Suitcase Carry: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Why It Beats Side Planks

The suitcase carry is exactly what the name suggests: pick up one heavy weight, hold it by your side, and walk without letting it drag you over. It looks like nothing. It is one of the hardest things you can ask your obliques to do, and it exposes a weak trunk within about fifteen metres.

Most core training happens lying on the floor. The suitcase carry happens standing up under load, which is the position you actually need a strong midsection in.

How to do a suitcase carry

Put one dumbbell or kettlebell on the floor beside your foot. You want something heavy enough to be a problem; a 12kg kettlebell is a warm up for most people who train.

1. Set your stance and grip. Stand alongside the weight, feet hip width. Hinge at the hips with a flat back, take the handle, and stand up with it the way you would a deadlift. Do not bend sideways to reach it.
2. Stack your ribs over your pelvis. Before you move, pull your ribcage down slightly and squeeze your glutes. Shoulders level, both of them. The loaded shoulder will try to sag; do not let it.
3. Brace and pull the shoulder back. Take a breath into the belly and tighten your abs. Keep the loaded arm long, the shoulder packed rather than shrugged, and the weight away from your thigh so it is not resting on you.
4. Walk normally. Short controlled steps, eyes forward, breathing in and out rather than holding your breath for forty metres. The weight should not swing, and your free arm should not stick out for balance.
5. Turn under control, then swap. Do the same distance on both sides, always. Set the weight down with a hinge, not a slump.

Muscles worked

Loading one side turns your whole trunk into an anti side bend machine, and that is where the training effect comes from.

• Obliques and quadratus lumborum. On the unloaded side, these fire continuously to stop your torso folding towards the weight. This is the primary target and the reason the exercise exists.
• Grip and forearms. A heavy suitcase carry is one of the best grip builders going, because you hold a maximal load for 30 seconds rather than for a five second deadlift lockout. Expect your hands to give out first for the first month.
• Traps and upper back. The trap on the loaded side works isometrically to stop the shoulder being pulled down towards the floor, and the whole upper back holds your posture together.
• Glute medius and hip stabilisers. Every step is a single leg moment, and the glute medius of the standing leg stops your pelvis dropping. Walking with a heavy load in one hand is quietly a hip stability drill.
• Deep abdominals. Whatever you want to call the deep bracing muscles, they hold the ribs and pelvis in the same relationship while you walk, which is precisely their job in real life.

If you want to load it properly, a single heavy kettlebell or a pair of adjustable dumbbells will take you a long way, because you can keep adding weight rather than buying a new implement every few months.

Benefits

It trains the trunk in standing. Crunches and planks train your abs horizontally. You use your abs vertically, carrying a shopping bag, a toolbox or a child on one hip. The transfer is obvious.

It builds grip without a dedicated session. Thirty seconds under a heavy load, four sets a side, twice a week, and your deadlift grip stops being the limiting factor. A grip strengthener helps if you want more, but carries do most of it.

It fixes side to side differences. You cannot cheat one side with the other. Weak left oblique? You will find out in about ten metres, and then you will spend six weeks fixing it.

It costs nothing in recovery. Carries are hard while you do them and gone by the next morning. The current ACSM position stand on resistance training makes the case for programming that covers movement quality alongside heavy loading (ACSM resistance training position stand), and carries fit that brief without adding meaningful fatigue.

It suits tiny spaces. Seven metres of hallway and one dumbbell is a complete workout station. The NHS recommends muscle strengthening work covering all major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and this is one of the easiest ways to hit the trunk and grip parts of that at home.

Common mistakes

Leaning away from the weight. The classic. Your body counterbalances by tipping the other way, which lets the obliques off the hook entirely and loads your lumbar spine asymmetrically. Fix it by dropping the weight by 20% and filming yourself from the front.

Shrugging or letting the shoulder sag. Both ends of the same error. Keep the shoulder packed, neither hiked up nor dragged down, and the arm long.

Holding your breath. Forty metres on one breath ends badly. Brace, then breathe shallow into the braced position. If you cannot breathe and hold the position at once, the weight is too heavy.

Resting the weight on your thigh. Some people let the dumbbell bump their leg every step and take a little load off. Hold it a few centimetres out.

Doing one side more than the other. Almost always accidental, almost always the stronger side. Match the distance, and if the weaker side fails earlier, that becomes the set length for both.

Variations

• Farmer's carry. Both hands loaded. Far more total weight, much less anti rotation demand. Different exercise, and worth doing too, which our farmers carry guide covers.
• Front rack carry. One kettlebell held in the front rack position, elbow tucked. Brutal on the trunk and shoulders, and useful if your grip is what keeps failing.
• Waiter's carry. One weight pressed overhead, arm locked. This punishes any sloppiness in your rib position and builds shoulder stability at the same time.
• Offset carry. Heavy weight in one hand, light one in the other. It lets you extend the set when grip is the limiter without losing the anti side bend challenge.
• Suitcase deadlift. Same setup, no walking. Just picking the weight up and putting it down with a level pelvis, which is a good place to start if the carry itself feels chaotic.

Sets, reps and distance

Programme it by time or distance, never by reps:

• Strength and trunk stability: 3 to 4 sets of 20 to 40 metres per side, heavy, resting 90 seconds. Two sessions a week.
• Grip focus: 4 sets of 30 to 45 seconds per side with the heaviest weight you can hold cleanly, resting two minutes.
• Learning it: 3 sets of 15 metres per side with something light, filming from the front until your shoulders stay level the whole way.

Add weight when you can walk the full distance on both sides without a hint of lean. If you want more anti rotation work alongside it, pair carries with the pallof press and drop a set of side planks from your programme; you will not miss them.

Recommended reads

1. Farmers carry: how to do it
2. The best kettlebells in the UK
3. The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
4. Pallof press technique guide
5. The best grip strengthener in the UK