As a lover of food, I need regular exercise to stay on top of my weight. But this has been an ongoing challenge throughout my life, finding that my dedication to exercise fluctuates, along with my weight. I enjoy exercise and the feeling it gives me, it’s just I like curry and cake too.
I first got into walking with a weighted rucksack about 10 years ago, before I knew that Rucking was even a thing. This was a solo-affair and involved me walking the streets in the evening after I had finished work. Steadily increasing the weight and varying the distance and weight of the walks was having a positive effect on my both physically and mentally. Again, this lasted about 3 or 4 months before the habit waned.
The next time I started rucking was with Marcus, in the summer of 2021, as we were coming out of the second lockdown. As well as dealing with the challenges and limitations of working from home, weekly banana bread, I was half-way through studying for a business degree. I was the heaviest I had ever been, my sleep patterns were all over the place, and I felt terrible. Initially, we started out just walking the dogs in the local park, but Marcus was keen for us to up our game, so we started taking a weighted rucksack on our walks, twice a week.
It really helps having a commitment to meet someone when the alarm goes off at 5.45am and it is wet and cold outside, but in the months leading up to Christmas 2021, we didn’t miss one session. We also had a goal now. To do a walk with 30KG by the 24th of December. As we gradually increased the weight, we were outgrowing our standard rucksacks, so started testing out the variety of kit available on the market, including waterproof clothing and headtorches for those winter mornings. The variety of conversation was broad, but often we would talk about work, family, and personal goals, especially as our 40th Birthdays were now a distant blur in the rear-view mirror. This was where the idea of RUCK-X was first born-out. We both recognised the benefit we were having from the exercise, but equally from the time spent outdoors and from just having a bit of a moan to a friend. We recognise that many people don’t prioritise this, and that over 40s men are probably the worst of all at just carrying on regardless.
Week by week we added 1 or 2 kilos to the rucksacks, this way you don’t really notice the increase. That is, until you start going over 15KG, this is when you can really start to feel your core engage and the physical exertion from our 60-minute walks. At this point, around October, we trialled our first weighted vest, which helped us reach the 20KG mark in a matter of weeks due to better distribution of weight across the body. I felt a bit stupid walking around looking a bit like a security guard, but this is when I started to notice that I was in better shape and my sleep had improved, so I just cracked on. I also was eating more sensible and was adding different workouts into my week, such as strength training with dumbbells.
As we got closer and closer to the goal, we had to be mindful of stability and the risk of injury on the uneven and slippy surfaces in the park, especially if you fall with an extra 25KG on your back. We adjusted the walk to stick to paths. We were clearly getting stronger week by week, but one hill at the end of the walk was when the conversation often dried-up as we concentrated on powering through to the end.
We ended up hitting the 30KG goal ahead of time, one morning in December we decided to go all in. You certainly know about carrying that kind of weight, but through consistent and gradual increases in weight over time, it was not the impossibility it had seemed months before. We were stronger, fitter, lighter, with me personally losing over 1 stone in weight and dropping body weight percentage by 10%.
I still ruck twice a week, but I now incorporate additional workouts into my week, such as weight-training and swimming. I don’t always walk with 30KG every time, preferring to increase and decrease the weight I carry, whilst adjusting the pace or distance of the walks, or adding squats, lunges, and step-ups for a bit more intensity.
