Rucking: The Benefits

Do you want to…

Be more active? Burn more calories? Get stronger? Improve your posture? Have a healthier heart? Be part of a Ruck Hard Play Hard community?

Yeah, us too. Rucking is the path.

"Rucking Is Every Man’s Favorite New Fitness Trend" (Men’s Health) because it works, and it’s sustainable. You can ruck with your buddies, and talk to them at the same time. And because weight is the great equalizer, you can scale up or scale down, depending on how fast you want to go.

Walking isn’t enough. If you want to burn up to 3X as many calories as walking, ruck instead. Rucking’s caloric burn is more in line with running, depending on the weight and the pace.

Rucking is an ART. That’s Active Resistance Training. The good Sir Isaac Newton taught us that For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. While rucking, the ruck is the action trying to fall to the ground, your muscles are the equal and opposite reaction to stop it. Without you, the ruck wouldn’t go anywhere. With you, it goes everywhere. And your muscles get stronger.

We all stare at our phones too much, we round our backs forward when we’re in front of a computer and when we watch USA dominate the Olympics. Chairs are comfortable, I do it too. With rucking, though, you’re forced to roll your shoulders back. It’s more comfortable with great posture, so rucking forces you to improve your posture, naturally. The weight rests close to your spine and your chest opens up. As your upper body adapts to rucking, it becomes more comfortable to maintain that posture in your daily life.

Your lower back will thank you all the way to getting stronger.

Life is busy and time is short. But fitness is important. The active part of rucking means your heart is pumping (it’s called cardio, don’t hate on it too much till you tried it like this), and because of the weight, it’s pumping a little more than usual.

More blood, more oxygen through your veins means more freedom in and out of your lungs = winning.

Be part of a Ruck Hard Play Hard community. You may start rucking for a million different reasons. To get fitter or to diversify your training or because you keep getting recurring injuries doing other stuff. But what you’ll find is that the best reason to ruck is for the community.

We all want to be a part of something greater than ourselves. But we don’t find the life we’re looking for in cubicle farms or staring at Facebook. Sorry not sorry, Mr. Zuckerberg. And spoiler alert: the iPhone 10 won’t make any of us happy, no matter how great it is. What makes us happy is being part of a community and doing awesome stuff together, as often as possible. It’s easy to start, and easy to keep doing.

Rucking is just the starting line.