You know that you should exercise. You have read the reasons why, heard about it on television and social media, but you still can’t get yourself to exercise. What if I told you that by making a simple change in walking, you could increase your endurance, improve strength, help with fat loss, while maintaining muscle mass. This is called rucking. Rucking is a military term used to describe a hike with a backpack on.
One study tested whether wearing a weighted vest could help in weight loss in people with obesity. Subjects were divided into two groups, one wearing a heavy vest for 8 hours daily, the other wearing a light vest for 8 hours daily. The results showed that the participants in the heavy vest group lost significantly more weight than those in the light vest group while maintaining muscle mass without any other changes in exercise or diet. The findings support the idea that external weight-bearing activities might encourage the body to adjust its fat storage, making it an interesting approach to combating obesity.
Two other studies compared weighted cardiovascular exercise with regular cardiovascular exercise and showed that weighted exercise showed greater increase in lower body strength and power, in women greater upper body strength and power and overall improvement in cardiovascular health for all.
It was estimated by researchers that rucking can burn 2-3 times more calories than walking alone can. It does so without much impact on your joints.
This is not to say that rucking is entirely risk free. When you go from walking unweighted to rucking, you will change your stance, change your stride, and increase the amount the knee has to bend. This can result in injury if you do too much too soon. Fortunately, these injuries occur much less often in walking than running with weight.
In general, add load gradually. Start out with about 5-10% of your body weight in a backpack. Slowly increase the weight to up to 20-30% of your body weight. You should also gradually increase the distance before adding additional weight for safety. Also doing too many rucking sessions too soon can lead to fatigue and overuse injuries. Initially limit rucking to one to two sessions per week, then slowly increase to get the recommended 300 minutes of exercise weekly.
The overarching conclusion is that rucking, when carefully designed to meet the specific needs of an individual, has the potential to yield significant health and functional benefits, whether it is managing body weight, improving muscle strength or increasing task-specific resilience, rucking can provide solutions that are accessible, practical, and highly effective. As with any exercise program, please check with your doctor before starting any new program.