People who are masters of weightlifting will scoff at this, but I just discovered this truth for myself: there's a marked difference between a farmer's carry and a suitcase carry. There are too many variations of each exercise to count (sets, reps, arm position, dumbbell vs. kettlebell, time vs. step number, banded vs. stable, etc.), but the fundamental difference is that a farmer's carry involves both of your arms while a suitcase carry, as the name implies, involves only one—as if you were lugging a heavy, wheel-less suitcase through an airport.
Up to now, I've been doing even and uneven farmer's carries routinely. Both work your core and increase your back strength along certain planes of movement. Neither is really a rotational exercise; I've got other exercises to deal with that issue. The variations I've been doing, in what are admittedly minimalist workouts (enough to rebuild lost strength after a stroke and a heart attack), are as follows: 10-kg/10-kg (left/right hand) farmers carries, and 20-kg/10-kg alternating farmer's carries (I do marches in my apartment). And that's it.
But just the other day, I randomly discovered something while I was holding only a 20-kg weight: the suitcase carry, for me at least, fires the opposite core muscles more than a farmer's carry (balanced or uneven weights) does. So today, I added 20-kg suitcase carries to my regimen, and damn, I can feel it in my core. For a guy still dealing with frozen shoulder, the 20-kg suitcase carry is the vertical answer to the side plank—no joke.
So that's my underwhelming discovery. Just thought I'd share the lameness.
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