TAKE UP YOUR RUCK: THE 30-DAY CHALLENGE
It has been said that if you cannot sprint, run. If your cannot run, jog. If you cannot jog, walk. For myself, I do not see the point of following this process without a load on my back. If I can walk, I am doing it with a pack on. If I can jog, I am going to do it with a pack on. You get the point; so essentially I am saying that human beings of all shapes and sizes should take a pack, fill it up with water or some other weight equal to 15-30lb, and get moving. In this article, I am going to talk more about the WHY of rucking and loaded movement to give you a decent understanding of how valuable it is as a fitness force-multiplier.
RUCKING
Rucking is one of the most efficient forms of exercise for the layman. It costs little to no money, and it can help you stay independent and strong into old age. It is something that checks all the boxes for fitness by boosting your physical, mental, and even spiritual fitness. These loaded walks can be meditative and therapeutic for a mind plagued by a fast and loud world. If you are spiritual, you could consider your ruck time as a way to take up your cross.
Walking is a basic movement and is used by virtually everyone every day, as is loaded carrying. When you carry groceries, this is a loaded exercise similar to rucking. When you pick up your child, this is also a form of loaded carrying. You are adding outside weight to your structure and moving a distance. Rucking is just doing this with a pack on your back or distributed through a vest of some sort.
USE A PACK OR A WEIGHTED VEST FOR CALISTHENICS
It has been said that calisthenics is the fountain of youth. It requires control and endurance to perform feats as simple as a pushup or pullup, all the way to something like a handstand pushup to a muscle up. It is not just about strength but also your control and ability to move for a period of time in that specific range of motion. Calisthenics take practice, and one of the many ways people have built their calisthenics competency is by adding weight to their movements.
Once you can do 10 pushups and 5 pullups, there is not much reason to stick to bodyweight only calisthenics. Once you can do 20 situps, you should be grabbing some weight and hugging it to amplify the work done. This addition to weight into something that already requires more balance and control will amplify your control and balance over time. I would promote the use of weighted calisthenics as a primary means of enhancing your endurance and control, once you are able.
It can take a good amount of time to learn how to monitor all your supporting muscles in something like a pushup or pullup to encourage true growth during such a compound movement. But once you add a bit of weight, those muscles super-compensate and you feel them engage. Take something like a loaded lunge where you would feel less challenged when going slick, but once you add weight, your obliques struggle to keep you balanced and upright. Holding the weight high above your head can increase the challenge.
The greatest benefit to weighted calisthenics is that it is an efficient way to do your exercise. If you are highly endurant already, weighted versions of calisthenics will save you alot of time and will give you the ability to enhance your endurance and power output. If you take the reps slow, you gain better endurance. If you power through them and do the reps at high speed with perfect form, you gain power. It is going to wear you out faster, but that is the point of it. You don’t have to grind all day to get your dose of conditioning and to improve in your capabilities.
NATURAL ADAPTATION
Often times when people are talking about loaded training, they advise the utmost caution and slow progression. This is smart because many people new to fitness or getting back into it after years have the same problem; they jump headlong into a hard routine that they cannot sustain. They push too hard too fast without factoring in recovery and building the body. They fail to appreciate that we are adaptive creatures, but that we need time to adapt.
When it comes to rucking, I recommend you try doing a small distance every day and slowly increase the distance each week until you meet a daily distance that challenges you slightly. Once that daily distance doesn’t have you waking the next day feeling sore and chaffed, you can move up the distance a little more. This is a method called step loading, which is all about growth at an organic pace for the individual. This method also works really well for calisthenics movements that are rep-based like your pushups, pullups, squats, lunges,and sit-ups.
CONSISTENCY IS KING
In my experience, the most important part about rucking and loaded calisthenics is not the distance covered or the reps accumulated. The most important thing is consistency. You will be successful if you can make it a daily habit. You can undulate the intensity and have it heavy and intense every other day, or you can set up a daily habit at moderate intensity. Both methods will get you good results, and I encourage you to experiment with both concepts.
Also, I would encourage you to consider the fact that the body is very forgiving in terms of the times in which you provide the stimulus. For instance, you could do three sets of loaded pushups in a period of 5 minutes, or you could do a set in the morning, at noon, and before bed. Often times you will find that the relative results are going to be the same, but you will notice that the payoff is in the fact that the body does not get as burdened and burnt out. This is about volume management. If you want to do 100 pushups a day, you can do a set whenever you feel like it throughout the day. The volume will be the same, but the fatigue will depend on how much of those repetitions are stacked up.
30-DAY CHALLENGE
Load a backpack with a stack of bottles of water with the caps pointed outwards. 30 bottles of 16-oz water bottles should suffice. If your backpack has alot of room leftover, take all the water out and stuff a folded hoody or shirt at the bottom to keep the weight higher up, lowering the burden placed on your spine.
My challenge to you, the reader is to make a commitment to walk 1 mile every day for 30 days with 30 pounds in a backpack. Also, do 3 sets of weighted pushups, aiming to stop as soon as you feel strain in your arms and chest. Lower yourself to touch only your chest AND nose to the ground on each repetition. Lastly, do one set of weighted squats while holding your pack over your head, stopping when you start feeling a slight burn in the legs. Whether you do 5 reps or 50 before the burn starts, it does not matter. Also, do all three of these exercises in the order you please. It is not about the order or what time of day it is done, but rather about getting it done every single day.
Monitor how you progress as the days go on, if you are curious. I am telling you to only go a mile per day because that is a relatively easy distance to commit to and you get to set the pace each day. You may wish to jog that distance on some days or go as slowly as a snail pace on others. On the lifts, you set the pace and decide the repetitions based on feelings. The light burn you feel is hydrogen buildup, and continued repetitions during this burn is not beneficial, so you don’t get extra credit for continuing. The burn is a signal that you have challenged the anaerobic system, which means you have reached that desired stimulus to trigger adaptation. Further repetitions would only buildup more hydrogen ions and drop PH further and only extend recovery and ensure DOMS (Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness) says hello and makes your life miserable.
This challenge is all about seeing if you can start a habit for yourself. It seems small, but the habit accumulates volume naturally. Some days you will feel really energized and some days you will want to do the sets early in the morning, while other days you will want to do them later in the day. The overall point is to get you to understand that it is not about doing exercise at any specific time. It is about showing up every day and getting after it, whether in the morning, at lunch, or at night. This will be a life-changing lesson for all that take this challenge because while it is simple, it is enough to inspire a good habit to form.