4 Standing Exercises That Restore Carrying Strength Better Than Gym Workouts After 40

You may have noticed that as you get older, carrying things just feels harder. Not necessarily lifting weights in the gym, but real-life carrying—groceries, luggage, kids, awkward objects, even holding things for a long period of time. What’s interesting is that a lot of people experiencing this are still regularly exercising.

So the question becomes: why does carrying strength decline even though someone is technically getting stronger in the weight room? Here’s where most traditional fitness models fall short. They focus almost entirely on muscle strength. And don’t get me wrong, muscle absolutely matters. Farmers carries, hanging, there are so many ways to build grip strength. But muscle is only one piece of the equation.

Why Muscle Strength Isn’t Enough

Carrying strength is actually the result of several systems working together all at the same time. The first piece is individual joint mobility. If joints like the shoulder girdle, the ribcage, or even your upper thoracic spine lose movement, the rest of the body tends to compensate. When compensation happens, muscles are forced to work harder, and efficiency drops. That’s why something relatively light can start to actually feel heavy.

The second piece is something most programs ignore completely, and that’s fascial connectivity. The fascia is the connective tissue system that links the shoulder, arm, spine, and hip. It holds everything together. Carrying strength isn’t just about isolated muscles contracting—it’s about how force travels through these fascial chains. When your fascia becomes restricted or poorly coordinated, force leaks out of the system, and the body loses its ability to transfer strength efficiently.

The Neurological Factor

The third and often most overlooked factor is neurology. Your muscles only produce strength based on the quality of the signal they receive from the nervous system. As we age, after injuries, or after years of repetitive posture, the nervous system can lose its efficiency. This often shows up as reduced endurance, decreased grip strength, or the feeling that your arm fatigues faster than it should.

Part of this neurological component involves something called neural gliding. Your nerves actually have to move through and around all the surrounding tissues. If those nerves become restricted, the signal to your muscles becomes less efficient. And when that happens, you have perfectly strong muscles, but they simply don’t perform the way they should.

A Different Approach

This is where my approach tends to differ a little bit from traditional fitness or even rehab models. Instead of just strengthening the muscles, I focus first on restoring joint mobility, fascial coordination, and neurological efficiency. Because when those systems improve, strength—especially functional strength—naturally improves. And more importantly, that strength becomes usable in real life.6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

Here are four of my favorite standing exercises that you can do to improve your carrying strength.

Scapular Rotation Drill

 

One of my favorite ways to work with the scapula is teaching the brain how to work the pieces independently. We’re isolating movement through the forearm, then the forearm and humerus, and then the forearm, humerus, and scapula. This builds motor control that directly translates to more efficient carrying patterns.

Muscles Trained: Rotator cuff, scapular stabilizers, forearm muscles

How to Do It:

• Bring your arm out to about shoulder height
• Spread your fingers and bend your wrist back
• Start by rotating just the forearm without moving the entire arm
• Fix that position, then rotate the entire arm without moving the shoulder
• Finally, move all the pieces together—forearm, humerus, and scapula
• Repeat the sequence from multiple angles (side view, back view)

Recommended Sets and Reps: 30 to 60 seconds per side, 2 to 3 sets per side

Form Tip: Focus on isolating each segment before adding the next. The goal is coordination, not speed.

Global Shoulder Girdle Movement

 

This exercise works on the global movement of the shoulder girdle and teaches your body to coordinate action across multiple joints. There’s a sequencing component that’s critical—your wrists go, then elbows, then shoulders, in that order.

Muscles Trained: Deltoids, rotator cuff, pectorals, upper back muscles, triceps, wrist flexors and extensors

How to Do It:

• Interlace your fingers and place them underneath your chin
• Gently tuck your chin with elbows up
• Extend your wrists, then your elbows, then pinch your shoulders back
• Reverse the movement: shoulders come back, elbows bend, wrists bend
• Think of the analogy of standing in a big tank of water—push the water away and pull it back to you
• Once comfortable, take the movement overhead: place the back of your hands on your head, chin tucked, pelvis tucked
• Extend wrists, elbows, then shoulders overhead, then reverse
• Progress to combining both movements: fingers under chin, extend out and back, bring overhead, extend up and down, back to head, under chin

Recommended Sets and Reps: Start at 30 seconds and work up to 90 seconds, 1 to 3 sets

Form Tip: Make sure you’re getting action in all of the sites. Work the movement nice and smooth and rhythmically—everything should flow together.

Lewit Technique

 

When clients come in and they’ve lost some carrying strength or grip strength, we always look into the neurology. The Lewit technique works by gliding through the neural line, especially the brachial plexus, which is all the nerves that innervate the arm, shoulder, and hand.

Muscles Trained: This is primarily a neurological exercise affecting the entire upper limb

How to Do It:

• Take a fairly wide base with your knees and feet turned in, and a little bend in the knees
• Tuck your pelvis under (like you’re tucking a belt buckle toward your belly or chin) and keep it fixed
• Phase 1: Bring both hands up, internally rotate one side (right arm) and externally rotate the other (left arm), then switch back and forth
• Phase 2: Add arm height—whichever arm turns internal drops a little, whichever arm turns external comes up a little
• Phase 3: Turn your head and look toward the hand that is dropping and going into internal rotation
• Phase 4: Add a translation—glide your ribs toward the side you’re looking down at and that is dropping

Recommended Sets and Reps: 30 to 60 seconds per phase. Once you’ve mastered each phase, move to the next. Once you’ve accomplished the complete movement, 60 to 90 seconds for 1 to 3 sets.

Form Tip: Take it step by step. Make sure you’ve achieved mastery of each step before adding the next component.

Curling Arnold Press

 

This compound movement integrates all the systems we’ve been working on—mobility, fascial coordination, and neurology—into a loaded strength pattern that mimics real carrying demands.

Muscles Trained: Biceps, deltoids, rotator cuff, upper back, core stabilizers

How to Do It:

• Hold two dumbbells at your sides
• Curl the weights up
• Once at the top of the curl, open your shoulders (rotate palms forward)
• Press the weights overhead
• Bring the weights back down to shoulder height
• Close your shoulders (rotate palms back toward you)
• Lower the weights back down to complete the curl

Recommended Sets and Reps: 3 to 5 sets of 10 to 20 repetitions

Form Tip: Keep the movement smooth and controlled. Each phase—curl, open, press, down, close, uncurl—should be deliberate.

Building Your Routine

Start with the scapular rotation drill and global shoulder girdle movement exercises to build the foundational motor patterns. These can be done daily as they’re primarily about coordination and mobility rather than strength.

Once you’re comfortable with those, add the Lewit technique two to three times per week to address the neurological component. Remember, you only need to continue each phase until you’ve mastered it—then you can move on to the next level.

Finally, incorporate the curling Arnold press as your loaded exercise. This is where all the mobility, fascial work, and neural efficiency come together under resistance. Two to three sessions per week is plenty.

The beauty of this approach is that you’re not just getting stronger—you’re restoring the systems that make strength usable in everyday life. Give these exercises four to six weeks, and you’ll notice a real difference in how effortlessly you can carry things throughout your day.