Rucking With A Backpack

Rucking With A Backpack is a new take on an old form of exercise. It involves walking or hiking with a weighted backpack. The extra weight takes your normal walk and turns up the intensity of burning calories.

When rucking, you’ll experience less pounding on the knees than when running, making rucking a good choice for low-impact exercise. The weight also requires more force from your muscles, which makes rucking a cardiovascular exercise that will build strength and stamina, too.

What is rucking?

Rucking is a form of exercise and the concept is simple: it’s walking or hiking a set distance while carrying a weight on your back. Rucking (also known as rucking march) has military origins, and the name comes from the word rucksack — a durable backpack meant for carrying heavy loads.

But you don’t necessarily need a rucksack to give this exercise a try — you just need a backpack. Load it with weight (and some hydration) and go for a walk. You can choose the terrain you walk on, the distance, and intensity to match your needs. There are few better cities for rucking in United States of America where you can go for ruck.

What are the benefits of Rucking With A Backpack?

Rucking improves strength, endurance, and physical fitness. For example, a 2019 study found participants had lower ratings of perceived exertion after a 10-week load carrying program, while their muscular power and oxygen intake also improved (4Trusted Source).

Rucking has also been shown to improve muscle power in older people (6Trusted Source). This research implies rucking could offer an effective training program for preventing sarcopenia and other degenerative muscular conditions that lead to falls and injury in senior populations.

Walking with weight also increases the burn of calories than the normal walk. The added weight means you have more mass to move and it’s also mean you need to work harder than the normal walk. Consequently, this increases the amount of energy needed to move at the same pace you would without the weight (6Trusted Source).

How to get started with rucking

If you are new to exercising or haven’t hiked much, then it is best to start slowly. Start with a 2 mile distance. Grab your backpack and load it with 10% of your bodyweight. For instance, if you weigh 150 pounds (68 kg), then you would load your pack with 15 pounds.

You can use a dumbbell, kettlebell, sandbag, rocks, or even bottles of water. For the best comfort when carrying, secure the weight as best as you can so that it doesn’t move or bounce around. Keep your straps tight and the weight high on your back.

While the military uses the target pace of 15 minutes per mile (1.6 km), aim for 20 minutes per mile when you begin.

Where to buy a rucksack

If you think you’ll be rucking often, you may want to consider investing in a rucksack and weight that is meant specifically for this purpose.

• GORUCK makes rucksacks and weight plates that are ergonomic and designed specifically for even distribution of weight.
• The EMPACK by Evolved Motion comes with reservoirs you can fill with water or sand to create the weight you’d like, on the go.

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Leave enough room in the pack to carry some form of hydration. You are upping the ante on the amount of energy you’re burning. Thus, you’ll produce more heat and sweat more.

As your fitness increases, you can increase the amount of weight you carry, the speed you’re walking, or the distance you are rucking. However, to avoid overtraining, try to only increase one of these at a time.

If your goal is to increase strength, then focus on increasing the load weight. If your goal is to increase endurance, add to your distance to make the ruck more challenging.

Does rucking burn more calories than running?

According to the US Army, a 180-pound (81.6 kg) person rucking at a pace of 15 minutes per mile (1.6 km) can expect to burn the following calories:

Let’s compare that to running. A 180-pound person running at a pace of 6 miles per hour (which equates to a 10 minute mile) without weight will burn roughly 840 calories per hour . That equals about 140 calories per mile.

To cover the same ground as listed in the chart above, a 180-pound person running at the pace of 6 miles per hour would burn 518 calories over 3.7 miles, 1120 calories over 8 miles, and 1680 calories over 12 miles.

While your calorie burn is dependent on your pace for both rucking and running, and on the weight carried when rucking, mile for mile, rucking typically burns more calories than running.

Walking with a weighted backpack

Unlike weighted vests that evenly distribute weight to your front, back, and sides, a weighted backpack places the resistance solely on your back. If you decide to go this route, George says to start with a 5- to 15-pound weighted backpack.

He also cautions against leaning too far forward or carrying too much weight, as doing so could strain your lower back and stress your joints or ligaments.

If you decide to walk with a weighted vest, make sure your form is impeccable. Keep your body upright and avoid leaning forward. Also, focus on engaging your core muscles to help protect your lower back.

It’s critical to use weighted vests and backpacks correctly, especially if you have a history of neck or back problems, such as a herniated disc or spinal stenosis, or you’ve recently had surgery.

Tawase says this type of loading can change your body’s center of gravity and add excessive pressure on your spine.

Does walking with weights burn more calories?

“Carrying extra weight while walking encourages the body to work harder and can therefore burn more calories,” says George.

However, as with any exercise routine, he says it’s important to take it slowly and gradually increase the weight you carry and the distance you walk.

George recommends starting with a 10-minute bout of exercise, and once you can double the mileage, increase the amount of weight you’re carrying.

“Carrying weights while walking intensifies the exercise, but remember, as you increase the weight, you increase the risk of injury, too,” he adds.

It’s also worth noting that the increased energy expenditure when walking with weights is not dramatic.

A small 2013 study found a slight increase in calorie expenditure when wearing a weighted vest while rucking on a treadmill compared with not wearing a weighted vest.

More specifically, participants who wore a weighted vest equal to 15% of their body weight burned 6.3 calories per minute, whereas participants who didn’t wear a vest burned 5.7 calories per minute .

If there is still a query you can read about the difference of ruck and weighted west.

FAQ section