Ep. #718: Here’s Why You Should Start Rucking (Especially If You Hate Cardio)

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I’m your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to learn about one of my favorite cardio hacks. One weird trick to make your cardio more effective without making it much more unpleasant. And. If I were to summarize it, if I were to cut to the chase, it would really just be put some weight in a backpack and then put the backpack on and go walk.

That’s it. That’s it in a nutshell. That is rucking. Which is simple, but also I think one of the most underrated kinds of cardio you can do because it burns a lot of calories, it increases your cardiovascular fitness. It’s very easy on your body. It’s very easy to recover from. It is not going to interfere with your muscle and strength gains in the way that more intense forms of cardio can.

Uh, it’s very versatile. You can rock. And anytime and you can make it into a social activity, it’s very easy to do with a group. What’s more unlike walking without the weight or doing other forms of cardio rocking is very easy to progressively overload. That is, you can continually make your rocks a little bit harder, which you can’t do with just walking, or at least you can’t do.

So if you are like many of my listeners in that you don’t particularly enjoy doing cardio, but you do it anyway because you like what it does for your body composition and your health, this episode may change that for you. With rocking, you may come to enjoy your cardio workouts just as much as your strength training workouts.

I know, I know a tall promise, but let’s see how it. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we’re on top because every ingredient and.

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Okay, so what is rucking? Well, I described it briefly in the intro, but in case you skipped over the intro, it’s simply walking with a weighted backpack. That’s really it. It’s called Rucking because ruck is short for ruck sack, which is a. Backpack designed to carry heavy loads. Uh, typically ruck sacks are made of more durable materials and they feature thicker shoulder straps and backpacking than regular backpacks.

But the terms are often used interchangeably. And if you’re wondering if. If there’s a difference between rucking and hiking or backpacking, in the case of rucking, you’re carrying extra weight with the goal of just getting a better workout, uh, with the goal of burning more calories and making your walking a little bit more difficult.

And typically you are gonna use metal plates, which are also called r weights or bricks. Sandbags water jugs or some other heavy object. And again, really just to weigh yourself down a little bit. Now, in the case of backpacking or hiking, you’re usually carrying extra weight because you need to bring stuff with you, , to complete the trip, not just metal or stone.

You’re bringing food, you’re bringing water, you’re bringing a tent, and so forth. And so while the experience can be more or less the same, the extra weight differs in composition. Purpose. And before I get into how to ruck effectively, I wanna share a little bit of the historical background because I think it’s kind of cool because although Rucking is becoming trendy these days, it is definitely coming into vogue, it’s origins, go back thousands of years and go back to soldiering.

In particular, for example, if we go back to the 100 s, the early 100 s bc, the Statesmen and General Gaius Marus made some major changes in the Roman military, and one of them was requiring the soldiers to carry their own equipment on campaign, which worked out to maybe about 50 or 60 pounds of armor, clothing, weapons, food, and other supplies.

Now, previously soldiers had stowed much of. Kit on pack animals, which were slow and unwieldy and inefficient, and Mar’s insistence on his soldiers Rucking not only allowed the Roman armies to move faster and using fewer resources, that also made the soldiers tougher, fitter, and better fighters. And when many of.

Realized this when many of them experienced it firsthand. They started to take pride in their ability to haul all of their own stuff and jokingly referred to themselves as Marion Mules. And now a couple of millennia later, rucking is still a key pillar of military training all around the world. As Eric Kaney details in his book Inside Delta Force Candidates for Delta Force, which is one of the most elite units in the us.

Are required to march with a 45 pound ruck sack for up to 50 miles over rough terrain in order to qualify for this elite unit. And other elite Special forces units have similar rucking standards like the Navy Seals and Green Berets and so forth. Ironically, modern soldiers often have to carry much more weight than.

Ancient counterparts who had to wear very heavy armor, for example. And that’s because while modern military technologies like radios and body armor, guns, ammunition, medical equipment and so forth have made these soldiers more effective, they’ve also made them a lot heavier. These gadgets weigh a lot.

For example, US soldiers in Afghanistan were often required to rock up to 130 pounds over mountainous terrains during long patrols. That’s. Okay, so now that we’ve painted a bit of a a landscape here, let’s fill in some of the more interesting details, the more practical details. Let’s talk about some of the benefits of rocking that I had mentioned in the intro.

Let’s talk about burning calories because rocking burns a lot. Of calories, and this starts with just walking in general, which many people are surprised to learn about how many calories they can burn. Just walking. For example, a study conducted by scientists at California State University found that subjects burned about 350 calories per hour while walking at a four mile per hour pace, which is a brisk walk.

That’s not power walking, that’s not leisurely walking. That’s moving with a bit of a purpose, and as you’d expect, you burn a lot more calories when you add weight, when you put 20, 30 or more pounds on your back. Specifically, a study on military personnel conducted by NATO found that you can expect to burn around 600 calories per hour when you’re rucking 45 pounds at about that four mile per hour pace on a flat.

That’s a lot of calories that’s on par with moderate intensity, biking, jogging, swimming, rowing, elliptical. You know the many types of cardio that people often do, and that number gets higher. The more you weigh, the more weight that you carry, and the faster that you walk and the steeper or the rougher.

The terrain that you walk on. So for example, if you weigh 170 pounds and you usually r with a 45 pound pack at about four miles per hour over moderately hilly terrain, so let’s say a a 2% grade, you’d be burning about 700 calories. Per hour. And if you wanna check out how many calories are burned at other pack weights, body weights, walking speeds, and so forth, head over to legion athletics.com and search for Rucking and you’ll find an article that this podcast is based on.

And in that article is a chart that has different body weights, it has different pack weights, different walking speeds, and it gives calories burned per hour. So you can go to the website and check that out. Another benefit. Of Rucking is that it boosts your fitness more than walking Now, walking is an excellent form of cardio.

It is one of the most underrated forms of cardio, but it’s not nearly as effective for improving your fitness and particularly your cardiovascular fitness as rucking is. And the reason for that is pretty obvious. It’s the same reason that bench pressing is. For improving your pectoral fitness than doing pushups.

It helps you better implement progressive overload. So compared to just walking, rucking elevates your heart rate higher, it burns more fat. It provides an all around greater training effect in the same amount of time because you are able to add weight and then once you adapt to. Let’s say you’re starting weight of 20 pounds, when that becomes noticeably easier, you can then make it harder by going up to 25 or 30 pounds and so forth.

Another benefit is that rucking is easier on the body than running and provides, I would say, probably more or less the same benefits in terms of calorie burning and improving cardiovascular fitness. Now, why is rucking easier on the body? Well, it is not for the reasons that most people think. You might first assume that it’s because it’s lower impact, for example.

But research shows that both activities are actually comparable in this regard. For example, a study that was conducted on military recruits found that rucking with 45 pound plates on a flat surface creates maximum impact forces of around twice the person. Body weight. So if a person weighs 200 pounds, the maximum amount of force transmitted through their legs while rocking would be around 400 pounds.

Now if you look at studies on running, they show that peak impact forces are around one and a half to three times body weight. So it’s not that drastically different from rocking. What’s more research shows that peak impact forces during running aren’t correlated, are not . Just to be clear there, they are not correlated.

With injuries. So the impactful of the training is not much of a concern if we’re talking about injury. So why is rocking easier on your body than running? Well, I’m not aware of any studies that have compared running and rocking in this manner, but based on my own experience rucking and running and talking with many people who have done these activities, it seems that rucking causes much less muscle damage than.

And this is also why rocking tends to interfere with weightlifting workouts less than running, which has been shown in research. Research has shown that running jogging can markedly impair your performance in your strength training because it adds quite a bit of muscle damage that your body has to repair.

And of course, your strength training also causes a lot of muscle damage, and your body can only repair so much muscle damage. Now, in the case of rocking, what you’ll notice, Is you’re just not gonna feel as stiff as sore, as drained after a good ruck session as you would after a good run session. And so practically speaking, that means that I bet you could go for a nice long R on a Sunday and then still do a heavy leg session on Monday without any problems, without missing a beat.

Now of course, it doesn’t mean you can do as much rucking as you want. Without interfering with your progress in the gym. If you do a five hour R, that is going to knock the starch out of you, period. But if you follow the advice I’m gonna give you in this podcast in terms of how to program your rocking, it’s very unlikely to interfere with your ability to gain muscle and gain strength.

So you can really think of. Amounts of rucking as a penalty free way to boost your calorie burning and boost your cardiovascular fitness. Another benefit of Rucking is it’s very versatile. Now, my personal favorite form of cardio right now is cycling on an upright bike for. A variety of reasons. It doesn’t interfere with weightlifting at all.

It doesn’t get in the way of muscle and strength gain. It burns a lot of calories and it’s very convenient. And I will schedule my cardio sessions during times when I have calls. And if I don’t have any calls, then I will multitask, I will double up, and I will usually read. Um, and because I’m doing moderate cardio, I’m not doing high intensity intervals.

I don’t. Distracting enough to get in the way of reading. Like I can focus on the book and I can just get in some extra study time while I am also getting in some sweat time. But if I were to want to trade the reading for listening, maybe listening to an audiobook, or listening to a podcast or a lecture, then I would switch to rucking because again, I could burn more or less the same amount of calories.

And I could challenge my cardiovascular system about as effectively. Now, something else you can stack with Rucking is social interaction, which you can’t do with many types of cardio. They just don’t lend themselves well to conversation and camaraderie. I mean, unless you are moving at a snails. Pace. You can’t talk while you’re cycling.

You can’t talk while you’re running or rowing again, or doing many of the other types of cardio that people do. Swimming, right? How are you gonna talk when you’re swimming? And even if you do cardio indoors on a machine, it’s often impossible to chit chat over the noise of the machines and the. Gym, if you’re doing it in a gym, rocking, of course, is different because you’re outside and it’s quiet and you’re going relatively slowly.

It is safe. You don’t have to pay too much attention to what you’re doing. Even if you’re doing it let’s say in the mountains and you’re hiking, and therefore you can invite some friends and you can chew the fat, you’re gonna be breathing. hard, probably if you’re pushing yourself, if you’re rucking at a faster pace and if you have a heavy pack, but you shouldn’t actually be getting to the point where you can no longer carry on a conversation, because that now would qualify as high intensity cardio, which you can do in stretches.

But I wouldn’t recommend that you try to go out for 30, 40 minutes of, you know, a seven, eight, or nine out of 10, because you’re just not gonna be able to. And it increases the wear and tear on your body and it’s just not necessary. So that is a, a good barometer actually of, is your rucking not difficult enough or is it too difficult?

Is are you able to carry on a conversation with having to stop and catch your breath here and there? That’s gonna be the sweet spot. As far as difficult or as far as intensity goes. If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world.

All right, well, if you’re still listening, chances are you want to start rucking. So let’s talk about how to do it right. Uh, the first step is to walk before you r. Now, this step is optional. It is for people who are not currently doing any cardio, and if that is you, then I would say start walking for at least a couple of weeks before you try rucking and increase the pace and the duration of your walks until you’re able to do two hours of walking per week.

Each walk lasting at least 30 minutes without having to stop. You want to be able to do several 30 minute walks per week fairly easily, and do this even if you’re already active with other sports, even if you already are lifting weights or maybe doing cycling or basketball or whatever, as it’s gonna prepare your joints and your tendons and your muscles.

For the specific challenges of rucking and it’s gonna reduce your risk of injury. Not so much in the rucking itself because it’s very hard to get injured rucking, but in the other activities where you are putting more stress and strain on your body now if you are very overweight, if you are at, let’s say 30% body fat or above, if you’re a guy or 35% body fat or above, if you are a.

And by the way, if you’re not sure what your body fat percentage is, just head over to legion athletics.com and search for body fat percentage and you’ll find an article I wrote that has some charts and I believe we even put a, a calculator in it now. So if you check out that article, you’ll be able to quickly determine your approximate body fat percentage.

And so if you are very overweight, then I would say stick to walking until you reach a lower body fat percentage, a body fat percentage that’s more in the range of healthy, like let’s say 25% or below in men and 30% and below in women. And the reason for this is if you have a lot of weight to lose, you are actually already rucking a considerable amount of extra mass around informed of the.

Body fat so you don’t have to add more weight. You can just go for walks and those walks will essentially be rucks. Alright, so the second step here is to get a good ruck sack and to get or make some ruck weights. Now when you first start rucking, you shouldn’t be using much weight, you shouldn’t be walking that far.

And so really any sort of. Pack will work. For example, when I started Rucking, I was doing two water jugs inside of an old backpack. And when you get better and you get fitter, and when it’s time to start rucking some heavier weights, you’re gonna want a proper ruck sack. You’re gonna want some proper weights.

A good rule of thumb is if you’re carrying more than 30 pounds for more. 30 minutes or so. I think it’s worth investing in a real ruck sack because it’s gonna be made of stronger materials. It’s going to feature thicker padding, so that’s gonna make your Rs more comfortable and it’s gonna make sure that your equipment doesn’t fall apart.

And some good options are the go R g R one. It’s expensive, little bit over $300, but I would say that’s probably the best overall rucksack out there. The best value option is the 5 11 5. 11 Rush 12 tactical military backpack. That’s just over a hundred dollars. I’d say the best ruck sack with hydration is the Camelback Hog, H a w g.

Ruck sack $170. And my favorite ruck sack for hiking and rucking is the Osprey Mutant 38. L that’s $170, Lisa, at the time of this recording. Now, if you really get into rocking, if you really like it and you plan on carrying more than 30 pounds for let’s say an hour or more at a time, then I would say you should invest in a rux sack that features a hip.

Belt and a rigid frame because those two features help transfer the weight onto your back and your hips, which makes it way more comfortable and way more efficient than just using these shoulder straps to support the load. Now the downside of these fancier rux sacks of course is price. They can be pretty expensive.

Uh, some good options are the Mystery Ranch terra frame. That’s $350 right now. Piner, P I T L E r four 50. The Cafaro Cutthroat, K I F A R U is the name of the company and that is just over $440 right now. And then the Stone Glacier Evo 3,300, uh, which is. Very nice, but also very expensive. That one’s over $600.

Now, as far as the weights go, you can use anything that’s heavy, of course, but r weights do work best because they are just rectangular steel or iron plates of various weights that fit very snugly. They fit comfortably into not only most backpacks, but also. Sacks and they evenly distribute the weight across your back as opposed to water jugs, for example, which can feel kind of lopsided.

And I recommend that you start with a ruck weight, regardless of what you’re using, start at 20 pounds. Uh, and you can make that yourself. You can fill some bags with sand, you can use bricks, but those are not gonna be very comfortable and they’re not as dense. So you’re gonna to put more of them in your backpack or your ruck sack than.

Ruck waits. And if you are gonna go the homemade route, just be warned that it’s not well suited to long rucks. So as the duration grows, eventually you’re gonna want to get some proper ruck weights. As far as good options, the yes for all, that’s the name of the brand. Silly name, but good enough product.

Yes. And then the numeral for all cast iron ruck weights work. Well, $45, right? For a 20 pound plate and then go ruck the company. Go Ruck, makes ruck plates, which currently are $99 for 20 pound plates, and that’s the power of branding, my friend. Oh, and if you are in Europe, you can get high quality ruck weights from a Swedish company called Tomahawk.

Designs. Uh, the website actually doesn’t say anything about ruck weights, but if you send them an email, they will hook you up. Uh, they’re expensive, but they’re also modular, which is cool, and it allows you to adjust the weight from 10 to 40 pounds. Okay, so now you have all of your stuff. It’s time to start rucking.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that I recommend you start with 20 pounds on your back. That’s probably gonna be 10 to 20% of your body weight, and then aim to do at least three 30 minute rucks per week. To start and you can maintain whatever pace you like, but try to work your way up to 20 minutes per mile, so that’s about three miles per hour.

And then when you can do that, you have a few options in terms of how to progress, how to make your Rs more difficult and thus more productive. You can walk faster, you can walk further, or you can rock a heavier weight. And I actually recommend that you progress in that order, that you first increase your pace over the same distance, then increase your distance.

then start carrying heavier weight. And the reason for that is increasing the weight in your pack quickly becomes uncomfortable and awkward, and it requires the use of a sturdier higher quality pack, like the ones I listed earlier, which means spending more money. Whereas you can quickly and easily increase the pace and duration of your RS without having to buy new things or reacquaint yourself to heavier loads.

That, again, can be a bit of a bear. Kind of like front squatting, if you remember. When you first started front squatting, how uncomfortable it was for the first bit, and then you eventually get used to it. Right? So just to give you a little bit more structure in programming your workouts, here’s what a beginner rock workout would look like.

You would have a rough weight of 20 pounds, you’d have a duration of 30 minutes. The pace would be 20 minutes per mile, so that’s three miles per hour. And the frequency would be three times per week. And once you can do that fairly easily, you could move up to the intermediate ruck workout, which is 30 pounds of ruck weight, 45 minutes of walking at a pace of 15 minutes per mile.

So that’s four miles per hour. Frequency again, would be three times per week, and then an advanced. Ruck workout would be 45 pounds, a duration of one hour and a pace of 15 minutes per mile. So that’s the same four, four miles per hour. And the frequency there, I would recommend two times per week plus maybe one 90 minute ruck at the same pace with the same weight.

And most people like to do these longer rucks on the weekends of. Course, and you don’t have to work up to these longer duration rucks if that doesn’t work for your schedule. If 30 minutes works best for you, you can stick with 30 minutes and just work your pace up and work your ruck weight up. Now, before we wrap up, let’s just address some frequently asked questions.

Let’s talk about shoes. What kind of shoes should you wear for rucking? And I would just say that whatever you. On hand, or should I say on foot? That’s comfortable. You don’t need special boots, for example, but if you really get into it and you want to invest in a good pair of shoes, then trail running shoes tend to work best.

Uh, Solomon makes good stuff. The Solomon X a Pro 3D model is a good one. For example. Now a caveat regarding footwear is boots. Don’t get boots. Many people think that rocking is best with boots because they associate rocking with soldiering and soldiers wear boots. But if you wear boots, you’re gonna be adding extra weight to your feet, and that is surprisingly fatiguing.

The more you weigh your feet down, the harder the ruck gets. Research actually shows that every pound added to your foot costs about five times more energy than a pound added to your pack, which means by the way, that ankle weights are another ruck like option for making your walks more difficult and more productive.

But back to boots. Issue regarding boots is while many advocates of them will claim that they will protect you from rolling your ankles, this is really only a concern if you’re walking over a very rough terrain, you know, that has sharp or loose rocks or maybe snow. And I’m guessing that that is not the case.

You’re just gonna go walking around your neighborhood. So, No real concern about rolling your ankles, and you probably don’t need to also worry about keeping your feet dry or warm in bad weather conditions. Which boots are also useful for. So simple athletic or running shoes or trail shoes are gonna get the job done.

Now what about planning or programming your. RS around your weightlifting. How should you do that? Because although I mentioned earlier in this podcast that rucking does not interfere with your ability to gain muscle and strength, it can of course, if you do too much or if you do it at the wrong times.

Therefore, it’s worth taking a a few simple precautions to minimize this interference effect that can occur. So what this comes down to is you want to limit the time you spend rucking to no more than the amount of time you. Weightlifting each week. So if you are lifting weights five hours per week, don’t do more than five hours of rucking per week.

Now, if you have heard my cardio, my general cardio recommendations in the past, you might be wondering why it’s not one half of the amount of time that you are spending lifting weights, because that is my general cardio rule of thumb is don’t do more than one half of the amount. Cardio as you do strength training.

So if you are strength training for five hours a week, keep your cardio at around two to two and a half hours per week. Now, the reason that these recommendations differ is rucking is a bit easier on the body than many of the types of cardio that people do. And when I’m giving my general cardio recommendation, I’m actually assuming that people.

Doing higher intensity stuff that does place more strain in the body. It doesn’t have to be high intensity interval training per se. I actually would not recommend exceeding probably more than about an hour of that per week, but I’m assuming that people are playing sports that require them to move around more intensely than just.

Walking with some heavy weights on their back or are riding a bike at at least a moderate intensity or swimming or rowing at a moderate intensity and so forth. But if all you’re gonna be doing is rucking, if that is going to be your cardio, you can get away with a bit more. Again, because you really are just talking about walking, which is very easy on the body.

With some extra weight, which makes it a bit harder on the body, but not as hard as the higher intensity stuff that I just mentioned. I also recommend that you limit most of your Rs to no more than one hour per session and only do one long, like longer than one hour session per week. And again, don’t feel obliged to.

Work up to one hour sessions. You can keep them at 20 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes if that works better for you. I also would recommend that you do your RS and your strength training workouts on separate days if you can. And if you have to do ’em on the same day, try to separate them by at least six hours and try to do your strength training first.

So maybe you’re gonna lift weights in the morning and then you’re gonna go on. In the evening after dinner or maybe before dinner in the late afternoon. Also, if you are going to be rocking and lifting on the same day, if you can try to schedule them together on upper body days and not lower body days.

Alright, the next question that. Will probably occur to you at some point is how do you make this more comfortable Now, first you just have to practice like any new activity. Rucking can feel quite uncomfortable for the first week or two when you keep at it though. And if you follow the advice I’m sharing in this podcast, you’ll get used to it again, think front squatting and how.

Awkward and sometimes painful . It was at first, but then in time you get used to it and it just becomes another exercise. Now, if you are rocking regularly and you are still experiencing discomfort, then I would say, It’s time to invest in a good ruck sack and some real ruck weights and get away from the bricks and sandbags and water jugs and other things that I shared in this podcast.

And also, if you want to carry heavy loads for longer distances, like 30 pounds and above. Then you probably are gonna want to pony up for one of the fanciest ruck sacks, one of those backpacks that feature a hip belt and a rigid frame because it really does help a lot with taking the stress and strain off of your shoulders and off of your neck and your upper back.

And it helps distribute the, uh, load more evenly throughout your torso. And my. FAQ that I want to quickly address is weighted vests. You may be wondering, or you may have wondered throughout this podcast if you could just use a weighted vest instead, and while you can just know that they are not designed to carry as much weight as a ruck sack, so there’s a limitation there.

They also can make it more difficult to breathe and they don’t allow you to carry. Like water or snacks or sunglasses or anything else, which makes them more uncomfortable generally and less practical than a rucksack. Well, that is it, my friends. That concludes today’s lecture on Rucking. Thanks again for joining me.

I hope you found it helpful and I hope you give it a try, especially if you hate cardio, and I hope you like it. I hope it helps you reach your fitness goals faster, and of course, I have more stuff coming this week that will help you get fitter faster. Like another installment of best of Muscle for Life.

Where you are going to hear handpicked morsels from several of the more popular episodes that I’ve done over the years, and in this case, you’re going to be hearing about the right and wrong ways deadlift. You’re gonna be hearing about how long it takes to get six pack abs, as well as my thoughts on the number one unspoken rule of success.

And then I have another q and a episode coming. This Friday on neck training trainer certifications and unilateral exercises. All right. Well, that’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don’t mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you’re listening to me from in whichever app you’re listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should, The show.

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That is the best way to get ahold of me, Mike, at muscle life.com. And that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.