. This is often a preferred choice for lifters with smaller hands, or for thicker diameter handles.
Experiment and find your personal preference. If you are competing, knowing the implement used might steer you one direction for your training cycle.
Optimal grip puts your hand slightly back from center on the handle. One tip that many use is to try and center your middle finger versus your entire hand. Gripping them too far forward or back may lead to an undesirable lean.
See how it appears the hand is off-center to the left, but it is actually centered on your dominant fingers allowing some extra leverage to the back of the weight (more on this during the pick portion).
Pick
To initiate the pick, take a breath and brace your core, then activate your lats. A good cue is to begin pulling your hips down by the handles, effectively “coiling” your hips and legs. Another way to cue the lats is to try and turn your hands outwards (they aren’t actually going to go anywhere).
Looking ahead or slightly downward with a neutral spine, push through your heel to mid-foot and keep your arms locked straight as you stand up with the handles. If your setup went according to plan, your focus should be on squeezing the handles and pushing off as hard as you can.
Being centered, you will propel yourself forward as you stand up. If your feet are behind the center line, you will pull the handles towards your center of mass, against the direction you are going.
Walk
Bracing
As with all weighted carries, proper bracing is important. Keep your shoulders back, chest out and push out your abdominal muscles. See in this picture the difference between rounded shoulders and a tight back. Note the misalignment between shoulders and hips, as well as the position of the handles.
Steps
Take short, choppy steps, always trying to keep some connection between your feet and the ground. Think “heel-toe-heel-toe…”. This is necessary because it allows you keep your hips connected to your braced core, which allows some freedom of leg motion.
Handle Position
Dedicate some focus to keeping handles away from you. One of the most frequent causes of dropped farmer’s handles is catching a finger or knuckle on your thighs (or pockets), which is going to peel your grip away like a villain stepping on your fingers as you hang on to a cliff.
Breathing
Short, diaphragmatic breaths like on most moving events. For short speed walks you might be able to get away with not taking any breaths, though this might be a poor decision if it is the first part of a medley.
Cues
Eyes forward, focus on a spot in front of you.
Shoulders back chest out.
Quick feet/fast feet
Technical Considerations
Speed
If you are not doing so already, try taking a small step (~1”) forward with your setup. This will make your hands slightly behind you, but the handles will swing forward with you as you stand up allowing you to get into a stride quickly.
Move your grip backwards ever so slightly. This may make the pick a little easier as it will lead to more of a levered lift, and leaning handles can help propel you forward. Remember that too much lean can throw you off balance or cause the front of the handles to touch the ground.
In the first picture, the athlete had lined up too far behind their hands, and is gripping the handles too far forward. This causes her to have to deadlift the weight directly up, before she can regain her balance and then initiate her walk.
In the second picture, her shoulders, hands, and feet are lined up, her hips and knees look coiled, and the handles are “peeling” off of the ground with a forward lean that propels her into her stride.
Good rules to live by when it comes to getting faster with farmer’s walks
Turning
For events that require a turn, it is important that you spend some time working on this as it is a make-or-break moment for many competitors.
Timing
Properly timing the start and end of your turn is the first thing to learn when it comes to this event. Because we never really have to turn something so unstable and heavy in our daily lives, (perhaps except for truck drivers?) the concept seems foreign at first and requires some practice.
Start turning your hands towards the direction you want to turn as you approach the cone or line, but before you are going to start turning your body. Just before you get to about 90 degrees of your turn, begin trying to guide your wrists back the other way. This should prevent overturn and carry you into your stride. Once you are adept at this maneuver, now you can look at your turning arc.
Steps
A lot of people naturally slow their step rate as they turn, but it is better to do the opposite. Take shorter, quicker, choppy steps as you enter the turn and through its completion before you open up your stride again. Since the handles are turning in front of you, long steps might cause you to trip over the handles. Further, the quick steps allow for micro adjustment, preventing one leg from dealing with the brunt of the horizontal forces of the turn for too long.
Choosing your Turn Arc
Turning with Farmer’s Handles is a game of picking the optimal trajectory for your given skill and strength set. As seen in the picture below, you can make it from point A to point B in any degree of arc. As you can see a wider arc can increase the distance you travel which can be a whole lot of wasted energy.
Note how in this example, a longer arc leads to a significant distance increase, meaning more time holding your handles and less ground covered. Remember that sharp turns have their own dangers, most notably the dreaded “overturn”.
The benefit of a wider turning radius is that you have less torque on your hands which will limit the possibility and severity of the overturn. This is where your handles continue to turn after your body has completed the 180 degrees. Overturning can cause you to drop the weights, inhibit your footpath, draw you into another lane, or at the very least waste energy turning them back or walking in a curved line.
A wider radius also does not need a change in stride, which might be difficult especially for those who do not have good footwork ability yet.
A narrow turning radius will help you cover more ground, but requires more energy to slow to a near stop, turn and accelerate again
Overall we recommend you test a few different strides and turning paths to find which one is right for you. Seasoned athletes working with moderate weights (for them) will usually take tighter turns and vice versa.
A. Arm+Wrist (Implement Rotation):
The rotation of the farmer’s implements themselves. In the Figure above you can see the twist in the farmer’s handle on the left.
Just before and during the beginning of a turn, your arms will be working to actively create rotation for the turn. If you’re turning right, your right arm will attempt to suppinate while your left arm will attempt to pronate, thus rotating the handles for a right turn.
B. Rotation at the Shoulder Girdle
A little-talked-about but important aspect of the turn. When holding a heavy load in your hands while standing, the mass hangs from the shoulder girdle which is a small system comprised of the scapula and clavicle (and related musculature).
As you turn by using small steps, the mass of the farmer’s handles will delay the rotation of the shoulder girdle. The rotation will begin very slowly relative to your turn until your shoulder girdle reaches its maximum level of extension/flexion while under a heavy load (lets say 7-10%). At that point the shoulder girdle is rotating along with you at that maximum rate until you’ve begun slowing your turn or try to walk straight. It is at this point that the overturn begins. Your shoulder girdle is now attempting to go from -7 degrees toward 0 degrees while you’re hoping to be going straight. Due to the mass of the farmer’s handles, they will HIT 0, and continue that rotation and suddenly you’re turning against your will and tripping over the farmer’s handles as they continue that rotation toward +7 to +10% the other way.
This is why Beginning and ending your turn early is so important.
In this figure you can see the break down of queues for the turn. Most of the active turning is steps 1 through 2. somewhere between 2 and 2.5 is where the athlete must now begin working toward their exit from the turn.
Steps 3 through 5 are all simply adjustments and progressive anti-rotation work to line up your exit for the return to the walk path.
Distance
Distance events are usually max distance with no time limit or a 60 or 75 second time limit. There are almost always going to be turns with this event. Grip and turning strategies as well as pacing yourself should be priority here. Also remember that your ability to quickly navigate turns are going to play a larger role if the track is short (~25-30’) vs. longer (50-60’).
Even though distance events do not technically require speed, it is almost always better to walk as fast as you can comfortably, to cover more ground before your grip gives out. In addition to programming long carries and some max distance sets, focus on finding the maximum speed you can go without sacrificing your grip.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting: Grip Slipping Early
Make sure your hands and the implement are dry, and chalked if possible. If you are doing any overlapping of fingers, you might make sure that there is a little chalk on the backs of your fingers.
Train farmer’s first or early in your workouts so your hands are fresh. Some people have reported improvement in farmer’s from doing specific grip exercises, but you will get the most carryover from training with the actual implements. Fortunately, with farmer’s being such a good grip exercise your hand strength will train itself.
Patience is often rewarded. Focus on getting a good start, and methodical steps. The potential mistakes that can be made trying to move too quickly may lead to a premature drop, which often will be the end of your run.
Troubleshooting: Handles dipping and digging
Your grip may be too far back. If you grip too far back the center of gravity will be too far forward from your hands causing the implement to dig into the ground. Shorter and longer-armed athletes may not be able to utilize much of a forward lean as taller ones. At least the pick is easier for them.
Troubleshooting: Tips cross/bump
This is often caused by your shoulders rolling forward and your back collapsing. Work on strengthening your back muscles and keeping a “Proud” chest to keep your shoulders a bit more retracted and externally rotated.
When turning, some athletes purposefully turn their outside hand to connect the front of each of the handles. As long as you know this is coming and can make them meet in a desirable spot, it can be a good strategy. The biggest problem with tips crossing is the unexpected nature of it, so if you are aware it is going to happen you will probably be able to adjust your stride/balance proper
See how once they cross, there is very little room to step. When turning and taking tiny steps this can be used intentionally, but otherwise can kill a run quickly.
Troubleshooting: Thumb “peeling” against thigh
Depending on your arm and leg length, you might notice you bump your thighs considerably with your hands if you don’t pay attention to pull them slightly away from your body. If this is you, make sure that you practice keeping that separation, even at weights that are light for you. You should feel your shoulders during this lift if you are actively using them.
Baby powder on the sides of your legs might help a bit, just keep it off of your hands.
Wear shorts or pants without pockets as anything that can catch them, will.
Equipment
Implement information
Specs
Like most strongman equipment, Farmer’s Walk handles vary greatly by manufacturer and promoter.
Handle height 14-18” from the floor to the bottom of the handle. Most common is about 16” (40cm)
Handle width: Varies, typically 1.25” (32mm)
Length: Typically around 4’ (1.25m)
Front vs. Top-loaded
Front Loaded and Top-Loaded are the 2 main types. All things equal, top loaded are superior. Even with good clamps it is hard to keep plates on side-loaded, and they are more difficult to load in the first place. They also tend to be lighter and so require even more plates and loading time to even begin warming up for most athletes.
Top loading farmer handles rarely need any sort of collars or clamps, however the cheaper front loaded option will require collars. With this implement some products work better than others. Lock-jaw style clamps can pop open due to drops and are not a great choice if there is an alternative. Some wrap resistance bands around either end, this will keep them on, but is a pain to do, and they often get in the way or become a trip hazard. We’ve found that Proloc or HighTemp collars fit most handles and stay on for many drops at high speeds.
Some high-level events, or even small gyms/contests have solid objects, like logs, dinnie rings, or even submarine torpedos. We won’t spend too much time worrying about these since you cannot really train them prior to contest, but be aware that they will feel different due to altered weight distribution. Training handles have most of the weight on the ends, whereas these objects are usually more evenly distributed.
Brands and differences
Handles vary by brand, and every brand has a slightly different feel, even if weight is equal due to their length, handle length, handle diameter, and more.
Below we have created a table with some of the most popular brands with their respective specs. You might wish to choose yours based on preference, or based on what you will see most in competition.
Brand Comparison chart
Programming Considerations
Frequency
Farmer’s are not an exceptionally taxing event if trained with a little intelligence. The pick is high and at your sides, relieving some lower back strain, and there is not a lot of eccentric resistance going on. With that said as you are challenging yourself and building strength, you might notice some substantial soreness in your traps, mid-back, and forearms.
Once per week with a very heavy challenge-week monthly or so is usually enough to progress your farms walk. If you are focusing on speed and footwork with lighter weights, there is no reason you could not do them 2 or even 3 times per week.
Intensity Progression
You can think of it like you would one of your main lifts (ex. squats) in that you can progress linearly or undulating. If you are focusing on speed, remember to err on the lighter side to make sure your speed does not drop substantially as you add weight.
For building speed
Start with a weight of about 25% of your max deadlift per hand and run the distance you will be going in your next competition as quickly as possible while remaining in control. Time these runs to know about how fast you can foresee walking in competition. Add 10-20% to this weight weekly until you begin to lose speed. Then keep the weight there until you can get back to the speed you are aiming for before adding more weight.
Program in at least 2 heavy farmer’s walk days where you can push your handles close to, or at competition weight. While keeping speed in mind for most of your training, you want to know what the handles will feel like at competition weight.
Speed while doing a loaded carry is mostly determined by your ability to have “fast feet” which is essentially a focus on stride frequency and minimized contact time with the ground. If you find that your maximum loaded walking speed is relatively consistent from ⅔ contest weight and full contest weight while your perceived effort at contest weight is about equal you may consider doing speed focused work.
For distance runs
Program long sets of 100 feet or more throughout your training
Setup the event distance so you can practice turns with the same distance you will be walking in competition. I.e. only walking 30 feet and turning if you know it is going to be a 30ft course.
Include a couple sets to failure early in your program to see when and how you might be failing. You might find that you always fail right after a turn, or when your mid-back gives way, which would give you targets for training and cue selection.
Supporting muscle groups and training methods
Producing “fast feet” comes primarily from developing high force output from the posterior muscles. In order to minimize the contact time with the foot and the ground you need to be able to not only produce a large amount of force, but in as fast a time as possible. Exercises that promote speed and power development with the glutes and hamstrings might promote stride rate gains.
Alternatives
Frame: This is as close as you will get to farmer’s with a few key differences. The handles stay cleanly away from you and are not going to wobble or move independently. This may make it easier to grip and move with, but will still challenge similar muscle groups and technique.
Trap bar holds: These will have some carryover to farmer’s as they challenge your grip holding a similar weight in a similar position. They will not, however, help you learn how to move with the weight, which is half of the battle. *Do not try to walk with a trap bar, if you have to drop it, there are many ways that scenario plays out and few of them involve you not getting hurt or hurting someone.
Dumbbells or parallel barbells: If you train in a basic commercial gym, dumbbells can work in a pinch, but likely will not be near heavy enough for most male competitors.
Rolling difference: Parallel barbells might be neat to try, but remember that the handles will roll separately from the weight. This will make it monumentally harder to hold on to as the bar will want to peel out of your hand. Training this method (with lighter weight than normal) might translate to better grip for the real thing, but there is not solid evidence to support this theory.
Accessories
Deadlifts: Trap bar and/or conventional
Lunges and Single-Leg Romanian Deadlifts
Any lift requiring heavy bracing
HIT training for footwork and conditioning
Agility ladder
Jumprope intervals
Other Considerations:
Energy Systems
The farmer’s walk like most strongman events will challenge your explosiveness (ATP and phosphocreatine system) but also your anaerobic glycolytic system especially on longer runs. For that reason is it good to train high velocity pulls from the ground as well as unilateral leg exercises. Your stamina really comes from the ability to maintain high intensities, so a higher carbohydrate diet is going to be the most optimal.
Skill Level - Moderate. Though this event seems to be about brute strength, your ceiling can be elevated to a significant degree with skill work and practice.
Recovery - Medium-high
Upper body (grip, lats, traps)
Lower body (quads, glutes)
Recovery should be considered when doing the full movement. Fatigue accumulation from farmer’s can affect most upper-body pull and lower body movements.
