Loaded carries are one of THE best ways to build total body strength and conditioning. I'm a HUGE fan of them.

If you're not familiar with the term, it's pretty much exactly as the name describes...carry heavy stuff. The most common type of loaded carry you're likely familiar with is the Farmers Walk.

Loaded carry training is AWESOME...some of the best stuff you can do if you're interested in building truly functional muscle and strength as well as sheer willpower and determination.

This version of the loaded carry concept is one that I call a "Robocop" carry. The reason is due to the sheer amout of metal loaded onto my body...literally a quarter TON, in this case (520 lbs)...and how it forces me to walk very slowly and deliberately as I'm carrying it (yes, like Robocop :).

This is basically a "multiple resistance" loaded carry. In this one, I'm combining 6 different pieces of training equipment into one exercise.

Now, just to be clear...I don't necessarily recommend that YOU do this exact exercise. It's EXTREMELY advanced in terms of loaded carry training and requires a lot of different equipment that you may not have access to.

I do, however, want you to start thinking of ways that you can do loaded carries with multiple pieces of equipment as part of your training...e.g. a dumbbell and kettlebell (held racked), a weight vest and sandbag, a kettlebell and sandbag, etc.

There are a lot of great combinations you can use....this stuff is fun and challenging.

And opening up your mind to the possibilities that multiple-resistance loaded carries can give you is the REAL reason I'm showing you this exercise...(aside from it being really cool to see, of course :).

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The Quarter Ton Robocop Carry

The grand total of all 6 pieces of training equipment I was carrying was 520 lbs (just a bit over a quarter ton).

First, I've got a pair of 20 lb ankle weights (total of 40 lbs) and an 85 lb weight vest.

Next, I slung a 70 lb sandbag across my upper back and shoulders.

Third, I had 40 lbs of chains hanging from the end of a bar in my power rack. This way, all I had to do was duck my head and walk under to get them hanging on myself.

This, however, resulted in the chains sliding under the sandbag and sliding the sandbag right off my back (should have tested that part of the setup first).

Not to be deterred, I grabbed the sandbag again and heaved it up overhead and onto my back again, so it was sitting on top of the chains.

The final step was to grab the dumbbells...a pair of 125 lb dumbbells.

Attached to the dumbbells was a pair of KettleClamps (a great piece of equipment that clamps onto a dumbbell handle, essentially converting it into a kettlebell). These weigh about 17 lbs each (34/35 lbs total).

The handles make it MUCH easier to do Farmers Walk with heavy dumbbells. They give you better balance in the load in your hands and allow the "bell" part to hang lower (beside your upper thigh rather than on your hip, which gets awkward).

I set the dumbbells on a flat bench so that I didn't have to squat down and pick them with all the other pieces of equipment hanging off myself.

Then it was pick up the dumbbells and turn around...the real fun begins.

Start walking.

One of the first things you'll notice in the video is the very slow and deliberate pace I keep when sporting this heavy of a load. You have to be sure of every single step before you take it and make sure your balance is spot on.

If you go too fast and can't account for the weight shift (especially with swinging chains), you will run into trouble.

Then it's just a matter of sheer guts and determination.

Once I got as far as I could in my limited floor space, I turned around and went back the way I came. If you're doing these in a space where you can just keep walking straight, that's totally fine. You don't have to turn around like I do.

With this one, when I was done, I was DONE.

I set the dumbbells down, slung the sandbag off to the side, took off the chains, then removed the vest and ankle weights.

One set of this was all that was going to happen on this one...

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Bottom line, don't let what I did here scare you...let it INSPIRE you.

Loaded carry training is incredibly effective. You can treat these carries as workouts on their own, as exercises within the context of a regular

workout, or as a finisher to a workout.

You can do these with very heavy weight for short distances or even for endurance for very long distances (I regularly do loaded carries of up to 2 miles).

The key is to just DO them. You will reap the benefits.

I've posted the video of this insanity onto my YouTube channel here....if you want to just watch the carry part, you can skip all the setup stuff by going to the 4:40 mark of the video.

If you love hard training like this, you need to check out my book "Metabolic Monsters"

These powerful strength, fat-loss and conditioning circuits utilize loaded carries (not quite as insane as that one, though!) to help you develop incredible work capacity and power, while building rock-solid muscle mass.

Check it out here.