This is a guest post from Michael Denmon. Michael is a Dad who is working on being a better man, one project at a time. Catch up with his latest attempts at Dad Level Viking.
If you had told me ten years ago that I would be writing about rucking, I would have asked you what rucking was. When you told me that rucking is walking a variable distance at a non-prescribed speed with weight inside a backpack strapped onto my back, I would have told you that I had already done that when I lived in Australia. It was called walking home from work. Plus, I had to watch out for trams.
In its most simple form, rucking is simply walking with weight in a backpack for exercise. Your own physical fitness level determines what speeds you advance at and what weight you start out with. For some of us, walking for 6 miles with 30 pounds of weight is challenging enough. For others, 24-hour “forced” marches with heavy loads and bonus torture activities defined as exercise are what get their competitive juices flowing. There are a million different variables that can be added or subtracted to fit your own needs, and that is why I encourage you to learn more about a simple activity that can change your life. The rucking movement is filled with lovable and eccentric weirdos, so keep an open mind and do what fits your own needs best.
Solo Experience
When I first heard about rucking what attracted me was the simplicity: no trainer, no gym membership. Just me and some gear: a backpack (procured easily enough from Amazon) and some weight (paver stones from Home Depot). I woke up the next morning at 5:00 A.M., laced up my sneakers, shouldered my backpack (AKA my ruck), and walked out the door for my first five-mile ruck. After trudging half a mile from my home, it started raining. I returned to my front doorstep shortly thereafter dripping with sweat, rain, and humility.
If I had been in a group, I might have quit right then. But as a solo-rucker, I didn’t have to be ashamed of my misjudgment of the distance and my own stamina. So the next morning I went again. And then the next day. And the day after that. I stopped worrying about what I couldn’t do and focused on what I could. In a gym, one of the scariest things for a newbie is being embarrassed in front of others. Rucking by yourself removes that concern. You can publicize your ability as little or as much as you want. It doesn’t matter either way. The only person to be bashful in front of is yourself. For someone starting down the path of regular exercise, the first step is always the hardest. Taking that first step alone was actually liberating for me.
Community of Weirdos
The solo pursuit of rucking glory is great but can get lonesome. You can only regale your uninterested friends so many times about an amazing rucking story or gear set-up before they start dodging your phone calls and DMs. In a niche community like rucking or CrossFit, we like to tell everyone we know about the benefits of what we do.
Eventually, you may start to desire a community of people to ruck with and learn from. The external challenge and camaraderie that come from being a part of a rucking group make you feel a little less like an outcast in your own life. The power of community is amazing and you will begin to feel like you are a part of something that could be life-changing. Amongst your peers, you can share your successes and failures in rucking and be lovingly teased for both. The only egregious sin for the rucking community is quitting on yourself, but even it can be forgiven with the proper penance of getting back after it.
So Many Activities
Eventually, your group of rucking cohorts will talk you into some form of an event. These events can vary from benign and simple group rucks, or they can be as extreme as 48-hour events in sand and surf that will test your ability to prove your own mettle amongst a group of other amazing people while being berated and mentally toyed with from true-life badasses. In other words, “fun.”
As a participant in an event you will gain the lessons of giving back to others, leadership, and how to overcome your own self-doubt when things get difficult. As a solo-rucker, you tend to focus on your stats of total miles rucked, pace, and weight carried. The improvements, no matter how small, are what bring you joy. As a member of a rucking group, you will learn to focus as much on building up others as much as your own self. Seeing the strength in others and encouraging it becomes your purpose. As a participant in an event, you will learn to focus on something bigger than yourself or your team. You will see purpose in sweating it out on a beach or crawling through the muck by building resilience and self-assuredness that translates quite beautifully to life without a ruck on.
Rucking for fun is a possibility. You will have laughs, overcome tough obstacles, and enjoy the feel of your ruck’s straps digging into your shoulders from the steel plates you carry for “fun”. You will learn to wrap your paver stones in multiple layers of duct tape to protect your bag from sharp edges, and then question what you will say if stopped by the police carrying literal bricks wrapped in tape and generally weighing around one kilo per piece. You will meet people who inspire you through their work ethic. You will alienate some friends on Facebook due to your posts about rucking. More important than fun, however, are the gains you will make for yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually, all from a backpack with some weight and shared endured misery for the greater good of self-improvement.
Toasting to friends with a post-ruck beer while experiencing the pillowy luxuriousness of open-toed flip flops, post-12-mile ruck, is pretty fun too, though.
