The Lift and Carry Exercise

April showers brought May flowers 🌺 and we are in the garden a planting!

Whether you have a big garden or a patio with pots, you probably find yourself lifting bags of soil, pails of water, or lugging old plants to the compost pile!

Todays lift and carry exercise focus on the hinge movement, the press, and a plank. Lift and carry is one of the 5 basic movement patterns we need to work on in our quest to be fit and injury free.

I give you several options here. If you are familiar with these then this is a friendly reminder to incorporate them into your movement or exercise routine.

They are one of my favorite core exercises. If you haven’t tried these before, give them a try, but start with light weight and move up slowly.

If you can walk in front of a mirror to watch any rocking or swaying that might be happening, that would be best. I started with a 35lb kettlebell, but if this is new to you try 8 or 10 lbs.

Before I start you can see me do a bit of a shoulder roll, slight rotation of the rib cage, eliminating rib cage flare, and I hinge at the hips.

Here’s the Lineup…

• Single Arm Carry: Hinge at the hips, grab the kettlebell, and stand upright. Make sure you feel even, we don’t want a shift in the hips or a rounded back here. We want to be in an upright plank.
• Double Arm Carry: With two kettlebells – hinge at the hips, stand upright and walk.
• Suitcase Option with Doubles: Walk 5 steps, put them down, reach down, pick them up, repeat as often as needed.
• Shoulder Carry: Bring the weight to the inside of the shoulder. Keeping close to the body, engaging the back muscles and trunk muscles for support. Walk.
• Shoulder Carry With Farmers Walk: Bring one weight to the inside of the shoulder with one arm and pick up the other weight with the other arm and leave that arm extended. Walk.
• Waiter Carry with Farmers Walk – we have pressed a weight up now, so the body must maintain shoulder stability while maintaining good hip mobility. This one is the Most challenging.

Start off with 20 – 30 seconds at a weight you can maintain with good form. Increase to a minute and, as you get stronger adjust or vary your carry.

To be truthful, I look a bit rounded. It could be because it was 9:30 at night….need to work on that!

So carry on… enjoy the workout and let me know if you have some favorite carries you would like to share.

As always, movement can be challenging but should not be painful! Enjoy and be strong! 💪