Coach,
For the farmer’s walks, would straps be permissible or advisable given the focus is on the delts?
The knurling on my trap bar is rather passive (I’ll be upgrading eventually, wish the dead-squat bar was still offered!)
It seems that the weight on the two and three minute sets especially would be limited by grip fatigue and that the grip would be trained to a degree even with straps on longer sets.
Would you describe pushing out as trying to do a lateral raise with the trap bar handles?
It absolutely is. In fact, unless you compete in a sport that requires a lot of grip strength, it is fine to use straps for other reasons too.
For example, when I do heavy loaded carries to build overall strength I stay strap-less as long as possible as I ramp the weight up. But after that I’ll add straps and keep adding weight for 1-3 more sets.
You prefer longer duration loaded carries or much heavier for trap growth ? Thank you
The underwhelming answer is “A mix of both is best”.
But if your main goal is hypertrophy and you only want to do one version, I like sets of 60-80 meters, as heavy as you can for that distance.
Would you apply the usual RPE scale (moderate volume, moderate intensity and moderate frequency accounted for in the training format) here as well Coach? I think you mentioned multiple times to treat loaded carries by itself as an exercise of the session, not as something you add as a supplement.
For example if you do 3 sets of 60 meters:
Set 1 & 2: RPE 8-9 → 60 meters with 10-20 meters in reserve
Set 3: RPE 9-10 → 60 meters with 0-10 meters in reserve (either with same weight as set 1&2 but higher RPE due to accumulated fatigue or due to increased load)
Hahaha… I actually came to the same conclusion after I posted that. Much appreciated Chris.
You favor any other exercise(s) over carries for trap growth ?
When I program for a distance client, I do.
Although it is harder to do precisely than with reps.
Yeah, you have the 10m = 1 rep correspondence, but it’s much harder to know how many more meters you can carry a weight than how many more reps you can do.
But it still give the client a pretty good idea of how hard they must push each set.
It does take a couple of runs and hitting failure to determine the proper distance and convert it to RPE’s.
Even though I talk like and am a complete training NERD, I try to just be content with staying in the right ball park. I don’t believe dropping the weight one meter sooner or later makes that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. As long as it’s in the suggested RPE range I’m pretty sure it’s alright.
However I still need to know that I’m doing things right and your experience/feedback certainly helps to confirm that I am or I’m not.
Thanks Coach.
I had Trap Bar Farmer’s Walks programmed today, so I decided to try out the “pushing the arms out” cue CT mentions in one of his latest articles. Observations: it certainly adds a new component to farmer’s walks; however, keeping the constant tension during longer distances (50 sec. or more) isn’t always easy, especially when you have to focus on other aspects of the exercise (abs tight, square shoulders, etc.). I guess it comes with practice. Will definitely be using the cue again next week.
It does come with practice. You basically externally rotate shoulders, depress scapula, brace on almost everything so once your nervous system is efficiently adapted to those internal cues, it becomes second nature and doesn’t require as much attention anymore.
I did the farmers walks with the side delt emphasis as well today. To get the best out of side delt activation you really want to focus on pushing out instead of up. Both with dbs and trap bar I like to imagine scraping the dbs/bb out over the floor. It’s great for MM connection.
It was a weird delt sensation with the trap bar. Not the usual lactic acid burn you’d expect from shoulders but more a feeling of increased rigidity in the side delts. Almost like your shoulders blow up without the lactic acid or pump feeling. Really weird but looks awesome.
Oh and using straps and not going too heavy for long distances really helps divert more attention towards the delts as well. The upper traps also get a great stimulus.
General consensus: farmers walks are awesome
The more time goes by, the more we come round to a Dan John view of the world…
Dan John is the epitome of loaded carries