Suitcase Carry

What the suitcase carry actually trains

A suitcase carry is a loaded walk in which you hold a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell in one hand and travel for distance or time while keeping your torso upright.

It sits in the core category, and that is fair enough, but it is honestly a loaded carry. The muscles that decide how it goes are the grip, the traps and the trunk, roughly in that order.

The forearm flexors hold the handle, and for most people they are the first thing to fail. The upper traps and levator scapulae stop the loaded shoulder being dragged down. On the unloaded side, the quadratus lumborum, external and internal oblique and erector spinae work continuously to stop your torso tipping towards the weight. The glutes and quadriceps handle the walking, one leg at a time, under an asymmetric load.

The training effect is anti-lateral flexion, meaning the trunk resists being bent sideways. This is a real and slightly unusual demand. Almost nothing else in a normal programme loads it.

It is also worth being straight about the claims made for carries. They are genuinely useful and genuinely oversold. McGill's review of core training makes the case that trunk work has real but limited benefits and that transfer to performance is less established than the marketing suggests. Do this because it builds grip, traps and lateral trunk strength.

The other honest note is that the loading is capped by your hand. Unless you use straps, the set ends when your fingers open, often before your trunk has been challenged at all.

Setting up and executing

Choose a dumbbell or kettlebell you can hold for the whole distance without your hand opening at the halfway point.

Deadlift it off the floor with a flat back. Picking it up badly is a needless way to make an easy exercise unpleasant.

Stand tall with the arm hanging straight at your side, and pull that shoulder down away from your ear.

Brace the abdominals, set the ribs down and keep the pelvis level. Squeeze the handle hard.

Walk forwards with normal length steps, resisting any lean either towards or away from the weight. Keep the head still and look ahead rather than down at the dumbbell.

Set the weight down under control at the end and repeat on the other side with the same load and the same distance.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Leaning away from the weight is the fault that removes the point of the exercise. Tipping the torso to the opposite side counterbalances the load with your skeleton so your trunk no longer has to work, and it looks fine to anyone not paying attention. Stay vertical.

Letting the loaded shoulder drop means the trunk and traps have stopped holding and the weight is hanging off the joint. Both shoulders should sit at the same height for the whole walk.

Going too light is very common, because the exercise looks like it should be light. A weight you barely notice trains nothing. It should be heavy enough that staying upright takes obvious effort.

Short shuffling steps make the walk easier by keeping both feet near the ground and shortening the single leg phases. Walk normally.

And uneven sides is the strategic error. Carrying further or heavier on your strong side makes the asymmetry worse, which is the opposite of what a unilateral exercise is for. Match the weaker side and stop both at the same point.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

Carries are measured in distance or time, not reps.

For muscle gain, three carries per side of thirty to forty five metres or about forty seconds, with ninety seconds rest. For strength, four heavy carries per side of twenty to thirty metres with two minutes. In a fat loss phase, three carries per side of forty five to sixty metres with a minute.

Load is the variable that matters most. Half your bodyweight in one hand is a serious carry; a quarter is a reasonable place to start.

If your grip fails long before your trunk, you have a choice. Use straps and train the trunk, or stay barehanded and accept that you are training grip. It helps to know which you have picked.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, and carries count, though they are better thought of as strength and conditioning work than as a hypertrophy driver.

Refalo and colleagues found that training close to failure is not necessary for growth, which applies here as a reason to end the carry when your position starts to break rather than when you physically cannot hold on.

Where it fits in your split

At the end of a session, after the heavy lifting.

On push, pull and legs it fits at the end of pull or legs day. On an upper duo split it goes last, since grip and traps are already involved in the pulling. On a bro split it belongs on back or legs day. On upper and lower plus full body, put it at the end of the lower session. On a bodyweight programme there is no direct equivalent, so use a heavy single arm hold if any weight is available.

Never before deadlifts. Cholewicki and colleagues measured very large lumbar loads during maximal lifting, and arriving at those lifts with a pre fatigued trunk and grip is a poor exchange.

Twice a week is comfortable. Carries are not especially fatiguing to recover from, which is part of their appeal.

The clearest case for including them is that they cover a movement direction nothing else in most programmes does, while also training your grip.

Variations worth knowing

The farmer's walk uses a weight in each hand, which cancels the side loading and lets you carry far heavier for pure grip and trap work.

The overhead carry holds the weight locked out above the shoulder, adding a substantial shoulder stability demand and a very different trunk challenge.

The front rack carry holds the weight at the shoulder, loading the trunk against forward collapse rather than sideways.

The suitcase deadlift is the lift without the walk, loading the same asymmetry from the floor and allowing much heavier weights.

The static suitcase hold is simply standing still under the load, which works when you have no room to walk and keeps almost all of the training effect.

And the side plank is the floor based anti-lateral flexion alternative, with no grip demand at all, which makes it the better choice if your hands are the limiting factor.

What the evidence says

McGill's review of core training argues that trunk training produces real but narrow benefits and that the transfer to performance and injury reduction is weaker than commonly claimed. Carries are worth doing on their merits, not as insurance.

Cholewicki and colleagues measured lumbar spine loads during extremely heavy lifting and found very large compressive demands, which supports placing trunk fatiguing work after your heavy lifts rather than before them.

Lehman studied how grip width and forearm position alter upper body muscle activity during pressing, and the principle carries over: how you hold a load changes which muscles are challenged, which is why handle thickness decides whether grip or trunk ends the set.

Speirs and colleagues compared unilateral and bilateral squat training and found broadly comparable improvements in strength and sprinting, which supports the idea that single sided loading is a legitimate way to train rather than a novelty.

Liao and colleagues reviewed unilateral against bilateral resistance training and reached similar conclusions, with unilateral work performing well for change of direction and jump measures, which is the strongest available support for asymmetric loading.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, though carries contribute more to grip, trap and trunk strength than to visible muscle growth.

Refalo and colleagues found training close to failure is not necessary for growth, so ending a carry when your posture starts to break is the correct decision.

Common questions

How heavy should the weight be?

Heavy enough that staying upright takes real effort. A quarter of your bodyweight in one hand is a sensible start and half is a serious carry. If you can walk a hundred metres comfortably, it is too light.

My grip fails before anything else. What now?

Either use straps and train the trunk properly, or stay barehanded and accept that you are training grip. Both are worthwhile, and knowing which you have chosen stops the frustration.

Is this better than a side plank?

They train the same anti-lateral flexion demand. The carry adds grip, traps and a single leg stability component, and loads more easily. The side plank needs no equipment and is the better pick if your hands are the limit.

Should I lean away from the weight to stay balanced?

No, that is the mistake. Leaning counterbalances the load with your skeleton so your trunk stops working. Standing vertical under an off centre load is the entire exercise.

Do carries prevent back injury?

The evidence for that claim is weaker than the marketing implies. They build grip, trap and lateral trunk strength, which are useful qualities. Choose the exercise for what it trains rather than what it is said to prevent.