"This will change your life" – An expert strength coach shares the training method missing from your workouts
The world is always searching for a secret fitness formula; a single exercise, activity or approach capable of overhauling your health and performance. We assume it doesn’t exist, but what if it’s been in front of you the whole time?
“If you do the five basic human movements, you’ve pretty much nailed it,” leading strength coach Dan John tells me. “There’s push, pull, hinge, squat and loaded carry.”
These movement patterns should be non-negotiable in a comprehensive strength training plan, he argues. You can play around with the exercises, weights, sets and reps (three sets of eight to 12 is a popular failsafe), but the foundations remain the same.
However, the last inclusion in this list, loaded carries, may raise a few eyebrows. Most gym plans centre around pushing, pulling, hinging and squatting movements, but surprisingly few contain this fifth fundamental movement. This is their shortcoming, according to John, and he has a strong case as to why.
Why should you include loaded carries in your workouts?
John previously claimed loaded carries (a term he coined) can “change your life in three weeks”. When I asked him how, his answer was twofold. Firstly, he says carrying is one of the key things the human body is designed to do.
“If you look back to a time when your primary concerns were protecting and feeding your family, you needed to hunt, then you needed to bring that mammoth back to camp two miles away,” he tells me. “How are you going to do that? You’re going to drag it, or you’re going to carry it.”
This leads nicely to his second point. In the 21st century, loaded carries are the basic human movement most of us aren’t doing enough of. Even our suitcases now have wheels.
Push, pull, squat and hinge exercises (like the bench press, pull-up, deadlift and squat, respectively) are commonplace in gyms across the world, but you rarely see someone holding a heavy weight and covering ground.
However, the body is hardwired to adapt to change and challenge, so adding something new and physically difficult into your workouts is always going to have a significant impact. In this case of loaded carries, this might mean anything from improved grip, leg and core strength to elevated athletic performance.
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How can you add loaded carries into your workouts?
“The weird thing about the whole loaded carry family is, I don’t care what you do, just do them,” says John “If you’ve never done a loaded carry, try it, then ask me more questions.”
Suitcase carries – carrying a dumbbell, kettlebell or even weighted rucksack in one hand with your arm by your side – are arguably the best place to start. Play with the weight, distance and even speed to find ways of challenging yourself, and change is sure to follow.
A rack carry, where a kettlebell is nestled between the front of your shoulder and your forearm, and a waiter carry, where you’re holding a weight in one hand with your arm extended overhead, round out Dan’s three favourite variations.
“Start by simply doing them, then you should play around with all the options two or three days per week,” he recommends. “In about two or three weeks, when you know how to do them, you’ll find you sit taller in your chair, your shoulders look better, children ask you for advice, dogs salute as you walk by, and then we’ll talk about improving from there.”
At his athletic peak, John’s strength training sessions would consist of just 15 minutes of lifting weights, followed by 15 minutes of loaded carries. The reason he was able to keep his workouts so short? “Loaded carries offer the most bang for your buck of any exercise,” he says.
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How to do a loaded carry workout
Perhaps John’s most famous loaded carry workout is called the SparHawk, and you only need one kettlebell to give it a go. It’s a pairing of goblet squats and suitcase carries which should only take a few minutes to complete, but promises to toast your whole body – John reminds me of his foundational training principle here: “The body is one piece.”
You can adjust the difficulty by changing the weight of the kettlebell and altering the distance of the suitcase carry.
Goblet squat x8
Left-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x7
Right-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x6
Left-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x5
Right-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x4
Left-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x3
Right-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x2
Left-handed suitcase carry x60ft
Goblet squat x1
Right-handed suitcase carry x60ft
The origin of loaded carries
The way John discovered the myriad marvels of loaded carries was slightly unusual. In 2001 he broke his left wrist at a weightlifting meet, and a doctor said he may never lift weights again. So he sought workarounds to keep doing what he loved without putting undue load through the injured area. After some time experimenting, a friend suggested carrying weights rather than lifting them.
“I started doing it,” says John. “I would carry sandbags and put on backpacks with weights in them. I also had a crappy sled made from the shell of a wheelbarrow with a rope around it. I tied the rope to my weightlifting belt and I threw junk in the wheelbarrow, then just dragged it everywhere.”
He later experimented with holding weights, starting light because his left forearm had lost a considerable amount of strength as a result of injury.
“At first I’d carry 10kg, then 20kg, and I soon realised I could do more, so I kept going. Then I started thinking about variations; there’s the waiter walk, the suitcase carry, the rack walk. These are terms that everybody uses now, but somebody had to invent them.”
As his recovery continued, John (an all-American discus thrower) returned to sport, competing at the Highland Games. “I could still throw,” he explains. But, having introduced loaded carries into his training, John’s performance had improved to the point he was catching the eye of rivals.
“People would lean in and go, ‘So, what are you doing?’, which in my world means, ‘What drugs are you on?’. I’d tell them I wasn’t on anything, then tell them what I was doing, and the universal response was, ‘That doesn’t make any sense’.
“I’ve learned one lesson in life: there are times in life where you fold your arms and you don’t try to make sense of it. If you’re throwing farther because you’re walking around with heavy backpacks, dragging a sled and carrying sandbags, you don’t ask questions, you just keep doing it.”
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