Get Rucking

Rucking delivers 85% of running's calorie burn with 10% of the risk

Josh Bryant breaks down the calorie and injury comparison: a 200-pound man rucking burns over 600 calories per hour versus 755 for running, but running can generate impact forces up to 11 times body weight while rucking stays around 3-4 times.

"So two things with that. So I've always said 5% of your body weight to 10% of your body weight in the high end is a fine place to start. in the program in the book, Rucking Gains, where you start off with 6% of your body weight in week one, and that's for 20 minutes straight at a 20-minute mile pace. You're walking one mile in 20 minutes. By the end, you're rucking for an hour straight with 20% of your body weight up in the hills, but that's over 16 weeks. so it's not like you i think that's's where a lot of people might, if they want to fully benefit from rucking, can look at some sort of progressive overload of sorts like everybody does with lifting. But a lot of times with this kind of thing, they don't. So if you're just looking to improve your health a little bit, you don't need to get super advanced and fancy and progressively overload. But if you want to kick it up to the next level, it's definitely something you need to consider. And I really don't recommend exceeding the 15-minute mile pace. That's a brisk walk. And, you know, I would way rather see you add a hill in there or something than, you know, get to jogging because we're talking about the lower impact. But all of a sudden, you're doing like that French Legion test where you're doing doing eight minute miles with 26 pounds on you, then you've created a worse problem. Yeah, I've ran with a rucksack before. It's not pleasant. And that would be the time to do it. Hey, I get it. You got some assessment coming up, your dream job, your pay is going to increase, whatever. I'm on board with a specificity there. I'm just saying, if this is for civilians, for general health, I do not see the purpose. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors. Do you say data or data? Well, at my house, we say data. And for the longest time, I thought paying a fortune on my monthly data plan was just normal. That was until I found out about Mint Mobile and their premium wireless plans that started just 15 bucks a month. Say goodbye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw-dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high-speed data or data, however you want to say it, and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ditched overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for just 15 bucks a month. So we've been using Mint Mobile, super easy to set up, super easy to bring my phone number to them. In the data, it's 5G, text talk, surfing the web. No matter how you say it, data or data, don't overpay for it. Shop data plans at mintmobile.com slash manliness. Mintmobile.com slash manliness. Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month five gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So we're doing some home improvement here in the McKay household. We have an older home. It's about 40 years old. There's a lot of wear and tear. So we're just doing some small things to freshen things up. For example, updating the kitchen cabinet hardware. I actually lost some of the knobs on our cabinets. I don't know where they went. They got lost in ether. And so one place I'm going to check out what's available is Wayfair. It's the best kept secret when it comes to home improvement. Whether you're making a little update like a new kitchen cabinet hardware like we are doing or doing a full renovation, Wayfair has stylish and quality home improvement products for every budget. So I love about Wayfair. I'm here in the kitchen cabinet section, make it really easy to find what's available. And so I'm looking at, I like this one here, the mushroom knob, silver, looks sharp. They got one day delivery. You can get it tomorrow if you need it fast. Shop the best selection of home improvement online."

Progressive overload for rucking — the 16-week Rucking Gains program

Bryant outlines his structured program from the book Rucking Gains: start at 6% of body weight for 20 minutes at a 20-minute mile pace in week one, progressing to 20% body weight for an hour with hills by week 16.

"So two things with that. So I've always said 5% of your body weight to 10% of your body weight in the high end is a fine place to start. in the program in the book, Rucking Gains, where you start off with 6% of your body weight in week one, and that's for 20 minutes straight at a 20-minute mile pace. You're walking one mile in 20 minutes. By the end, you're rucking for an hour straight with 20% of your body weight up in the hills, but that's over 16 weeks. so it's not like you i think that's's where a lot of people might, if they want to fully benefit from rucking, can look at some sort of progressive overload of sorts like everybody does with lifting. But a lot of times with this kind of thing, they don't. So if you're just looking to improve your health a little bit, you don't need to get super advanced and fancy and progressively overload. But if you want to kick it up to the next level, it's definitely something you need to consider. And I really don't recommend exceeding the 15-minute mile pace. That's a brisk walk. And, you know, I would way rather see you add a hill in there or something than, you know, get to jogging because we're talking about the lower impact. But all of a sudden, you're doing like that French Legion test where you're doing doing eight minute miles with 26 pounds on you, then you've created a worse problem. Yeah, I've ran with a rucksack before. It's not pleasant. And that would be the time to do it. Hey, I get it. You got some assessment coming up, your dream job, your pay is going to increase, whatever. I'm on board with a specificity there. I'm just saying, if this is for civilians, for general health, I do not see the purpose. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors. Do you say data or data? Well, at my house, we say data. And for the longest time, I thought paying a fortune on my monthly data plan was just normal. That was until I found out about Mint Mobile and their premium wireless plans that started just 15 bucks a month. Say goodbye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw-dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high-speed data or data, however you want to say it, and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ditched overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for just 15 bucks a month. So we've been using Mint Mobile, super easy to set up, super easy to bring my phone number to them. In the data, it's 5G, text talk, surfing the web. No matter how you say it, data or data, don't overpay for it. Shop data plans at mintmobile.com slash manliness. Mintmobile.com slash manliness. Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month five gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So we're doing some home improvement here in the McKay household. We have an older home. It's about 40 years old. There's a lot of wear and tear. So we're just doing some small things to freshen things up. For example, updating the kitchen cabinet hardware. I actually lost some of the knobs on our cabinets. I don't know where they went. They got lost in ether. And so one place I'm going to check out what's available is Wayfair. It's the best kept secret when it comes to home improvement. Whether you're making a little update like a new kitchen cabinet hardware like we are doing or doing a full renovation, Wayfair has stylish and quality home improvement products for every budget. So I love about Wayfair. I'm here in the kitchen cabinet section, make it really easy to find what's available. And so I'm looking at, I like this one here, the mushroom knob, silver, looks sharp. They got one day delivery. You can get it tomorrow if you need it fast. Shop the best selection of home improvement online."

Rucking builds the aerobic base that supports strength gains

Bryant explains that rucking improves the aerobic base needed for recovery between sets and workouts, and works well as active recovery the day after heavy leg training once you are adapted to it.

"I noticed the first time I, you know, did it really well, like good form, my glutes were actually a little bit sore the next day. So it's like I keep them engaged and sort of like flex them, but it's not like a real conscious thing where I'm trying to lift with them or anything. Gotcha. And then where to rock? I mean, again, you can do this anywhere, but I imagine some terrains are better than others. Absolutely. So you're going to be more prepared for real life if you get out in nature because life's going to happen all around you. Obviously, if you're just going for a time, I want to see how many 15-minute miles I can do or whatever. Then the synthetic track is probably a good choice because it's going to be real measurable and real repeatable type of thing. But real life happens on all sorts of different terrains. So I'd recommend getting out in nature and having some fun. And it's interesting is there's, in Texas, it's pretty flat, but where I live, there's actually a lot of hills, even though it's up the hill country here. And I take my kids a lot with me. And we went out there the other day and they were just running up and down this real steep hill. And I was walking up and down right in the city and we got stalked by a coyote at four o'clock in the afternoon. So that was pretty crazy to, you know, getting out in nature to see that. And I didn't know what we were supposed to do except not act scared. And we didn't, it finally left. Oh yeah. Those coyotes are getting bold these days. They were super bold. This one's fat too. It's like, then my wife checked the message board for South, like where I live and, or whatever that neighborhood is over there. And there are people talking about this Bobcat that seems to be eating well. So I guess it's pretty well known. All right. So uneven terrain, that'll also help with the, like that balance aspect you talked about earlier, one of the benefits of rucking. Yeah. And learning to move under load like that is going to help you in the weight room too. So I think that's where you got to understand for these strength increases, rucking is not going to increase your squat or deadlift like you just do it and that happens. It's going to be more like as a beginner, you're learning to move under load. So like the strongman events, things like that. And then as you improve your conditioning, that's where it's real important with the regeneration because your work capacity is higher and you're going to recover faster between workouts, between sets, all that stuff. So that's how, that's how something, if you do strength training, ruck can be a nice supplement to that. It's like active recovery in a way. It is. And that's a good way to put it. So like, for instance, I've been rucking since 2018 at least once a week. So I, my favorite time to do it is right now I'm doing it once a week. I like to do it the day after I do heavy leg stuff and stuff that involves the lower back on Friday. So I like to do the rucking on Saturday as an active recovery. Well, let's talk about this. So yeah, for those who are doing some sort of strength and conditioning program, one of the challenges I've seen in people who get into rucking is that their rucking starts to interfere with the recovery from their strength training, right? Because they overdo it. Like, how do you, what's the best way to incorporate rucking so that you get that recovery benefit but without killing yourself and you won't be able to do, complete a work set your next workout. Sure. So there's a couple ways to look at this. Eventually, if you keep rucking and assuming you're following the guidelines we're putting out there of not, you know, exceeding 20% of your body weight, not going faster than 15 minute miles, you can possibly get to the point where it doesn't matter. Like for me now I could, you know, ruck on Saturday and then squat on Sunday if I needed to. It's my recovery has gotten to that point. It took a little while. So there's that aspect. As your work capacity increases, it won't be as much of a challenge because you're somewhat acclimated to this and you're not exceeding that 15-minute mile pace. Otherwise, I would say the best spot to do it would be, I like it as the day after as an active recovery because we're not recommending you. I would say, I know you're going to be able to get away with rucking once a week and that's going to improve your physical health. You probably can get away with it twice a week, but I think once a week is a really safe bet to do and it works really well as an active recovery the day after something involves your legs your legs and lower back yeah i train monday tuesdays thursday fridays and i ruck or sometimes just walk take a long walk on wednesdays okay that's what i did and then maybe another walk or ruck on saturday and haven't had any problems with it okay so with walking here that's a that's a good point because some people that are into strength training, we're taking for granted that you're in shape to do this. So I would recommend if you're not able to walk an hour straight at a reasonably brisk pace, you shouldn't be rocking probably. So you want to get to that point. Yeah. So that's a, okay. So if you can't walk an hour, don't, don't start off with load. Like you have to start, you gotta, you gotta crawl before you, you walk here or walk without load before you add load. Imagine if you couldn't even do a body weight squat. And I said, yeah, you know, let's get out there and start, you know, with 225 or something would be crazy, you know? So it's the same type of thing here. So, okay, let's talk about this. We talked a little bit about this progression here. So, okay, if you've never, if you can't walk without load for an hour and not be incredibly winded, you should probably just start walking without load. How long does that last? Like a week, two weeks? Like how long before you can start adding load, do you think? I think once you can comfortably walk an hour straight, you know, at a brisk pace, you can add load. So how long will it take you to get there? Well, I mean, to be honest with you, I've seen powerlifters that almost need oxygen walking up a flight of steps. So that person is going to take a while to get to that point where somebody else that has been in good shape cardiovascularly somewhat recently, just taking some time off, it could take a week or two. Okay. And then after that, you're going to start off with five to six percent of your body weight so if you're what a 200 pound man what's that going to be like 10 pounds 10 pounds yeah so not not much and then each week are you adding weight sure so there's a lot there's a few different ways that see that's what's what's cool about the the progressive overload so just like um we've discussed before here on on body weight training strength training is we have to look at more than just the weight so there's other ways to do it you can increase the ruck so i recommend not doing you know more than like five pounds between sessions so you start off that 10 it's a joke you go to 15 20 so on so eventually you 20% of your body weight. So if you weigh the hypothetical 200 pound man, we keep discussing it's about 40 pounds is what you'd end up at. Okay. Then you can also increase the distance. So, you know, I would say like between rucking sessions, you can, if you're going off a distance, increase like a quarter mile or so. It doesn't have to be like you started off at a half mile, then, you know're at three miles. You can increase the total duration, just add five minutes to what you're doing at the same pace. And another one people don't look at is the incline. If you're on a flat surface, when I was researching for my tactical conditioning course, it was amazing to see the metabolic expenditure that changes when you just add a grade to what you're doing, to an incline to what you're doing. So that's another way to progressively overload. And even the surface you're on, okay, I'm at the city track with a synthetic surface. You feel like you're gliding when you walk. All of a sudden now I head over to the park where there's a big sandpit. I'm rucking around that. It's going to be harder. Gotcha."

Using a rucksack as a full-body strength training tool

Bryant describes how a rucksack can replace gym equipment for a full workout: push-ups, rows, lunges, overhead presses, Romanian deadlifts, suitcase carries, overhead carries, and even cleans and snatches.

"You can do push-ups, you can do pull-ups, you can do lunges. You can even take it off and do a bent over row. I mean, you could do inverted bicep curls if you had a bar, or you could just take it off and grab by the straps and do hammer curls. You could do tricep extensions holding it by the straps overhead or putting it on your body against the bar. Overhead press it. Romanian deadlift it."