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The Secret to Total Body Strength is in Your Hands: Try Loaded Carries!

The Secret to Total Body Strength is in Your Hands: Try Loaded Carries!

Lyle Agagon
November 13, 2025

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EXERCISE 🏋️‍♂️

One of the best total-body exercises on the planet doesn’t need a machine, a gym, or a long routine. It’s just picking up something heavy and walking with it.

It sounds almost too simple — but simple is often what works best. That’s the magic of loaded carries. Moves like the Farmer’s Walk or Suitcase Carry may not look as flashy as a bench press, but when it comes to real-world, head-to-toe strength, they’re hard to beat.

Let's break down why you should try them and how to do them safely.

The Mighty Farmer's Walk

The Farmer's Walk is the perfect place to start. It does exactly what it sounds like. You lift two heavy weights and start to walk.

How to Do It

1. Pick Your Weight
Use dumbbells, kettlebells, or farmer’s handles. Choose something heavy but still holdable without your grip giving up right away.

2. Get Set
Stand tall with a weight on each side. Hinge at your hips, bend your knees, and keep your back straight as you grab the handles.

3. Stand Tall
Lift the weights in one smooth motion. Pull your shoulders back, chest up, eyes forward. No hunching.

4. Walk
Take short, steady steps. Go for distance (like 50 feet) or for time (like 30 seconds). Stay tight and controlled the whole way.

5. Put Them Down Safely
Don’t drop the weights. Hinge, bend your knees, and lower them to the floor.

Why the Farmer’s Walk Rocks

Grip Strength: Your forearms and fingers get a huge challenge.
Shoulders & Upper Back: These muscles fire hard to keep you upright.
Core: Your abs, obliques, and lower back lock in to keep you from wobbling.
Legs & Glutes: Every step is basically weighted walking — a sneaky leg workout.
Posture: Teaches you to stand tall and counters all the slouching we do daily.

The Suitcase Carry: The Core Crusher

Once you’re solid with the Farmer’s Walk, try unbalancing the load. Carry one weight in one hand — just like picking up a really heavy suitcase.

How to Do It

1. Grab One Weight
Set up like the Farmer's Walk, but pick up only one dumbbell or kettlebell.

2. Stand Up Straight
Shoulders level. Chest high. Don’t let the weight pull you sideways.

3. Walk a Line
Move slowly and stay tall. Fight the urge to lean toward the weight — this is the whole point.

4. Switch Sides
Match your time or steps on the other hand.

Why the Suitcase Carry Is a Game-Changer

This one hits your obliques and deep core muscles like nothing else. It also fixes side-to-side imbalances so one hip, shoulder, or oblique isn’t secretly weaker. If you’ve ever carried groceries, luggage, or a kid on one side, you’ll feel the carry payoff in real life.

How to Start Safely

Loaded carries are safe and beginner-friendly, as long as you follow a few basics:

Start lighter than you think. Form first, weight second.
Slow steps, no rushing. Control builds strength.
Chest up, shoulders back. If you start rounding, the weight is too heavy.
Keep breathing. Don’t hold your breath while walking.

Add two to four sets of carries at the end of your workout, a couple of days each week. You’ll feel stronger, stand taller, and move better.

Next time you’re at the gym, don’t just walk past the dumbbells. Pick them up, stand proud, and take a walk. Every step is building a tougher, stronger, more resilient body.

NUTRITION 🥑

The Secret to Calming Inflammation: It's All About Balance

You’ve probably heard that inflammation is “bad,” but that’s not all true. The quick kind, like when your ankle swells after a twist, is your body doing its job. The heat and puffiness are healing in action.

The real problem is chronic inflammation. This is the slow, silent kind that sticks around for years and can lead to joint pain, weight gain, and even heart problems.

So, how do we keep the good inflammation and ditch the bad? A huge part of the answer lies in two tiny fats you eat every single day: omega-6 and omega-3. And it’s all about getting them to work together as a team.

The Fatty Acids

Your body can’t make Omega-6 and Omega-3. You have to get them from food.

The Omega‑6: These guys are like the "gas pedal" for inflammation. When you get hurt, they help start the inflammatory process to begin healing. We get plenty of these from common cooking oils like corn, soybean, and sunflower oil, as well as from many processed snacks and fried foods.
The Omega‑3 Family: These are the "brake pedal." They cool things down and tell the inflammation when to stop. You find these in foods like fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel), walnuts, flaxseeds, and chia seeds.

Both are important. You need the gas pedal to get the car moving, and you need the brake pedal to stop safely. The trouble starts when you have one foot slammed on the gas and you’re barely using the brakes.

Why Our Balance is Out of Whack

For most of human history, people ate a diet where these two fats were pretty balanced. Some scientists think it was close to a 1-to-1 or 2-to-1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3.

Today, the average Western diet is totally out of whack. It's more like 10-to-1, or even a crazy 20-to-1! We’re flooded with omega-6 from processed foods and vegetable oils, while we eat very few omega-3s.

Imagine your body is that car. With this modern diet, the inflammation gas pedal is stuck to the floor, and you’re only lightly tapping the brakes every once in a while. Your body is constantly in a low-level state of inflammation, and it never gets the signal to cool down.

How to Shift the Balance and Feel Better

The good news is, you don't need a complicated diet or expensive supplements to fix this. You just need to make a few simple swaps to press the brakes more often and ease off the gas.

Step 1: Add More Omega-3s (Use the Brakes)

Eat fish twice a week — salmon, sardines, tuna, mackerel.
Use ground seeds, not whole — sprinkle flax or chia on oatmeal, yogurt, or smoothies.
Grab walnuts for snacks or use walnut oil in dressings.

Step 2: Cut Back on Excess Omega-6 (Ease Off the Gas)

Switch your oils — use extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil for most cooking.
Check labels — soybean and corn oil hide in nearly every packaged snack.
Pick better snacks — fruit with nut butter, walnuts, hummus, and carrots.

Here’s the Deal

You don’t need a perfect diet. Just a few swaps can reset your body’s balance.

When omega-6 and omega-3 work together the way they’re supposed to, your body can turn inflammation on when it’s helpful, and shut it off when it’s hurting you. Small changes. Big impact.

BIOHACKING⚡

Feel Better Faster: Can Pulses of Energy Help You Recover?

Sometimes, after a tough workout, your muscles are sore, you feel stiff, and all you want is to bounce back a little quicker. Or maybe you’ve had a minor injury that just seems to take forever to heal. What if you could give your body’s own repair crew a little boost? That’s the idea behind Pulsed Electromagnetic Field therapy, or PEMF for short. It’s a real tool that people are using to help their bodies recover.

What Is PEMF?

Think of every single cell in your body as a tiny, living battery. A healthy cell has a strong, full charge. This electrical charge is crucial. It’s how cells communicate with each other. It’s how they take in nutrients and get rid of waste. It’s a fundamental part of staying healthy and repairing damage.

Now, imagine what happens when you get injured. You sprain your ankle, or you tear muscle fibers during a heavy lift. That injured area becomes a disaster zone. The cells there are damaged, overwhelmed, and their electrical charge drops. It’s like their batteries are drained. They can’t communicate properly. They can’t do their jobs effectively. This leads to inflammation, swelling, pain, and a very slow healing process.

Your body wants to fix itself, but the repair crew is working with dead walkie-talkies and no power.

PEMF as a Universal Charger

This is where PEMF comes in. A PEMF device—which can be a mat, a pad, or a portable unit—sends out incredibly safe, gentle pulses of electromagnetic energy through your body. These are the same kind of energy waves that are all around us in nature, just carefully controlled for a specific purpose.

You do not feel a shock. Most of the time, you don’t feel anything at all. These pulses are simply waves that pass through your tissues, seeking out those drained cellular batteries.

So, what happens when the PEMF waves meet your cells? They give them a recharge. It’s like taking a dead smartphone and plugging it into a working charger. The phone doesn’t instantly work, but the power starts flowing back in. With PEMF, the energy pulses gently encourage your cells to restore their natural electrical charge. It jump-starts them.

How Can This Help Me Recover?

“Recharged” cells translate into three key benefits that directly speed up your recovery:

Reduced Inflammation and Swelling: Inflammation is your body’s natural response to injury. It sends extra fluid and blood to an area to protect it. But sometimes, this response is too strong or lasts too long, causing most of the pain and stiffness you feel. PEMF has been shown in studies to help calm this overactive response. Improving cell function helps your body manage inflammation more effectively, leading to less swelling and pain.
Improved Circulation and Oxygen Flow: Your blood is the delivery truck for your body. It brings oxygen and nutrients to damaged tissues and carries away the metabolic waste that causes soreness (like the lactic acid that makes your muscles burn). PEMF helps improve blood flow and oxygen delivery at the cellular level.
Faster Tissue Repair: Your body heals by creating new, healthy cells to replace damaged ones. This process requires a lot of energy and perfect communication between cells. By recharging the cellular batteries, PEMF supports and accelerates this natural regeneration process. This means your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and even bones can repair themselves more efficiently.

Who Actually Uses This?

PEMF is a tool used by people at all levels.

Professional and Amateur Athletes: This is one of the biggest groups. After a game or intense training session, athletes will often lie on a PEMF mat or place a pad on a sore area. Their goal is simple: reduce downtime. By managing inflammation and soreness quickly, they can get back to training sooner and at a higher level.
People with Chronic Pain: For individuals dealing with ongoing issues like arthritis, back pain, or stiff joints, PEMF offers a drug-free way to manage their daily discomfort. Regular use can help keep inflammation low and improve mobility.
Post-Surgery Patients: After an operation, the body is in a major state of repair. Using PEMF can help accelerate the initial healing phase, reducing swelling and pain around the incision site and helping tissues mend faster.
Everyday Active People: Maybe you’re not a pro athlete, but you like to hike, run, or play weekend sports. PEMF can be a great way to deal with the ordinary aches and pains of an active lifestyle, helping you stay active without being sidelined by soreness.

Give It a Go

PEMF is not a magic wand. It won’t instantly heal a severe injury or replace the need for rest, good nutrition, and proper medical care. What it is is a powerful support tool. It works with your body’s own brilliant design, giving your cells the energy boost they need to do their jobs better.

If you are tired of long recovery times, constant soreness, or nagging injuries, PEMF is a safe and non-invasive technology worth exploring. As always, talk to your doctor to see if it’s right for your specific situation. But for a growing number of people, it has become the secret to pushing the "recharge" button on their own body’s recovery.

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CHALLENGE💪

Challenge of the Week: The Loaded Carry Challenge!

Your Mission: This week, we're ditching the complicated stuff and getting strong the simple way. Your challenge is to add loaded carries to your workout at least twice this week!

The Challenge Workout

Do this at the end of your regular workout, or on its own. You just need two dumbbells or kettlebells.

Part 1: The Farmer's Walk Finisher

The Move: Pick up a heavy (but manageable) weight in each hand. Stand tall, chest up, and walk.
Your Goal: Complete 3 sets.
How? Walk for 30-40 seconds per set. Or, if you have the space, walk a specific distance (like the length of a basketball court and back).
Rest for 60-90 seconds between sets.

Part 2: The Suitcase Carry Core Test

The Move: Pick up a single weight with one hand. Stand tall, don't let your shoulders tilt! Walk in a straight line.
Your Goal: Complete 2 sets per side (left and right hand).
How? Walk for 20-30 seconds per set. Focus on fighting the lean and keeping your core tight.
Rest for 45 seconds between sets.

Pro-Tips for Success

Form First: This is not a race. The goal is to stay tight and controlled. If you start hunching over, the weight is too heavy.
Pick Your Weight: Start lighter than you think you need to! For the Farmer's Walk, you should feel challenged by the last 10 seconds. For the Suitcase Carry, it should feel heavy, but you should be able to keep your shoulders level.
Where to Do It: A gym floor, your garage, or even your backyard are all perfect spots.

Let’s Go!