People love to use the term “functional fitness,” and it’s almost become synonymous with kipping pull-ups, double unders, and a lot of other movements that leave you scratching your head about what makes them more functional than any other movement.

Let’s make things simpler.

What could be more functional than having to pick up something heavy and move it from Point A to Point B?

Human beings have done this since the beginning of time.

Hunter-gatherers wouldn’t eat if they couldn’t transport the spoils of the kill.

Today’s military often is required to carry all of their equipment and sustainment for multiple days on their back, while also wearing a plate carrier, helmet, and various other protective equipment. This is no different than firefighters who perform their occupational tasks in turnout gear and SCBAs.

Carrying external load isn’t just something we do in the gym. It’s part of our DNA and has been necessary to fight and survive.

Who Can Benefit from Loaded Carries?

In short…everybody. If you’re in one of the tactical professions, it’s necessary for your job. Your occupational tasks will be conducted in some sort of gear that adds external load to your body.

Even if you’re just the average gym-goer though, loaded carries offer a significant number of benefits that will improve your overall health and performance in the gym.

1. Trunk & Hip Stability – carries require that you stabilize your torso while in motion (aka dynamic stability), building strength of the trunk and legs while stabilizing at the hip. Sound kind of important if you’re building the type of strength that will help you move further and faster while carrying a ruck? I thought so.How about just trying to improve your squat though? Do you think having better torso strength and stabilization at the hip joint will help you move more weight? Almost certainly.

   I highlight the stabilization at the hip, however, there’s a myriad of carry variations out there. We can hit unilateral stability and anti-lateral flexion through unilateral (one-sided) carries. We can develop shoulder stability through overhead carry variations. There’s no shortage of variations that can be implemented in a training program.

2. Total Body Movement – trunk, hips, legs, shoulders, upper back, grip…all engaged when performing loaded carries. (ps – if you’d like to hear your upper back scream, perform some max effort KB front rack carries and let me know how you feel). This is why carries are one of my favorite movements to prescribe for athletes who are training in the field or potentially limited on time. In a very short time, we can train strength and endurance across every major muscle group in the body. While I don’t recommend that carries are ALL that you do, if you’re short on time and wondering what you should do, picking up something heavy and carrying it for max distance within your allotted time is a great option.
3. Specificity for Tactical Professionals – Military, fire, law enforcement – you are always going to be carrying some form of external load whether that’s a rucksack, plate carrier, turnout gear, or whatever it may be, you have to be able to perform under conditions where you’re supporting more than just your bodyweight. For our military athletes, just being a good endurance athlete won’t make you the best a rucking. Developing the musculature to have a strong torso and lower body to support a heavy ruck is necessary to your performance in that event. Loaded carries are an excellent movement, with a low recovery cost, to implement in a ruck-based training plan.
4. They’re Easy – maybe not physically easy, but they’re a movement that pretty much anybody can perform with little coaching. Pretty much anybody can walk into a gym, pick up a DB or KB and perform a carry with relatively good form. This makes them an excellent choice for a wide variety of training experiences and can be included in programs ranging from novice to advanced.

Training for the Real World

So, let’s talk about the practical application of carries for tactical professionals. The real-world won’t present you a perfect, evenly weighted barbell. You’ll get odd objects that change your body position. You’ll have unevenly weighted implements that challenge strength and stability. And you probably won’t be moving it on a perfectly even surface. Does your training support this? Or have you just been moving plates forwards and backwards?

I’ve always looked at load carriage as one of the major differentiating factors between how tactical professionals train versus the general population. Every single person can benefit from improving their load carriage capacity, but if you’re in a tactical profession it’s non-negotiable. Every single occupational task you are going to conduct will be conducted while wearing some sort of load.

If you look at the average kit (not including rucksack) of a service member on a special operations team, you’ll find him wearing a plate carrier, helmet, and carrying magazines, primary and secondary weapon systems, night vision devices, spare batteries, 9 bangers, etc…all the stuff that they need to be readily accessible while conducting their job. This list can go on and on depending on the type of operation conducted. This individual likely finds himself carrying 60-70 pounds of personal gear before you even add an assault pack, ruck, or aid bag for the medic.

Now put all this stuff on and you are expected to move for large distances over steep terrain, sprint, change direction, and display strength and power. Not to mention the possibility of having to also drag a litter or pick somebody else up and carry them to cover.

In order to do this well, you have to be well-conditioned, and you also have to be strong. It’s not either/or. It’s non-negotiable that you’re both. While you still need to use the barbell to build foundational strength and you still need to train across multiple cardio modalities to build an aerobic base, loaded carries add a high degree of specificity to your training that improves strength and overall strength endurance.

Even if you’re not in a tactical profession, we see this demand across numerous occupations and tasks, whether you are having to carry equipment all day at a job site or just carry your kids.

Adding Carries to Your Program

There’s a thousand different ways you can add carries, so I’ll just speak to how you would see them on Warfighter or in any of our other programs. Typically, we use the Tier System for our training template, which is a full body training system where each day consists of an upper body movement, a lower body movement, and a total body movement. In traditional programs, movements in the total body category are typically deadlifts or variations of the clean and snatch. This is typically what we will use if the total body movement is the main focus of the training session, however, on days when our total body movement is the third exercise of the training session, you’ll often find us programming some sort of carry or drag.

Using loaded carries as a finisher to your program is also a great option. Like I mentioned before, these don’t require a high level of skill to perform, so it’s perfectly fine to do them deep in a training session when you’re fairly fatigued.

Your carries can be progressed each week by weight, distance, or time. I also like to ensure that I’m getting a low carry, high carry, and an overhead carry in each week. These can be performed as three separate carry sessions, or a combination of the two.

Here’s a few examples of various carries and how you can progress them each week.

• 4 x 50 ft Zercher Carry followed by x20 Zercher Shrugs. This is one of my favorites. Not only challenges your posture while carrying a barbell in the zercher (pro tip: using an axle bar makes it more comfortable), but we also get some direct trap work. I like to progress these with weight. Week 1 I may perform these with 135 lbs, then use 155 lbs the next week, and 165 lbs the following week.
• x3 Strict Press, x25 yd Overhead Carry, x3 Strict Press, x25 yd Front Rack Carry. Credit to Coach Dan John for developing this one. This is absolutely BRUTAL, and I love it. I like progressing this one by time. Last time I added these to my program I started with an 8 minute As Many Rounds as Possible (AMRAP), then did it for 10 minutes the next week, and 12 minutes the final week before deloading.
• Single Arm KB Overhead Walk. These I typically progress by distance. The typical progression I follow is perform 25 steps on each leg with the KB overhead, then switch arms and do it again. This is one set. Perform for 3 sets. The next week I’m going to do the same thing for 30 steps. The following week I’m going to do it for 35 steps, then deload.

All of these are simply examples, and I encourage you to try multiple variations in your training plan.