The Art of Manliness - Born to Carry — How to Build Strength, Stamina, and Sanity Through Rucking

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00:01:22.520 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler.

00:01:35.060 The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed.

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00:01:52.960 Now on to the show.

00:01:54.320 If you're looking for a way to improve your fitness, boost your mental health, and reconnect with a deeply human activity, all without going to the gym or pounding your knees on a daily run, then rucking may be the practice you've been looking for.

00:02:13.080 Rucking is simple.

00:02:14.360 Throw some weight on your back and start walking.

00:02:16.500 But a little context and a few key tips can make it a safer, more effective, and more satisfying experience.

00:02:21.640 Here to unpack those principles and practicals is Michael Easter, author of Walk With Weight, The Definitive Guide to Rucking.

00:02:28.020 Michael and I first explored the evolutionary and military history of carrying load.

00:02:31.740 We then dive into why rucking is perhaps the most successful form of training for strength and stamina, and such an effective tool for alleviating back pain, building bone health, and fostering fat loss.

00:02:40.720 We get into using a backpack versus a weighted vest, how much weight you should carry, and how you get started today with stuff you probably already got lying around.

00:02:47.860 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash ruck.

00:02:51.640 All right, Michael Easter, welcome back to the show.

00:03:05.580 Thanks for having me back, man.

00:03:06.840 I'm excited to be here.

00:03:07.800 So you got a new book out called Walk With Weight, The Definitive Guide to Rucking.

00:03:11.780 For those who aren't familiar with rucking, you've become kind of the evangelist, the Paul the Apostle of rucking.

00:03:18.420 For those who aren't familiar with the activity, what is rucking?

00:03:21.880 That's a fine distinction.

00:03:23.420 The evangelist of rucking. 0.59

00:03:24.660 I like that.

00:03:25.240 Yeah.

00:03:25.360 Simplest way to put it is rucking is just throwing some weight in a backpack and going for a walk.

00:03:32.380 Now, I also think it gets interpreted and starts to capture things like putting on a weight vest and going for a walk, but basically carrying weight on your body, walking across the earth.

00:03:42.060 That's it.

00:03:42.620 Pretty simple.

00:03:43.340 That's pretty simple.

00:03:44.260 But there's more to it than that, as we'll see in this conversation.

00:03:46.840 But how did you discover rucking?

00:03:48.160 So my background is I was an editor at Men's Health Magazine for about seven years.

00:03:54.560 And so, you know, I'm always in that role looking for fitness trends coming out.

00:03:59.420 And rucking had sort of popped up as this kind of interesting thing that was tied to the military.

00:04:04.180 But I think when I started to really understand why it is such a powerful physical activity for humans, it came when I was reporting my book, The Comfort Crisis.

00:04:13.940 And for that book, I spent about a month up in the Arctic and we were on this caribou hunt.

00:04:20.380 So it took us about two weeks to finally hunt a caribou.

00:04:24.280 And then we had to pack it out.

00:04:26.440 And as I was doing that pack out, I started to sort of realize, and we can get into the sort of evolutionary science of this, that humans are really unique in our ability to carry weight.

00:04:38.740 So we're the only mammal that can carry weight for distance.

00:04:41.700 And I've always been really interested in, you know, how can the things that shaped us as humans in the past, how can they still help us today?

00:04:50.620 So that sort of set off the idea, this like packing out 120 some odd pounds of caribou across this freezing tundra that's terrible to walk on.

00:04:59.400 How long ago was that?

00:05:00.420 Was that about 2019, 2018?

00:05:02.860 Yeah, that was the fall of 2019.

00:05:05.060 So I remember, I'm a rucker.

00:05:06.900 I love rucking.

00:05:08.020 I do about once a week.

00:05:09.080 I discovered it back in 2012 because the founders of Huckberry, Andy and Richard, they introduced me to the founder of GoRuck.

00:05:17.980 Because at the time, Huckberry started doing some partnerships with GoRuck.

00:05:21.900 Yeah.

00:05:22.480 And what's the name of the founder?

00:05:23.980 We've had him on the podcast.

00:05:25.300 Jason McCarthy.

00:05:26.220 Jason McCarthy.

00:05:26.780 He invited me to do a GoRuck Tough.

00:05:29.320 Nice.

00:05:29.720 I never heard of this.

00:05:30.640 And I was like, oh, okay, why not?

00:05:31.740 So I got a rucksack, started training for it.

00:05:33.940 And I did the GoRuck Tough with my brother in Oklahoma City in November, I think 2012.

00:05:39.920 It was cold.

00:05:40.780 I remember it was like 30 degrees.

00:05:42.780 And if you've done a, have you done a GoRuck Tough?

00:05:45.600 Is that the 12-hour one?

00:05:47.640 Yeah, the 12-hour one.

00:05:48.980 Yeah.

00:05:49.340 So I've done a tough and a heavy.

00:05:51.860 I did a tough.

00:05:52.460 Oh, wow.

00:05:52.660 I did a tough in Providence in probably about the same time you did.

00:05:57.680 Yeah.

00:05:57.820 Maybe 2012.

00:05:59.640 And that was for a mental story.

00:06:02.180 And then I ended up doing a 24-hour one in maybe 2013 or 14 or something like that.

00:06:09.120 So yeah, that was a good introduction.

00:06:11.080 Yeah, that was my introduction to rucking.

00:06:12.380 Because I mean, for those who aren't familiar with the tough events, it's all night.

00:06:15.620 It's 12 hours.

00:06:16.440 You got a rucksack on with, I think, 40 pounds of weight, I think, 30 pounds of weight.

00:06:20.600 And then you get there and you do these like calisthenics, bear crawls, push-ups.

00:06:25.180 You're carrying people around.

00:06:26.680 And then they get you wet.

00:06:28.100 The first thing, they found a pond.

00:06:30.140 And it's like, get in the pond.

00:06:31.300 And it was 30 degrees.

00:06:33.020 And so the rest of the night, you're just cold and wet.

00:06:35.520 And you're carrying logs.

00:06:37.020 It was brutal.

00:06:38.280 I've done a few other events since then.

00:06:40.220 Been a while since I've done one.

00:06:41.260 But I still ruck.

00:06:42.180 I caught the bug.

00:06:43.260 And I just enjoy it.

00:06:44.520 We're going to talk about why I enjoy it and why I think it's so great.

00:06:46.860 And why you think it's so great.

00:06:47.840 Because I think you did a really good job capturing it in this book.

00:06:49.800 Like, so people have probably heard the idea that humans were born to run.

00:06:56.480 But you argue that they were really born to carry.

00:06:59.500 So you kind of alluded to it a little bit in your answer previously.

00:07:03.760 But what's the history of humans carrying stuff?

00:07:06.960 Yeah.

00:07:07.220 So, I mean, for some context, there's this 2004 paper that came out from a guy from Harvard

00:07:12.360 whose name is Daniel Lieberman.

00:07:13.780 And he basically argued that if you look at the way the human body is built the way it

00:07:18.840 is, you know, we stand on two feet, we sweat, we don't have much hair.

00:07:23.480 One of the reasons for that is that we evolved to run long distances in order to hunt prey.

00:07:29.400 So most other animals can't cool themselves in the heat.

00:07:32.580 And so if you get them running in the heat, they're eventually going to tire.

00:07:35.000 We don't overheat when it's hot out and we're running.

00:07:39.160 So we would use that to our advantage.

00:07:40.680 We'd run like 10 miles chasing an animal.

00:07:43.720 Eventually, it would get too hot.

00:07:44.900 It would topple over.

00:07:45.920 We would spear it or whatever.

00:07:47.880 And then we would successfully complete this hunt.

00:07:50.540 Now, what got lost in that, though?

00:07:52.320 And this is kind of the realization that I had when I was hunting up in the Arctic is what

00:07:58.040 happens after you have killed the animal and you're 10 miles from camp?

00:08:02.760 You got to carry that thing back, right?

00:08:05.280 And if you look at us compared to many other animals, pretty much every animal can run.

00:08:11.500 But we're the only animal that can pick up weight and carry it a long distance across the earth.

00:08:19.240 And that was only in the context of hunting, right?

00:08:21.320 If you look at what humans sort of evolved doing every single day, we were carrying all the time.

00:08:27.220 We're hunters and gatherers.

00:08:28.680 And gathering is simply an act of walking around, finding food, you pick it up, you carry it, you gather more.

00:08:36.020 We also had to carry our children.

00:08:37.640 And that really shaped us as a species.

00:08:40.640 So once we started walking on two feet, this was about 6 million years ago, by the way.

00:08:46.060 Once we start walking on two feet, it all of a sudden frees our hands.

00:08:48.660 And once our hands are free, we can use them to manipulate the world.

00:08:53.500 We can use them to carry tools into the unknown.

00:08:56.680 We can do all these really interesting things with them that allows us to eventually take over the world.

00:09:02.500 And that makes us really unique and explains why we are doing this over the internet in these lovely built houses.

00:09:11.240 As, you know, my dog hasn't evolved much more than just, you know, sitting around begging for treats.

00:09:16.960 All right.

00:09:17.100 So carrying stuff really opened things up for us as a species.

00:09:20.240 And you also get into the history of rucking.

00:09:22.140 So it seems like the first carrying devices that we would think of as backpacks started with mothers who used them to carry their kids.

00:09:30.200 And that freed up their hands for doing other things.

00:09:32.960 And then a lot of the development in the practice of humans carrying cargo on their backs happened in the military.

00:09:39.460 So rucking, this idea of rucking, it comes from the military.

00:09:42.980 Rucking is a military phrase.

00:09:44.760 Talk about the history of soldiers in war carrying load in order to do what they do.

00:09:49.280 Yeah.

00:09:49.400 When it comes to warfare, especially for most of history, these soldiers were having to take equipment really long distances by marching it.

00:09:59.440 So, you know, you might have to walk 300 miles to a battle site with all of your, you know, your unit, as it were, and you're carrying your gear the entire time.

00:10:08.500 And a lot of this gear was very heavy.

00:10:10.720 Loads in the past, you know, a couple thousand years ago, they might range from 35 pounds all the way up to 85 pounds.

00:10:17.580 But this act of rucking, of carrying your gear as a soldier, that has really been the foundation of military training for basically all of time.

00:10:29.200 Like if you look at how military units throughout the world have trained, the foundation has always been marching with weight.

00:10:37.440 And it still is.

00:10:38.220 Yeah, I mean, you talk about a manual written by a Roman guy where he talks about how to train a soldier.

00:10:44.160 And one of those training exercises was you had to just carry load for distance as much as possible.

00:10:51.360 Yeah, that was basically it.

00:10:52.800 And a lot of the military units throughout time, when they were trying to test their soldiers to see if they were ready for battle, the tests were basically tests of being able to march with weight.

00:11:04.640 It could be, hey, you have to be able to walk 12 miles with, say, 50 pounds in X amount of hours or whatever it might be.

00:11:12.820 And these tests, they all sort of varied throughout different places, different military units and different periods of time.

00:11:19.200 But they all are fundamentally based around, can you carry X load for Y distance in Z time?

00:11:26.420 Yeah, you have some examples from history.

00:11:27.740 So the Macedonian soldiers, Alexander the Great's soldiers, they marched to battle carrying about 80 pounds.

00:11:35.700 A Greek hoplite, 50 pounds of gear in armor.

00:11:38.940 And even like their armor was just heavy.

00:11:41.240 I remember when I took a class in ancient Greek history and they described like how much the shin covers weighed, their spear, their shield.

00:11:48.940 Like, man, that's got to be exhausting.

00:11:50.960 Oh, yeah.

00:11:52.320 And I will also add what makes, I think, this even more amazing is that, I mean, those loads are heavy for anyone today.

00:12:01.520 But when you look at the average size of men back then, they were far smaller than we are today.

00:12:07.520 Like the average American man right now weighs about 200 pounds.

00:12:10.560 And back then they would weigh, say, about 140 pounds.

00:12:13.880 So if you're carrying 85 pounds and you weigh 140 pounds, that's like an average guy today carrying, say, around 120 pounds.

00:12:22.760 So these are not insignificant loads.

00:12:24.840 I mean, these guys were unbelievably fit.

00:12:27.920 And they were doing it for long distances and sometimes really fast.

00:12:30.360 Like after the Battle of Marathon, the Athenian army marched 25 miles back to Athens to head off the Persians. 0.78

00:12:37.420 And they got there pretty fast and they were carrying their gear.

00:12:40.040 Yeah, I mean, it'll definitely make you feel a little bit soft when you start reading about these soldiers of the past.

00:12:46.540 One thing that I would add that I found pretty interesting is that, you know, as technology advances, you would think that the loads that our soldiers carry would have gone down.

00:12:58.460 We would have made lighter gear.

00:13:00.880 Things would have become lighter, easier to carry.

00:13:03.260 That's not actually what happened.

00:13:04.700 So some of our gear did become lighter, but we started adding more and more gear.

00:13:10.040 So by the time we are in, you know, World War II, Vietnam, even the Iraq War, the loads that the average American soldier was carrying were around 100 pounds.

00:13:20.400 So we've kind of just ramped up the weight over time.

00:13:22.960 That said, those soldiers were bigger, but these weights have just kind of gone up over time.

00:13:28.300 Yeah.

00:13:28.440 If you saw Saving Private Ryan, the D-Day invasion scene at the very beginning, you saw some of those guys, they just drowned because they had too much stuff on them when they got into the water.

00:13:37.660 Yeah.

00:13:37.900 So the military, rucking has been a big part of their training.

00:13:42.700 What has the military learned about walking with weight that has carried over into civilian life?

00:13:51.220 Like what have we learned about the science of walking with weight from the military?

00:13:55.460 I think that there's been some good and some bad.

00:13:58.840 So I'm going to start with the good.

00:14:00.420 Always give the hug first, right?

00:14:01.940 There's some research, especially conducted around the 1950s, that found effectively the military was noticing, hey, as we've loaded these guys up with more and more weight, we're starting to see all these injuries.

00:14:16.020 Not to mention, to your point about the D-Day invasion, if you load a soldier down with too much weight and someone starts shooting at him, like good luck getting out of the way, right?

00:14:25.060 You can't move as quick.

00:14:26.120 So the military started looking at, okay, what is an amount of weight that will, one, reduce injury risk, and two, allow our soldiers to move swiftly and efficiently when they need to.

00:14:38.140 And they basically found that one third of your body weight is about as much weight as you should carry to reduce injury risk and also be able to move well.

00:14:49.260 So going over that, if you go over one third of your body weight, so if you weigh 200 pounds, that's why am I doing math here?

00:14:57.020 I'm a writer.

00:14:57.640 66 pounds, we'll call it that.

00:14:59.720 If you go over that, injury risk rises, you don't move as well.

00:15:03.040 So there was this push to try to lighten soldiers' loads, but of course the sort of military industrial complex of, hey, you need more gear sort of won out.

00:15:12.640 We didn't quite meet that.

00:15:14.660 But that said, I think it gives the average person a good marker to know, hey, you should probably never go above this weight.

00:15:21.660 And in the book, I argue most people, the vast majority of the time, for your average rucks, you should be going a lot lighter than that as well.

00:15:29.600 Now let me touch on the bad.

00:15:30.820 I think one of the bad things is that because rucking, especially as it has become more popular, it has been framed through this sort of military lens.

00:15:40.800 But remember, humans evolved to carry.

00:15:43.720 I mean, this is like a fundamentally human act we've been doing very, very long before we had militaries.

00:15:49.820 And so when rucking becomes popular, people look up rucking and they start to look at, okay, well, how much weight are soldiers carrying?

00:15:57.800 But you got to remember, soldiers are carrying these massive weights because their mission is to win a war.

00:16:03.400 Whereas the average person, you're not going into warfare.

00:16:06.120 You're just trying to improve your health and fitness.

00:16:07.740 And so a lighter load is going to be a lot more appropriate.

00:16:10.500 And I think it pushed some people into using maybe a little too heavy a weight at first.

00:16:15.540 Do you have any idea when rucking started becoming a civilian fitness activity?

00:16:20.920 Were you able to figure out the evolution of that?

00:16:24.160 That's a good question.

00:16:25.160 I mean, I think you had soldiers come back from the military.

00:16:30.700 You know, some groups of veterans were doing it.

00:16:32.500 Those that hadn't been too scarred by the, you know, 100 mile rock marches they had to do in training.

00:16:37.240 I think you had some brands sort of pop up like GORUCK that started to put it on people's radar.

00:16:43.340 I think probably the rise of it being popular today.

00:16:49.460 I think my book, The Comfort Crisis, helped with that a little bit.

00:16:52.180 Now, I will say that took me going on shows like yours and talking about it to sort of give it a bump to the average person.

00:17:01.280 But it's kind of been this slow trajectory of like more people doing it, people who have a sort of platform like I do, writing about it, people inviting me on their platforms, and it just sort of spreading.

00:17:12.980 Yeah.

00:17:13.460 Because I see it often.

00:17:14.660 I see it more often when I'm in my neighborhood.

00:17:17.320 I see women might not have a weighted backpack on, but just like a weighted vest on. 1.00

00:17:21.260 And you didn't see that five years ago.

00:17:23.300 Totally.

00:17:23.920 Yeah.

00:17:24.380 Those have become the weighted vest phenomenon has become really popular.

00:17:27.820 It's a great thing.

00:17:28.340 Well, let's talk about why rucking is so great for health and longevity.

00:17:32.920 You start off in the book in this section talking about why rucking is a great activity for weight loss.

00:17:39.960 So why is rucking a great activity for weight loss?

00:17:42.960 Yeah.

00:17:43.160 Simplest way to think about it is that rucking combines strength and cardio.

00:17:48.480 So you're getting a strength stimulus because you're carrying weight and your muscles have to work harder to carry that weight.

00:17:54.860 Now, because you are also walking, that's an endurance activity.

00:17:58.540 So you're getting endurance.

00:17:59.900 So by mixing those two things, you see that from a per mile perspective, rucking burns more calories than walking or running alone.

00:18:10.960 And so you kind of get more bang for your buck.

00:18:13.460 Now, I will say, of course, you can cover more miles in a quicker span of time if you're running, but then you won't get that strength stimulus.

00:18:20.820 So when you look at calorie burn, it really depends on how much weight you're carrying, what is the terrain like, et cetera, et cetera.

00:18:28.820 But anywhere from 20 to about 200% more calories compared to walking or running.

00:18:36.200 And again, it really kind of depends.

00:18:37.600 Of course, the heavier you're using, the crazier the terrain, the more calorie burn you're going to get.

00:18:42.460 So it's a lot of bang for your buck in terms of calorie burn.

00:18:45.880 Yeah, tons of bang for your buck.

00:18:47.440 Yeah.

00:18:47.660 And one thing I would point out, too, is that it seems to be uniquely good for fat loss.

00:18:53.380 So there's some interesting studies.

00:18:55.440 There's this one on this group of backcountry hunters.

00:18:58.060 And what scientists did is they took this group of hunters, measured their body fat percentage, took a bunch of other health measurements, whatever.

00:19:07.100 Then these guys went out and they did, I believe it was a 12-day hunt.

00:19:11.200 So when you're doing a backcountry hunt, you have this heavy backpack full of all your gear.

00:19:16.040 You're also not packing in a ton of food because food is heavy.

00:19:20.080 So you're generally under eating, which sort of simulates the exact same thing that people do when they're trying to lose weight.

00:19:25.620 You want to move more.

00:19:27.000 You want to eat less.

00:19:28.320 Now, when most people lose weight, you lose a mix of fat, yes, but also muscle.

00:19:34.320 So you want to lose the fat, but you ideally want to hang on to as much muscle as possible because muscle is going to be good for your ability to function.

00:19:43.080 It's going to be better for your metabolism, on and on and on.

00:19:45.740 But when these guys came back from their hunt and they retested them, these researchers found that the hunters lost, I think it was about 12 pounds on average.

00:19:54.880 And the entirety of that loss came from fat, which is really surprising.

00:20:00.180 So they hadn't lost any muscle.

00:20:02.420 And in fact, they had gained a slight amount.

00:20:05.420 It was insignificant, but it was still a slight amount, which really shows us rucking can be great for fat loss.

00:20:11.800 And I think the reason for that is rather simple.

00:20:13.580 It's that when you have this load on your body, your body needs to hang on to your muscle in order to move that load across the ground.

00:20:22.240 So it almost triggers your body like, hey, we actually need our muscles here.

00:20:25.560 But you're also pairing cardio, which is generally a much better calorie burner than lifting alone.

00:20:32.140 So it's almost like it preferentially shifts what you're burning to fat.

00:20:36.800 That's interesting.

00:20:37.100 I've also heard that there's this sort of speculative research about how we maybe have this sense in our body, like gravity of weight.

00:20:45.120 Yeah.

00:20:45.600 And that determines how many calories you burn.

00:20:47.620 So, you know, if you weigh 220 pounds, that requires a certain number of calories to maintain.

00:20:53.080 But if you lose 20 pounds, now you're 200 pounds, your body is going to burn less calories.

00:20:59.000 And so I've heard of this one trick you can do is as you're losing weight and you want to keep losing weight is to put on a weighted vest that weighs, you know, 20 pounds.

00:21:08.900 And your body's still going to think it's 220.

00:21:12.020 And then you'll burn calories as if it were 220.

00:21:15.860 And it's not just because you burn more calories because it takes more effort to move, but it's because it like senses your body weighs more.

00:21:23.960 Have you heard about that research?

00:21:25.880 Yeah, I think it's new.

00:21:27.140 It's definitely emerging, but it's really interesting.

00:21:30.700 So it's called the gravidestat hypothesis.

00:21:32.820 And they think effectively what happens is like your bones sort of do some signaling.

00:21:37.800 And so when you have that load on your body, your bones don't necessarily know where it's coming from.

00:21:43.820 So it sort of leads you to not get as much of a metabolic drop as would happen had you not had the added vest on after you've lost weight.

00:21:54.580 Well, speaking of bones, rucking is also good for bones.

00:21:56.940 How's rucking good for your bones?

00:21:58.840 Yeah, well, and first I'll say, you know, when you start talking about bone health, I think most people sort of roll their eyes because who the hell cares about their bones?

00:22:06.420 But the reason this is important is because as you age, your bones start to lose density.

00:22:12.600 Now, this is generally talked about from a female perspective because it happens more often in women. 1.00

00:22:19.600 But that said, doctors are finding more and more men facing an issue with bone density.

00:22:25.380 And the reason for that is because as a society, we've generally become a lot more sedentary.

00:22:29.980 And so your bones need impact and loading in order to maintain and even improve their density.

00:22:36.640 So rucking gives you this ability to load your bones for quite a long time, much longer than lifting, because the average set of, you know, lifting exercise is going to be, I don't know, 20, 30 seconds.

00:22:48.040 So you can load your bones for about an hour, get those impact on them.

00:22:52.300 And that seems to help maintain, maybe even improve bone density, which becomes really important because as you age, if you fall and break a hip, that is like the worst thing that can happen.

00:23:03.400 I think the stat is about a third of people who are over 65 and break a hip die within the next six months because it just totally wrecks their function.

00:23:13.600 And then everything goes downhill.

00:23:15.560 All right.

00:23:15.740 So yeah, rucking is great for strengthening bones.

00:23:17.760 You think carrying stuff on your back would be bad for back pain, but you point to research that carrying load on your back is probably one of the best things you can do for your back pain.

00:23:29.160 Walk us through that.

00:23:30.980 Yeah, I think people find that definitely find that counterintuitive.

00:23:33.820 I did.

00:23:34.480 But what happens is there's some military research about this.

00:23:38.480 When you have the weight on your back, you would think your back starts to work much harder.

00:23:45.080 That's not actually the case.

00:23:46.560 Your back muscles actually end up working less when you have a weight on your back.

00:23:51.840 And so then the question is, okay, well, what's keeping me upright?

00:23:55.020 What happens is that your core actually picks up all of that slack.

00:23:58.860 So your core ends up working a lot harder.

00:24:01.000 And when you look at what one of the root causes is for back pain, and by the way, like 80% of people will experience back pain at some point in their life.

00:24:10.220 Like this is one of the most common pains.

00:24:12.400 The reason is because people's cores are so weak.

00:24:15.920 So your core is really built to sort of stabilize your spine if you have to pick anything up or move a certain way.

00:24:21.260 And so as we become more sedentary, our cores have become weaker, and then you have to go pick up a bag of mulch or whatever in the backyard.

00:24:30.300 Your core is not strong enough to protect your spine, and then you get a problem.

00:24:33.540 So by rucking, you're strengthening your core in a way that to me is a little more interesting than doing planks and bird dogs and whatever you might do.

00:24:41.080 Now, that said, you should do those too.

00:24:42.840 I wouldn't discourage you from any form of exercise.

00:24:45.820 But rucking really allows you to strengthen your core.

00:24:48.020 And there's also a researcher up in Canada, he's kind of considered the world's foremost back health expert.

00:24:54.180 And one thing that he does with a lot of his back patients is have them ruck because he says it, you know, it strengthens their core.

00:25:02.500 It also sort of decompresses their spine, like allows their spine to get some light motion in.

00:25:07.040 And that tends to do some good things for your back.

00:25:10.020 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

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00:27:43.600 And now back to the show.

00:27:45.760 Okay, so Rucking, great for weight loss, especially fat loss, because you're burning more calories.

00:27:51.620 You're maintaining muscle as you do the Ruck.

00:27:54.720 It's great for your bones.

00:27:56.040 It's great for back pain.

00:27:57.500 Another thing you talk about, another health benefit of Rucking is that it gets you outside and is social.

00:28:03.240 What are the health benefits of being outside and doing this with other people?

00:28:07.480 Oh, man.

00:28:07.780 Well, the health benefits of being outside.

00:28:10.160 Now, I had a chapter about this in the comfort crisis.

00:28:12.980 And, you know, when I first started hearing people say, oh, being outside is good for your health.

00:28:17.140 It's good for your mental health.

00:28:18.520 I was kind of like, eh, that's some kind of hippie nonsense, you know.

00:28:21.900 But then I looked into the research.

00:28:23.620 And it goes all the way back to the 80s.

00:28:25.380 So we're talking like four decades of research.

00:28:27.080 And it consistently finds that being outdoors tends to reduce stress levels, tends to increase happiness, tends to lead people to be more productive once they get back into the office, tends to improve focus.

00:28:40.040 And it also actually boosts a lot of physical health markers.

00:28:43.320 So time in the outdoors has been shown to lower blood sugar, all these different good things for your health.

00:28:49.340 And then I think on the social component, so when you look at a lot of exercise that's endurance focused, it can be hard to sort of pair it right with another person and make it social.

00:29:02.700 So let's say you and I go for a run.

00:29:04.860 And let's say that you're a way better runner than me.

00:29:07.380 I'm not.

00:29:08.280 Okay.

00:29:08.760 Let's say I'm a way better runner than you.

00:29:11.260 Yes.

00:29:11.920 We'll go with that then.

00:29:12.840 If you and I are going to go for a run and try and have a conversation, well, your sort of lack of running fitness means that in order for us to talk, you're going to be running rather slow.

00:29:23.140 And that's really not going to give me that much.

00:29:25.380 Like I'm really going to be sort of held back, right? 0.97

00:29:28.520 On the opposite coin, if I go, all right, I'm setting the tempo of this run, you're going to be dragging behind like this sucks. 0.97

00:29:34.320 I hate this. 0.91

00:29:34.940 We're not going to be able to talk at all.

00:29:36.040 So it's hard to sort of get into a deep conversation.

00:29:38.960 You can run together, but you're not really going to talk.

00:29:41.040 Whereas with rucking, I'll give you the, I'll give you the benefit here.

00:29:45.220 Let's say you're a way better rucker than me and you can carry more weight.

00:29:48.740 Well, you can simply carry say 45 pounds and get a great workout and walk.

00:29:54.340 And I can just carry say 30 pounds and I can get an equally good workout and we can have that walk, go rucking together and have a long conversation and really connect.

00:30:06.040 And when you look at research about when do humans have the best conversations, how do we connect for men in particular?

00:30:12.820 This is for everyone, but I will say for men in particular, it tends to happen when we are shoulder to shoulder out moving across the earth.

00:30:21.120 And so rucking really allows us to capture that.

00:30:23.920 You get in a good workout, but you're able to really talk about things with people, connect with people.

00:30:29.520 And that just makes it really sort of universal.

00:30:31.980 So another example is like, I'm not going to go for a run with my mother, right?

00:30:35.920 She's 75 years old, but I could say, Hey mom, do you want to go ruck together?

00:30:40.900 I could take 35 pounds.

00:30:42.900 She could take like five pounds and we'd be able to do that activity, get in a good workout, but have a conversation. 1.00

00:30:48.780 So I think that makes it really social.

00:30:50.560 And then you pair that with the fact that we're outside that has all those benefits.

00:30:54.680 It makes it really powerful and accessible for people.

00:30:57.280 So going back to what we talked about earlier, how rucking grew out of the military.

00:31:00.800 And sometimes there's good lessons and parallels we can draw from military rucking to civilian rucking.

00:31:06.720 And sometimes there's not.

00:31:08.420 Whenever we've posted about rucking on the site, military guys will often chime in and say,

00:31:13.880 Oh, rucking that destroyed my joints.

00:31:16.560 It destroyed my body.

00:31:18.060 Don't ruck.

00:31:19.380 So is rucking safe?

00:31:21.440 The short answer is yes.

00:31:23.380 When I released the comfort crisis, I got a few emails from military guys like that saying that

00:31:29.380 I didn't know what I was talking about because rucking hurt their knees or their back, but

00:31:33.900 you have to ask what kind of loads is the military carrying?

00:31:37.480 Like I said before, they're carrying really heavy loads because the mission is the war for

00:31:42.220 the average person.

00:31:43.260 You don't need to carry that much weight.

00:31:44.940 You can just carry say anywhere from five to 20% of your body weight.

00:31:48.720 And it is really, really safe.

00:31:51.640 So the injury rate for rucking is pretty close to that of walking.

00:31:56.040 And the injury rate for walking is only 1%.

00:31:59.920 Now the rate goes up, the more weight you add, but you don't have to add a lot of weight

00:32:04.700 to get a really massive benefit.

00:32:07.100 So what was interesting too, is that, you know, after the comfort crisis has been out

00:32:11.820 for a while, it touches on rucking.

00:32:14.520 I got follow-up emails from military guys who said, you know, I was skeptical about that

00:32:19.500 rucking thing because the military just made me hate it and it injured me.

00:32:23.080 But once I lightened the load, it totally improved my fitness.

00:32:26.940 I didn't have any injuries.

00:32:28.260 I was able to lose weight, to lose fat.

00:32:30.600 I improved my endurance.

00:32:32.720 I improved my body composition.

00:32:35.540 And it also sort of, they said, returned them to the roots of the military in a way that

00:32:40.480 kind of made them feel good.

00:32:41.940 Like, okay, I'm back at it.

00:32:43.520 So long story short is if you're not using crazy military loads, you probably won't get

00:32:49.880 hurt rucking.

00:32:50.700 Yeah, and I like rucking for cardio because people typically think, well, I got to do

00:32:56.120 cardio, I got to run.

00:32:57.600 But running can beat up your joints.

00:32:59.980 The injury rate for long distance running is like 20 to 70%, just depending.

00:33:05.080 And it's usually joint pain.

00:33:06.120 Like you have something wrong with your knee or something like that.

00:33:08.080 Because like the impact, every time you hit the ground, it's really hard.

00:33:11.820 Rucking, you don't have that issue.

00:33:13.860 So you get a good cardio workout without the stress on your joints.

00:33:17.580 Again, if you're keeping the weight reasonable.

00:33:21.200 Yeah, exactly.

00:33:22.020 I mean, how many people do you know that say they've been hurt by running?

00:33:26.400 Probably any runner you've ever talked to.

00:33:28.920 Running, it takes a toll on your body.

00:33:30.540 I mean, it's good for us.

00:33:32.060 I think sometimes it's like you learn from your injuries, you clean up your form, good

00:33:35.640 things happen.

00:33:36.180 But just from a general population health perspective, my opinion is that if you can

00:33:40.980 choose activities that are going to, that have a lower risk of injuring you, you should

00:33:47.000 probably do those.

00:33:48.460 Because what happens when people get injured is that they tend to stop exercising at all.

00:33:53.660 And then when they stop exercising, all their health markers go down, mental health goes down,

00:33:58.520 a lot of bad things happen.

00:33:59.500 So for me, it's just thinking about what is the activity that I not only enjoy, but that

00:34:05.640 I can also continue to do for decades without worrying that I'm eventually going to blow

00:34:10.340 out a knee or whatever it is and then be sidelined for a really long time.

00:34:14.380 Yeah.

00:34:14.560 I call it rucking, cardio for the man who hates cardio.

00:34:17.520 Yeah.

00:34:18.040 It's a good tagline.

00:34:19.080 I should have put that in the book.

00:34:20.200 Should have consulted you.

00:34:21.040 And it's funny, whenever I've introduced rucking to guys, I've never done cardio, but once I learned

00:34:26.820 about rucking, like it's changed, I do it all the time and they just love it.

00:34:30.800 So I'm a big, I'm again, I'm a big booster of rucking.

00:34:33.140 That's why I have you on the podcast to talk about rucking.

00:34:35.100 So let's talk about how to get started with rucking for those who haven't done it before.

00:34:39.480 There are lots of different options these days for carrying weight.

00:34:45.200 Backpack, there's special rucksacks.

00:34:47.600 Now there's weighted vests.

00:34:49.700 What do you think is the best option for someone who's starting out for the device they use to

00:34:54.040 carry the weight?

00:34:54.580 So I think for most people starting out, I just try and make it as simple as possible.

00:35:00.340 Find a backpack you have in your house.

00:35:02.660 Could be, you know, backpack you used in college.

00:35:05.940 Could be one you use for travel.

00:35:07.380 Could be, you know, a pack you bought for a hike.

00:35:10.640 Fill it with something that weighs something and go out and walk.

00:35:13.400 Like it's that simple.

00:35:14.700 To begin, you just have to begin.

00:35:17.700 Because I think oftentimes people get paralysis by analysis when it comes to gear.

00:35:22.360 It's like, well, should I have this one or this one?

00:35:24.380 And what equipment do I need to buy?

00:35:25.480 It's like, no, this is just so accessible.

00:35:28.780 Like make it that way.

00:35:31.120 And people might often find like, okay, I really love this thing.

00:35:35.060 Great.

00:35:35.460 I want to invest in some, you know, proper rucking specific gear.

00:35:39.260 And if that's you, then I think that can be a good way to find a pack that maybe fits you

00:35:44.260 better, that handles the load more appropriately.

00:35:47.440 But it really can be as simple as just like find a backpack and go out for a walk, throw

00:35:51.660 some stuff in it that weighs something.

00:35:53.940 Are there any benefits to the weighted vests?

00:35:55.760 You know, again, we've been seeing those more often.

00:35:58.780 Yeah.

00:35:59.080 Yeah, for sure.

00:35:59.720 There are.

00:36:00.020 The book gets into sort of the nuances between packs and vests.

00:36:04.640 And it says, you know, for what circumstances might one be more appropriate than the other.

00:36:10.580 My message is generally that you walk with weight matters a lot more than how you walk

00:36:17.020 with weight.

00:36:18.100 So both are beneficial.

00:36:20.100 Both have their nuances.

00:36:21.560 But when you're just starting, I just tell people, don't think, don't overthink it.

00:36:26.000 Just start.

00:36:26.940 If you want to get a weight vest, get it.

00:36:28.620 It also means you're going to have to invest a bit more money.

00:36:31.560 It's also a very sort of hyper-specific contraption, whereas like a backpack, you can use that for

00:36:37.840 travel too, right?

00:36:38.640 It doubles for all these different things.

00:36:40.340 Yeah.

00:36:40.580 I've tried both the vest and the backpack.

00:36:43.280 The weight vest does distribute the weight more and it keeps the weight high and tight.

00:36:48.400 But I don't think it's as comfortable as a backpack because you've got the weight on the

00:36:52.760 back and on the front.

00:36:54.480 Just having that weight on your chest, it makes it hard to breathe.

00:36:57.200 And you talk about this in the book, one of the benefits of the backpack, when you have

00:37:01.240 the weight just on your back, you can lean into it, right?

00:37:04.700 And it makes it a little bit more comfortable.

00:37:06.500 With the weighted vest, it's just pulling you down to the center of the earth.

00:37:10.260 And that gets uncomfortable.

00:37:13.140 Yeah.

00:37:13.340 So I think for most people, most of the time, a backpack is the answer.

00:37:17.440 I'll get into a couple of points.

00:37:18.980 So the one you made, when you have a weight vest, you've got weight on the front, especially

00:37:24.100 if it's these military style vests that almost look like bulletproof vests.

00:37:27.980 Yeah.

00:37:28.620 When you have weight sitting on your chest, that can make it hard to breathe, especially

00:37:33.760 if it's a heavy load.

00:37:35.340 So now it becomes harder to breathe as you're doing cardio. 0.96

00:37:38.080 That sucks.

00:37:39.820 Number two is that those get really hot if it's the summer, because your sweat can't 0.67

00:37:45.100 evaporate because you're sort of enveloped by this thing.

00:37:48.700 The second point that you made is, and this kind of applies more to longer distances and

00:37:55.160 heavier loads, but I'll give you an extreme circumstance so people can understand it.

00:38:00.160 It's like, if you got 300 pounds and you put it in a backpack and put it on someone, say

00:38:07.720 some random guy, chances are it would of course be uncomfortable.

00:38:12.060 It would be too heavy, but it would still be able to stand because when the weight is

00:38:16.400 at your back, you can kind of lean in and you have something to resist against that sort

00:38:21.220 of balances you.

00:38:22.240 Now, if you take that same 300 pounds in the form of a weight vest and strap it on someone,

00:38:27.820 they're probably going to collapse.

00:38:29.340 And that's simply because there's nothing to really lean into to resist against.

00:38:33.760 It just sort of covers you like this super heavy blanket and you fall.

00:38:38.240 Now, of course, most people aren't using insane loads, but that begins to matter at sort of

00:38:45.200 everyday loads when you're going across a long distance.

00:38:49.460 So if you get really tired and your sort of form starts to falter with a vest, you've got

00:38:55.860 nowhere to go to sort of maintain proper form.

00:38:58.440 Whereas with a pack, you know, just to kind of lean forward and you'll be able to maintain

00:39:03.140 proper form.

00:39:03.980 And a good case study of this is through hikers.

00:39:06.660 So backpackers who do, you know, month long hikes where they're hiking every day.

00:39:11.360 Now, those people could figure out some way to have a contraption that keeps their gear

00:39:16.240 on their front and their back.

00:39:17.480 But no one actually does that.

00:39:19.800 Every single person uses backpacks.

00:39:21.340 And that's simply because when you're covering long distances and a lot of miles, the backpack

00:39:26.180 just becomes way more comfortable, keeps your form better, leads to fewer issues.

00:39:31.600 And so for me, that's kind of the answer there.

00:39:34.560 And then I'll add one more thing is that the vests, especially the military style ones,

00:39:40.000 you kind of look like you're going to maybe throw a coup against your HOA as you're walking

00:39:44.860 through the neighborhood.

00:39:46.040 You know, it's just like, what is this dude wearing a bulletproof vest?

00:39:49.320 Should I be concerned?

00:39:50.580 What's going on here?

00:39:51.880 Just sort of a weird look.

00:39:53.380 Whereas a backpack, it's like, you know, people wear backpacks all the time in all different

00:39:58.220 public places.

00:39:59.300 Pretty normal.

00:40:00.700 All right.

00:40:00.820 So go, just go with backpack.

00:40:02.040 Make it simple if you're getting started.

00:40:03.520 Yeah.

00:40:03.860 Let's talk about weight.

00:40:04.640 When you're first starting out, how much weight should you start off with?

00:40:07.200 So we learned from the military, you don't want to go above a third of your body weight.

00:40:11.620 When you're first starting out, what weight should you pick?

00:40:14.220 I mean, I tell people a go-to is 10% of your body weight.

00:40:17.820 Some people might find that too light at first, but I would rather you start light than start

00:40:23.200 super heavy and get out there and go, oh my God, this is the worst thing I've ever done.

00:40:27.800 I don't ever want to do this again.

00:40:29.880 Because you can always add weight later on and that allows you to get your body used to

00:40:34.120 it to sort of build up some fitness.

00:40:35.540 And then you can just sort of add from there.

00:40:37.900 I realize this is called the art of manliness, but I'll point out two things, differences

00:40:42.540 between men and women with the starting.

00:40:46.040 So I think women will sometimes start too light. 1.00

00:40:49.380 They might only use say five pounds and it's a little too easy.

00:40:53.000 So I would encourage women, you know, you want it to be uncomfortable. 1.00

00:40:56.440 Shouldn't feel soul crushing, but like, don't be afraid to use, you know, 15 pounds instead

00:41:00.820 of 10.

00:41:01.200 With men, we tend to have the opposite problem where we, you know, go online and look at photos 0.89

00:41:07.040 of Navy SEALs and think, you know, I'm just going to load this sucker up.

00:41:11.200 I would discourage that at first.

00:41:13.520 I think you want to kind of build a base where you're used to it.

00:41:16.360 You want some muscles that have been underused to sort of develop, and then you can start

00:41:21.820 adding some weight from there.

00:41:23.400 Gotcha.

00:41:24.280 And for weight, there's all sorts of different options.

00:41:27.180 It can be as easy as when I first started rucking, I just used a bunch of bricks taped together.

00:41:32.420 That was it.

00:41:33.400 It was pretty rudimentary, but you could use books.

00:41:35.320 You could use a milk jug filled with water, or then you get as fancy with like the ruck plates

00:41:42.100 that they have available.

00:41:43.740 Yeah.

00:41:44.340 There's a lot of options.

00:41:45.480 I think your milk jug idea is really good.

00:41:48.200 And the reason I like that is because if you get out on your initial rocks and you're

00:41:52.860 like, oh, I'm starting to fade and I still have, you know, three miles to get home, you

00:41:57.780 can always just dump out the water and you'll be fine.

00:41:59.940 So that makes it rather accessible.

00:42:02.220 Things like sandbags can also be good because you can kind of find the right weight.

00:42:07.260 It also sort of molds to the bag nicely, bags of rice.

00:42:11.240 Some people will use dumbbells.

00:42:13.060 If you use a dumbbell, I would suggest you wrap it in a towel so you don't have this steel

00:42:17.160 weight digging into your back the whole time, which can be uncomfortable, but really just

00:42:22.000 get creative.

00:42:22.620 Like the thing just has to weigh something when you load it, you want it tight to your

00:42:26.440 back and you're good to go.

00:42:28.760 Yeah.

00:42:28.880 So besides having it tight to your back, is there a placement that's better for comfort,

00:42:33.540 like up high in the middle, low?

00:42:36.000 What should people think about there as far as comfort and avoiding injuries?

00:42:40.200 Yeah.

00:42:40.340 I think generally if you can have the weight higher, do, that's not always easy to do or

00:42:47.260 practical.

00:42:47.720 If you're just kind of using random stuff you find around the house.

00:42:50.940 I mean, one way to fix that is to put maybe like a, you know, a little cardboard box or

00:42:55.740 something at the bottom of your towel.

00:42:58.560 So it elevates the weight and then do keep it close to your back.

00:43:02.660 You also want it secure.

00:43:03.620 You don't want the weight sort of flopping around every step because that can just kind of

00:43:06.980 alter your, your walking patterns.

00:43:09.200 So tight to your back, secure a little bit higher if you can get it higher and then just

00:43:13.560 go out and walk.

00:43:14.580 And then when you first start out, how long should a ruck be?

00:43:17.660 Like you start off with a mile, two miles.

00:43:19.620 What are you looking at there?

00:43:21.420 I just tell people if you have a normal walking route in your neighborhood that you do, let's

00:43:26.800 say you, you know, your walk with your spouse after dinner is two miles.

00:43:30.840 Just do that.

00:43:31.980 It's a good way to start.

00:43:32.940 I would discourage that phenomenon where we choose a new exercise and we decide to just

00:43:38.520 go all in with crazy distances because pretty much with any exercise doing too much too soon

00:43:45.340 is the main driver of injuries.

00:43:46.880 So it's like, yeah, just do your kind of normal walk and see how it goes.

00:43:50.900 In terms of frequency, how often can you ruck without running into overuse injuries?

00:43:56.100 So I like to say that if humans couldn't carry every day, we would have died off as a species

00:44:01.140 a very long time ago.

00:44:03.680 But that said today, because we carry so infrequently, it might make sense to have, you know, a rest

00:44:09.720 day between days that you ruck.

00:44:11.460 But another option is to simply use more weight some days and less weight others.

00:44:17.260 For me, I'm rucking nearly every day and that's because I have to walk my dogs every day.

00:44:23.640 So I just look at it as, look, I can get more from every step.

00:44:27.460 If I just throw this ruck on when I walk the dogs and I've been totally fine.

00:44:32.260 I mean, I'm not carrying crazy loads.

00:44:34.280 I've just sort of found, okay, what's a good go-to weight?

00:44:37.960 And I would, this is a recommendation for everyone.

00:44:40.120 What's a weight that feels uncomfortable?

00:44:43.040 You know, it's there, but it's also not soul crushing.

00:44:46.140 And you feel like you could walk a really long distance with it without tapping out.

00:44:51.040 So for me, that's about 35 pounds.

00:44:52.900 That's what I wear when I'm walking my dogs.

00:44:55.540 If I'm going a really long distance, let's say I'm doing a 12 mile walk.

00:44:59.640 I might bump that down to say 25, 20 pounds.

00:45:03.140 But sometimes like if I'm training for a hunt or, you know, a big backpacking trip, I'll go heavier than 35.

00:45:09.860 I'll use 45 or 50.

00:45:11.820 And there's even sometimes a workout that I love and it'll make you feel like a pack mule is to throw like, you can really load this thing.

00:45:22.420 Throw like a lot of weight in a pack, get on a treadmill, set it to say an incline, 10 to 15 incline, and just walk slowly for like an hour.

00:45:32.820 That will get you ready for the mountains.

00:45:35.620 And it's one that I love.

00:45:37.280 And because you're on a treadmill, you don't have to worry as much about injury.

00:45:40.660 Because one of the reasons injury risk gets higher when you have heavier loads is that if you misstep and you roll an ankle with, say, 80 pounds on your back.

00:45:50.220 Well, now that ankle that would have been a sort of minor little spring, that can become a real problem.

00:45:54.760 But with the treadmill, you don't really have to worry about curbs you didn't see, crap in the road, things like that.

00:45:59.820 And there's a little bit of give to the treadmill.

00:46:01.640 So most people tend to not ever get injured doing that.

00:46:05.100 You mentioned how you ruck whenever you walk your dog.

00:46:07.960 That's something you talk about in the book is that you can just ruck whenever.

00:46:11.360 You don't have to make rucking like I'm setting aside time for a ruck.

00:46:14.920 You can just put on a rucksack or a weighted vest when you're doing chores around the house.

00:46:19.980 Like I've done that.

00:46:20.900 Like I'll do that every now and then.

00:46:22.200 It's like, all right, we got a bunch of chores.

00:46:23.900 Put on the weighted vest and make it a little bit harder.

00:46:26.640 And yeah, it doesn't destroy you.

00:46:28.620 It's a little bit harder, but after you're done, you're not like, oh, boy, I'm beat.

00:46:31.620 I need to spend a day recovering.

00:46:34.200 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:35.580 For another book I'm working on, I had this really long through hike through southern Utah.

00:46:40.120 It took like 45 days.

00:46:42.020 And so to get ready to have a pack on my back 12 hours a day, I would just wear my ruck around the house as I was vacuuming, picking up, living life, whatever it might be.

00:46:52.180 And that really sort of slowly got my body ready to be able to carry that weight.

00:46:56.460 And I'm burning more calories just doing my everyday tasks that I already had to do.

00:47:01.800 Have you noticed for people who are doing rucking as a civilian activity for fitness, are there common injuries you see with this population?

00:47:12.280 And if so, what are some of the things you can do to mitigate those injuries?

00:47:15.880 The most common thing, and I wouldn't consider it an injury, is that people will say their shoulders are uncomfortable during a ruck or after a ruck.

00:47:24.780 And I think that's just because we rarely carry weight in backpacks anymore.

00:47:30.440 So it's like you throw some weight on your shoulders, they're going, what the hell is this?

00:47:34.460 We haven't done this since you were in high school.

00:47:36.600 But that discomfort isn't necessarily injury.

00:47:39.460 It's just your body saying, what the hell are we doing here?

00:47:42.180 A way to fix that is pretty simple.

00:47:44.640 It's to just do a dead hang from a pull-up bar.

00:47:47.560 So just hang like with your body slack, your arms totally straight for say 30, 60 seconds.

00:47:55.140 Because the weight is pulling down on your shoulders, that almost elongates them.

00:47:59.820 And that seems to sort of fix that over time.

00:48:02.660 And eventually, most people's shoulders adapt, and it fixes the problem really quick.

00:48:07.660 Another one is blisters.

00:48:09.140 Anytime you start adding weight to your body, now there's more pressure on your feet.

00:48:15.900 And so blisters can definitely happen.

00:48:17.980 My advice there is if you get a hot spot, don't let it devolve into a crazy blister.

00:48:23.640 Try and treat it.

00:48:24.600 That's pretty easy.

00:48:25.300 A lot of it is just your feet need to get tougher over time.

00:48:28.180 But just don't push yourself so far into the red that now we've got a real blister problem.

00:48:33.560 Going back to that dead hang, even if you don't ruck, I recommend that for anybody.

00:48:37.640 It's one of the best things I do for my shoulder, especially if you're a bench presser, shoulder presser.

00:48:43.740 You get really tight in your shoulders.

00:48:45.520 You might have a shoulder impingement. 0.98

00:48:47.520 Do the dead hang.

00:48:48.520 Make it a regular part of your fitness activity.

00:48:51.760 It'll help your shoulders out a ton.

00:48:53.840 Yeah, I agree 100%.

00:48:56.100 And if you want to level it up, you can just do single arm hangs as you progress.

00:49:01.700 But I agree with you.

00:49:02.620 That's something I try and do every single day, even for just 30 seconds.

00:49:07.040 So you're a big proponent of this thing called the 2% mindset. 0.72

00:49:10.300 In fact, your sub stack is called 2%.

00:49:12.360 What is the 2% mindset and how do you apply it to rucking?

00:49:16.040 Yeah, so the 2% mindset comes from this study that found that only 2% of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available.

00:49:25.200 2%.

00:49:25.680 Now, to me, 100% of people know that taking the stairs is going to be better for their long-term health, maybe even their long-term mental health.

00:49:35.300 But 98% of people choose to do the easy, effortless thing, even though it might harm them in the long run in the context of how little we move today.

00:49:44.000 So the 2% mindset, it's not really about the stairs, though, in that study.

00:49:48.900 To me, it's like this overarching idea of being willing to embrace short-term discomfort to get a long-term benefit.

00:49:57.320 So, yes, it's the stairs facing the discomfort of the stairs to get to that second floor instead of doing the easy thing.

00:50:04.360 But you can apply that to so many different areas of your life.

00:50:07.660 And I think by applying that in as many different areas as you can find, those little benefits you get from each uncomfortable act, they really compound over time and lead to sort of these massive changes.

00:50:20.480 Now, to apply it to rucking, I think it goes back to if you have something that you already have to do, but you could throw a rock on as you do it to make it a little bit harder to get more from every step.

00:50:33.660 Like, to me, that feels like a massive win.

00:50:35.940 It's like if you got to walk down to your mailbox, like in our neighborhood, our mailbox is set away.

00:50:40.940 It's like a, you know, quarter mile away or whatever.

00:50:43.320 If I could just throw a rock on, I'm getting more from every step.

00:50:46.140 And if I do that every single day that I get the mail, like that's going to add up a lot over time.

00:50:50.900 If I'm vacuuming, throw on the rock.

00:50:53.180 If I'm doing a nightly walk with my kids or whatever, I'm going to throw on the rock.

00:50:57.920 And so I think it's really just finding ways, how can I add this tool into things I already have to do in order to get a bigger long-term benefit from that thing?

00:51:08.980 For example, my, my doctor, great dude.

00:51:12.140 He started wearing a rock as he was doing rounds.

00:51:16.100 So he's literally walk, walking around the hospital all day, visiting patients, and he just rolls in and consults with people and he's got this pack on.

00:51:23.800 And it's like, to me, that is awesome because he already has to do rounds.

00:51:27.900 It's not impeding his ability to do his job in any way.

00:51:32.040 And he's also showing his patients a really valuable lesson that like this exercise thing that I've been telling you to do for all these years, it doesn't have to be that hard.

00:51:43.380 I think that one problem with the way that society views exercise is we view it as this like separate distinct thing from our normal lives, right?

00:51:52.400 It's like, we got our 30 minutes in the gym where we run on a treadmill.

00:51:56.800 It's a special little time.

00:51:58.460 And then the other 23 hours and 30 minutes of the day, we're totally sedentary.

00:52:03.700 But to me, it's like, how can I just add more activity into my life?

00:52:07.860 How can I make the things I already have to do a little bit harder so that I can live better?

00:52:12.240 Yeah, I love the whole idea of the 2% mindset. 1.00

00:52:15.420 And I know I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but be a 2%er has become a motto in our family. 0.96

00:52:21.780 Awesome.

00:52:22.320 I love it.

00:52:22.960 So whenever we're at the airport, especially, that's when you see stairs because there's almost always stairs next to the escalator.

00:52:31.920 And we tell our kids, okay, McKay's are 2%ers. 0.82

00:52:35.340 We're taking the stairs.

00:52:36.680 I love it.

00:52:37.340 Yeah.

00:52:37.540 So let's say you've been rucking for a while and you want to challenge yourself.

00:52:41.840 Any challenges you'd recommend for people to try out after they've been doing this for a while?

00:52:47.480 Yeah.

00:52:47.760 I list a handful in the book, and a lot of them are based off of some of the military challenges that we talked about.

00:52:55.060 I've, of course, adapted them for the average person.

00:52:59.320 So there's a big list there, but I think just, you know, it could be using a certain weight for a certain distance.

00:53:04.640 I mean, my favorite thing personally is once a year, I'm going to take a long backpacking trip somewhere, say three days out with my friends.

00:53:12.400 That gives me incentive to keep rucking all year so I'm able to handle those loads when I go into the mountains.

00:53:20.200 And that in itself is a good challenge.

00:53:21.740 It's like, all right, we're going to try and do 20 miles a day.

00:53:24.840 We got, you know, our 35, 40 pounds of gear on our backs, and we're going to do this big loop, this big circuit, wherever it is in the mountains.

00:53:32.080 And so I think, you know, finding these big challenges, I think, can incentivize you to get those little wins we talked about with the 2% mindset and then give you something that sort of pushes you up against the boundaries of your limits and teaches you something about yourself.

00:53:47.920 I love it.

00:53:48.660 Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation.

00:53:50.560 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:53:53.020 Probably the best place to find me is on my sub stack.

00:53:55.460 It's called 2%, as we talked about, and the website is twopct.com.

00:54:02.080 There's a lot of rucking material on there.

00:54:04.280 You can find links to the book on there.

00:54:06.380 And the book is, of course, available at pretty much anywhere you buy books, which I think for the vast majority of people is amazon.com now.

00:54:12.900 So.

00:54:13.740 Fantastic. Well, Michael Easter, thanks for your time.

00:54:14.820 It's been a pleasure.

00:54:15.580 Yeah, thanks a lot, man.

00:54:17.600 My guest here is Michael Easter.

00:54:18.740 He's the author of the book, Walk With Weight.

00:54:20.500 It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:54:22.780 You can learn more information about his work at his website, 2%, and you can find that at twopct.com, twopct.com.

00:54:30.240 It's a great sub stack, one of my favorite newsletters.

00:54:32.400 Check it out.

00:54:32.940 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash ruck.

00:54:35.360 We find links to resources.

00:54:36.500 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:54:45.400 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:54:47.880 If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a beautiful podcast or Spotify.

00:54:51.720 It really helps out a lot.

00:54:52.660 And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:54:54.280 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think gets something out of it.

00:54:57.780 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:55:00.040 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:55:01.500 Remind you on the list of the AOM podcast, let's put what you've heard into action.

00:55:21.600 Hey, before you go, here's one more episode to consider.

00:55:24.440 In episode number 716, we dig into a paradox.

00:55:27.080 How do you make your life easier without becoming passive?

00:55:30.120 It's all about clearing friction, choosing your battles wisely, and crafting habits that help you move forward with less drag.

00:55:35.820 You can find it at aom.is slash effortless.

00:55:38.760 That's aom.is slash effortless.

00:55:40.900 A lot of great actionable insights in this episode.

00:55:42.800 Check it out today.

The Art of Manliness - February 24, 2026

Born to Carry — How to Build Strength, Stamina, and Sanity Through Rucking

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