← The Art of Manliness
The Art of Manliness
Born to Carry — How to Build Strength, Stamina, and Sanity Through Rucking
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- [00:00]
Brett McKay
If you ever started something from scratch, a business, a podcast, a side project, you remember that moment right before you launch when the doubts start stacking up. So this is a good idea. What if no one buys anything? I remember that feeling well. When I started the Art of Manliness, I didn't have some grand plan. I just decided to take the leap and figure things out as I went. And it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made when it comes to actually running a business, especially selling things. The platform that we've used and I recommend is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and and about 10% of all E commerce in the United States, from big household names to brands just getting started. I've used it myself from the AOM store and it made it possible to build a professional online shop without hiring a developer. Shopify gives you hundreds of great looking templates, built in tools to help with product descriptions and photos, and an all in one system for payments, inventory and analytics so you're not juggling a dozen different platforms. As your business grows, Shopify grows with you. If you've been sitting on an idea waiting for the right time, this this is it. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.commanliness. that's shopify.commanliness this episode is brought to
- [01:05]
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- [01:35]
Brett McKay
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. The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, process, word and deed. Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliest.com, read the deeper dives we do in our substack newsletter@dyingbreed.net and turn our content into real world action by joining the strenuous Life program@strenuouslife.com now on to the show. 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. Rucking is simple. Throw some weight on your back and start walking. But a little context and a few key tips can make it a safer, more effective, and more satisfying experience. Here to unpack those principles and practicals is Michael Easter, author of Walk with the Definitive Guide to Rucking. Michael and I first explored the evolutionary military history of carrying load. We then dive into why rucking is perhaps the most successful form of training for strength and skill. Amna and such an effective tool for alleviating back pain, building bone health, and fostering fat loss. We get into using a backpack versus a weighted vest, how much weight you should carry, and how you can get started today with stuff you probably already got lying around. After the show's over, check out our shownotes at AOM is ruck. All right, Michael Easter, welcome back to the show.
- [03:18]
Michael Easter
Thanks for having me back, man. I'm excited to be here.
- [03:20]
Brett McKay
So you got a new book out called Walk with the Definitive Guide to Rucking. For those who aren't familiar with rucking, you've become kind of the evangelist, the Paul, the apostle of rucking. For those who aren't familiar with the activity, what is rucking?
- [03:34]
Michael Easter
That's a fine distinction. The evangelist of rucking. I like that simplest way to put it is rucking is just throwing some weight in a backpack and going for a walk. 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. That's it. Pretty simple.
- [03:55]
Brett McKay
That's pretty simple. But there's more to it than that, as we'll see in this conversation. But how did you discover rocking?
- [04:01]
Michael Easter
So my background is I was a editor at Men's Health magazine for about seven years. And so I'm always in that role looking for fitness trends coming out. And rucking had sort of popped up as this kind of interesting thing that was tied to the military. 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. And for that book, I spent about a month up in the Arctic, and we were on this caribou hunt. So took us about Two weeks to finally hunt a caribou and then we had to pack it out. 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. So we're the only mammal that can carry weight for distance. And I've always been really interested in how can the things that shaped us as humans in the past, how can they still help us today? So that sort of set off the idea that it's like packing out 120 some odd pounds of caribou across this freezing tundra. That's terrible to walk on.
- [05:11]
Brett McKay
How long ago was that? Was that about 2019? 2018?
- [05:15]
Michael Easter
Yeah, that was the fall of 2019.
- [05:17]
Brett McKay
So I remember I. I'm a rucker. I love rucking. I do about once a week. I discovered it back in 2012 because the founders of Huckberry, Andy and Richard, they introduced me to the founder of Goruck at the time. Huckberry started doing some partnerships with goruck.
- [05:34]
Michael Easter
Yeah.
- [05:34]
Brett McKay
And what's the name of the founder? We've had him on the podcast. Jason McCarthy, Jason McCarty. He invited me to do a Goruck tough.
- [05:41]
Michael Easter
Nice.
- [05:42]
Brett McKay
I never heard of this. And I was like, okay, why not? So I got a rucksack, started training for it, and I did the Goruck tough with my brother in Oklahoma City in November, I think 2012. It was cold. I remember it was like 30 degrees. And if you've done a. Have you done a Goruck tough or would go.
- [05:59]
Michael Easter
Is that the 12 hour one?
- [06:00]
Brett McKay
Yeah, the 12 hour one, yeah.
- [06:01]
Michael Easter
So I've done a tough and a heavy. I did a tough. Wow. I did a tough in Providence in probably about the same time you did. Yeah, maybe 2012. And that was for a mental story. And then I ended up doing a 24 hour one and maybe 2013 or 14 or something like that. So yeah, that was a good introduction.
- [06:23]
Brett McKay
Yeah, that was my introduction to rucking because, I mean, for those who aren't familiar with the tough events, it's all night, it's 12 hours. You got a rucksack on with I think 40 pounds of weight. I think 30 pounds of weight. And then you get there and you do these like calisthenics, bear crawls, push ups. You're carrying people around and then they get you wet. The first thing they found a pond and it's like, get in the pond. And it was 30 degrees. And so the rest of the night you're just cold and Wet, and you're carrying logs. It was brutal. I've done a few other events since then. Been a while since I've done one, but I still rock. I caught the bug and I just enjoy it. We're going to talk about why I enjoy it and why I think it's so great and why you think it's so great, because I think you did a really good job capturing it in this book. So people have probably heard the idea that humans were born to run, but you argue that they were really born to carry. So you kind of alluded to it a little bit in your answer previously. But what's the history of humans carrying stuff?
- [07:19]
Michael Easter
Yeah. So, I mean, for some Context, there's this 2004 paper that came out from a guy from Harvard whose name is Daniel Lieberman, and he basically argued that if you look at the way the human body is built, the way it is, you know, we stand on two feet, we sweat, we don't have much hair. One of the reasons for that is that we evolved to run long distances in order to hunt prey. So most other animals can't cool themselves in the heat. And so if you get them running in the heat, they're eventually going to tire. We don't overheat when it's hot out and we're running. So we would use that to our advantage. We'd run like 10 miles chasing an animal. Eventually, it would get too hot, it would topple over, we would spear it or whatever, and then we would successfully complete this hunt. Now, what got lost in that, though, and this is kind of the realization that I had when I was hunting up in the Arctic, is what happens after you have killed the animal and you're 10 miles from camp. You got to carry that thing back. Right. And if you look at us compared to many other animals, pretty much every animal can run, but we're the only animal that can pick up weight and carry it a long distance across the Earth. And that was only in the context of hunting. Right. If you look at what humans sort of evolved doing every single day, we were carrying all the time. We're hunters and gatherers, and gathering is simply an act of walking around, finding food. You pick it up, you carry it, you gather more. We also had to carry our children, and that really shaped us as a species. So once we started walking on two feet, this was about 6 million years ago, by the way. Once we start walking on two feet, it all of a sudden frees our hands. And once our hands are free, we can use Them to manipulate the world. We can use them to carry tools into the unknown. We can do all these really interesting things with them that allows us to eventually take over the world, and that makes us really unique and explains why we are doing this over the Internet in these lovely built houses. As you know, my dog hasn't evolved much more than just, you know, sitting around begging for treats.
- [09:29]
Brett McKay
All right. So carrying stuff really opened things up for us as a species. And you also get into the history of rucking. So it seems like the first carrying devices that we would think of as backpacks started with mothers who use them to carry their kids. And that freed up their hands for doing other things. And then a lot of the development in the practice of humans carrying cargo on their backs happen in the military. So rucking. This idea of rucking, it comes from the military. Rucking is a military phrase. Talk about the history of soldiers in war carrying load in order to do what they do.
- [10:01]
Michael Easter
Yeah. When it comes to warfare, especially for most of history, these soldiers were having to take equipment really long distances by marching it. 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. And a lot of this gear was very heavy loads. In the past, you know, a couple thousand years ago, they might range from 35 pounds all the way up to 85 pounds. 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. Like, if you look at how military units throughout the world have trained, the foundation has always been marching with weight, and it still is.
- [10:50]
Brett McKay
Yeah. I mean, you talk about a manual written by a Roman guy where he talks about how to train a soldier. And one of those training exercises was you had to just carry load for distance as much as possible.
- [11:04]
Michael Easter
Yeah, that was basically it. 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. It could be, hey, you have to be able to walk 12 miles with, say, £50 in x amount of hours or whatever it might be. And these tests, they all sort of varied throughout different places, different military units, and different periods of time. But they all are fundamentally based around, can you carry x load for y distance in Z time?
- [11:38]
Brett McKay
Yeah. You have some examples from history. So the Macedonian soldiers, Alexander the Great's soldiers, they marched to battle carrying about 80 pounds, a Greek hoplite, 50 pounds of gear in armor. And even, like, their armor was just heavy. 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. Like, man, that's got to be exhausting.
- [12:04]
Michael Easter
Oh, yeah. And I will also add, what makes I think this even more amazing is that, I mean, those loads are heavy for anyone today. But when you look at the average size of men back then, they were far smaller than we are today. Like, the average American man right now weighs about 200 pounds. And back then, they would weigh, say, about 140 pounds. So if you're carrying 85 pounds and you weigh 140 pounds, that's like a average guy today carrying, say, around 120 pounds. So these are not insignificant loads. I mean, these. These guys were unbelievably fit, and they
- [12:40]
Brett McKay
were doing it for long distances and sometimes really fast. Like, after the Battle of Marathon, the Athenian army marched 25 miles back to Athens to head off the Persians. And they got there pretty fast. And they were carrying their gear.
- [12:53]
Michael Easter
Yeah, I mean, it'll definitely make you feel a little bit soft when you start reading about these soldiers of the past. 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, we would have made lighter gear, things would have become lighter, easier to carry. That's not actually what happened. So some of our gear did become lighter, but we started adding more and more gear. So by the time we were In World War II, Vietnam, even the Iraq war, the loads that the average American soldier was carrying were around £100. So we've kind of just ramped up the weight over time. That said, those soldiers were bigger, but these weights have just kind of gone up over time.
- [13:40]
Brett McKay
Yeah. 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.
- [13:50]
Michael Easter
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:51]
Brett McKay
So the military rucking has been a big part of their training. What has the military learned about walking with weight that has carried over into civilian life? Like, what have we learned about the science of walking with weight from the military?
- [14:08]
Michael Easter
I think that there's been some good and some bad. So I'm going to start with the good. Always give the hug first. Right. 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. 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, you can't move as quick. 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. 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. So going over that, if you go over 130 of body weight, so if you weigh 200 pounds, that's why am I doing math here, I'm a writer. £66, we'll call it that if you go over that, injury risk rises, you don't move as well. So there was this push to try to lighten soldiers loads, but of course, the sort of industrial, military industrial complex of, hey, you need more gear sort of won out. We didn't quite meet that. But that said, I think it gives the average person a good marker to know, hey, you should probably never go above this weight. 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. Now let me touch on the bad. 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. But remember, humans evolved to care. I mean, this is like a fundamentally human act we've been doing very, very long before we had militaries. And so when rucking becomes popular, people look up rucking and they start to look at, okay, well, how much weight are soldiers carrying? But you got to remember, soldiers are carrying these massive weights because their mission is to win a war, whereas the average person, you're not going into warfare, you're just trying to improve your health and fitness. And so a lighter load is going to be a lot more appropriate. And I think it pushed some people into using maybe a little too heavy a weight at first.
- [16:27]
Brett McKay
Do you have any idea when rucking started becoming a civilian fitness activity? Were you able to figure out the evolution of that?
- [16:36]
Michael Easter
That's a good question. I mean, I think you had soldiers come back from the military, some groups of veterans were doing it. Those that hadn't been too scarred by the 100 mile rock marches they had to do in training. I Think you had some brands sort of pop up, like goruck, that started to put it on people's radar. I think probably the rise of it being popular today. I think my book the Comfort Crisis helped with that a little bit. 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. 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.
- [17:25]
Brett McKay
Yeah, because I see it often. I see it more often when I'm in my neighborhood. I see women might not have a weighted backpack on, but just like a weighted vest on. And you didn't see that five years ago.
- [17:35]
Michael Easter
Totally. Yeah. Those have become. The weighted vest phenomenon has become really popular. It's a great thing.
- [17:41]
Brett McKay
Well, let's talk about why rucking's so great for health and longevity. You start off in the book, in this section talking about why rucking is a great activity for weight loss. So why is rucking a great activity for weight loss?
- [17:55]
Michael Easter
Yeah. Simplest way to. To think about it is that rucking combines strength and cardio. So you're getting a strength stimulus because you're carrying weight, and your muscles have to work harder to carry that weight. Now, because you are also walking, that's an endurance activity. So you're getting endurance. So by mixing those two things, you see that from a per mile perspective, rucking burns more calories than walking or running alone. And so you kind of get more bang for your buck. 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. 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, but anywhere from 20 to about 200% more calories compared to walking or running. And again, it really kind of depends. Of course, the heavier you're using, the crazier the terrain, the more calorie burn you're going to get.
- [18:55]
Brett McKay
So it's a lot of bang for your buck in terms of calorie burn.
- [18:58]
Michael Easter
Yeah, tons of bang for your buck.
- [18:59]
Brett McKay
Yeah.
- [19:00]
Michael Easter
And one thing I would point out too, is that it seems to be uniquely good for fat loss. So there's some interesting studies. There's this one on this group of backcountry hunters. And what scientists did is they took this group of hunters, measured their body fat percentage, took a bunch of other health measurements, whatever. Then these guys went out and they did. I believe it was a 12 day hunt. So when you're doing a backcountry hunt, you have this heavy backpack full of all your gear. You're also not packing in a ton of food because food is heavy. So you're generally undereating, which sort of simulates the exact same thing that people do when they're trying to lose weight. You want to move more, you want to eat less. Now, when most people lose weight, you lose a mix of fat, yes, but also muscle. 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, it's going to be better for your metabolism, on and on and on. 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. And the entirety of that loss came from fat, which is really surprising. So they hadn't lost any muscle, and in fact they had gained a slight amount. It was insignificant, but it was still a slight amount, which really shows us rucking can be great for fat loss. And I think the reason for that is rather simple. 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. So it almost triggers your body, like, hey, we actually need our muscles here. But you're also pairing cardio, which is generally a much better calorie burner than lifting alone. So it's almost like it preferentially shifts what you're burning to fat.
- [20:49]
Brett McKay
That's interesting. 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, and that determines how many calories you burn. So you know, if you weigh 220 pounds, that requires a certain number of calories to maintain. But if you lose 20 pounds, now you're 200 pounds, your body is going to burn less calories. 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 20 pounds and your body's still going to think it's 220, and then you'll burn calories as if it were 220. And it's not just because you burn more calories, because it takes more effort to move, but. But it's because it senses your body weighs more. Have you heard about that research?
- [21:38]
Michael Easter
Yeah, I think it's new. It's definitely emerging, but it's really interesting. So it's called the Gravitostat hypothesis. And they think effectively what happens is your bones sort of do some signaling. And so when you have that load on your body, your bones don't necessarily know where it's coming from. 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.
- [22:06]
Brett McKay
Well, speaking of bones, rucking is also good for our bones. How is rucking good for your bones?
- [22:11]
Michael Easter
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? But the reason this is important is because as you age, your bones start to lose density. Now, this is generally talked about from a female perspective because it happens more often in women. But that said, doctors are finding more and more men facing an issue with bone density. And the reason for that is because as a society, we've generally become a lot more sedentary. And so your bones need impact and loading in order to maintain and even improve their density. So rucking gives you this ability to load your bones for quite a long time, much longer than lifting, because the average set of lifting exercise is going to be, I don't know, 20, 30 seconds. So you can load your bones for about an hour, get those impact on them, 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 the worst thing that can happen. 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, and then everything goes downhill.
- [23:27]
Brett McKay
All right. So, yeah, rucking is great for strengthening bones. You'd 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. Walk us through that.
- [23:43]
Michael Easter
Yeah, I think people definitely find that counterintuitive. I did. But what happens is there's some military research about this. When you have the weight on your back, you would think your back starts to work much harder. That's not actually the case. Your back muscles actually end up working less when you have a weight on your Back. And so then the question is, okay, well, what's keeping me upright? What happens is that your core actually picks up all of that slack, so your core ends up working a lot harder. 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. Like, this is one of the most common pains. The reason is because people's cores are so weak. So your core is really built to sort of stabilize your spine if you have to pick anything up or move a certain way. 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. Your core is not strong enough to protect your spine, and then you get a problem. 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. Now, that said, you should do those too. I wouldn't discourage you from any form of exercise, but rucking really allows you to strengthen your core. And there's also a researcher up in Canada. He's kind of considered the world's foremost back health expert. 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. It also sort of decompresses their spine, like, allows their spine to get some light motion in, and that tends to do some good things for your back.
- [25:22]
Brett McKay
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- [28:26]
Brett McKay
And now back to the show. Okay, so rucking, great for weight loss, especially fat loss, because you're burning more calories, you're maintaining muscle as you do the ruck. It's great for your bones, it's great for back pain. Another thing you talk about, another health benefit of rucking, is that it gets you outside and is social. What are the health benefits of being outside and doing this with other people?
- [28:49]
Michael Easter
Oh, man. Well, the health benefits of being outside. Now, I had a chapter about this in the Comfort Crisis. And when I first started hearing people say, oh, being outside is good for your health, it's good for your mental health, I was kind of like, eh, that's some kind of hippie nonsense. But then I looked into the research and it goes all the way back to the 80s. So we're talking like four decades of research 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, and it also actually boosts a lot of physical health markers. So time in the outdoors has been shown to lower blood sugar. All these different good things for your health. 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. So let's say you and I go for a run and let's say that you're a way better runner than me.
- [29:49]
Brett McKay
I'm not.
- [29:50]
Michael Easter
Okay, let's say I'm a way better runner than you. Yes, we'll go with that then. If you and I are going to go for a run and try and have a conversation. 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. And that's really not going to give me that much. Like, I'm really going to be sort of held back. Right. On the opposite coin, if, if I go, all right, I'm setting the tempo of this run, you're going to be dragging behind. Like, this sucks. I hate this. We're not going to be able to talk at all. So it's hard to sort of get into a deep conversation. You can run together but you're not really going to talk. Whereas with rucking, I'll give you the benefit here. Let's say you're a way better rucker than me and you can carry more weight. Well, you can Simply carry, say, 45 pounds and get a great workout and walk. And I can just carry, say £30 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. And when you look at research about when do humans have the best conversations, how do we connect? For men in particular, 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. And so rucking really allows us to capture that you get in a good workout, but you're able to really talk about things with people, connect with people, and that just makes it really sort of universal. So another example is I'm not going to go for a run with my mother, right? She's 75 years old. But I could say, hey, mom, do you want to go ruck together? I could take £35, she could take like £5 and we'd be able to do that activity, get in a good workout, but have a conversation. So I think that makes it really social. And then you pair that with the fact that we're outside. That has all those benefits. It makes it really powerful and accessible for people.
- [31:39]
Brett McKay
So going back to what we talked about earlier, how rucking grew out of the military, and. And sometimes there's good lessons and parallels we can draw from military rucking to civilian rucking, and sometimes there's not. Whenever we've posted about rucking on the site, military guys will often chime in and say, oh, rucking, that destroyed my joints. It destroyed my body. Don't ruck. So is rucking safe?
- [32:03]
Michael Easter
The short answer is yes. When I released the Comfort Crisis, I got a few emails from military guys like that saying that I didn't know what I was talking about because rucking hurt their knees or their back. But you have to ask, what kind of loads is the military carrying? Like I said before, they're carrying really heavy loads because the mission is the war. For the average person, you don't need to carry that much weight. You can just carry, say, anywhere from 5 to 20% of your body weight. And it is really, really safe. So the injury rate for rucking is pretty close to that of walking. And the injury rate for walking is only 1%. Now the rate goes up the more weight you Add, but you don't have to add a lot of weight to get a really massive benefit. So what was interesting too is that after the comfort crisis has been out for a while, it touches on rucking. I got follow up emails from military guys who said, you know, I was skeptical about that rucking thing because the military just made me hate it and it injured me. But once I lightened the load, it totally improved my fitness. I didn't have any injuries. I was able to lose weight, to lose fat. I improved my endurance, I improved my body composition. And it also sort of, they said, returned them to the roots of the military in a way that kind of made them feel good. Like, okay, I'm back at it. So long story short is if you're not using crazy military loads, you probably won't get hurt. Rocking. Yeah.
- [33:33]
Brett McKay
And I like rucking for cardio because people typically think when I got to do cardio I got to run. But running can beat up your joints. The injury rate for longdistance running is like 20 to 70%, just depending. And it's usually joint pain, like you have something wrong with your knee or something like that. Cuz like the impact every time you hit the ground, it's really hard rucking, you don't have that issue. So you get a good cardio workout without the stress on your, your joints. Again, if you're keeping the weight reasonable.
- [34:03]
Michael Easter
Yeah, exactly. I mean, how many people do you know that say they've been hurt by running? Probably any runner you've ever talked to. Running it takes a toll on your body. I mean, it's good for us, I think sometimes it's like you learn from your injuries, you clean up your form, good things happen. But just from a general population health perspective, my opinion is that if you can choose activities that are going to, that have a lower risk of injuring you, you should probably do those. Because what happens when people get injured is that they tend to stop exercising at all. And then when they stop exercising, all their health markers go down. Mental health goes down. A lot of bad things happen. So for me it's just thinking about what is the activity that I not only enjoy, but that I can also continue to do for decades without worrying that I'm eventually going to blow out a knee or whatever it is and then be sidelined for a really long time.
- [34:56]
Brett McKay
Yeah, I call rucking cardio for the man who hates cardio.
- [34:59]
Michael Easter
Yeah, it's a good tagline. I should have put that in the book. Should have consulted you.
- [35:03]
Brett McKay
And it's funny Whenever I've introduced rucking to guys, like, I never done cardio, but once I learned about rucking, like, it's changed. I do it all the time and they just love it. So I'm a big again, I'm a big booster of rucking. That's why I have you on the podcast to talk about rucking. So let's talk about how to get started with rucking. For those who haven't done it before, there are lots of different options these days for carrying weight. You backpack, there's special ruck sacks, now there's weighted vests. What do you think is the best option for someone who's starting out for the device they use to carry the weight?
- [35:37]
Michael Easter
So I think for most people starting out, I just try and make it as simple as possible. Find a backpack you have in your house. Could be, you know, backpack you used in college, could be one you use for travel. Could be, you know, a pack you bought for a hike, fill it with something that weighs something and go out and walk. Like it's that simple to begin. You just have to begin. Because I think oftentimes people get paralysis by analysis when it comes to gear. It's like, well, should I have this one or this one? And what equipment do I need to buy? It's like, no, this is just so accessible. Like, make it that way. And people might often find like, okay, I really love this thing, great. I want to invest in some, you know, proper rocking, specific gear. And if that's you, then I think that can be a good way to find a pack that maybe fits you better, that handles the load more appropriately. But it really can be as simple as just like find a backpack and go out for a walk, throw some stuff in it that weighs something.
- [36:35]
Brett McKay
Are there any benefits to the weighted vest? You know, again, we've, we've been seeing those more often.
- [36:40]
Michael Easter
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There are. The book gets into sort of the nuances between packs and vests, and it says, for what circumstances might one be more appropriate than the other? My message is generally that you walk with weight matters a lot more than how you walk with weight. So both are beneficial, both have their nuances. But when you're just starting, I just tell people, don't overthink it, just start. If you want to get a weight vest, get it. It also means you're going to have to invest a bit more money. It's also a very sort of hyper specific contraption. Whereas like a backpack, you can use that for travel too. It doubles for all These different things.
- [37:22]
Brett McKay
Yeah. I've tried both the vest and the backpack. The weight vest does distribute the weight more and it keeps the weight high and tight. But I don't think it's as comfortable as a backpack because you've got the weight on the back and on the front. Just having that weight on your chest, it makes it hard to breathe. And you talk about this in the book. One of the benefits of the backpack, when you have the weight just on your back, you can lean into it. Right. And it makes it a little bit more comfortable. With the weighted vest, it's just pulling you down to the center of the earth and that. That gets uncomfortable.
- [37:55]
Michael Easter
Yeah. So I think for most people, most of the time, a backpack is the answer. I'll get into a couple points. So the one you made, when you have a weight vest, you've got weight on the front, especially if it's these military style vests that almost look like bulletproof vests.
- [38:10]
Brett McKay
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Michael Easter
When you have weight sitting on your chest, that can make it hard to breathe, especially if it's a heavy load. So now it becomes harder to breathe as you're doing cardio. That sucks. Number two is that those get really hot if it's the summer because your sweat can't evaporate because you're sort of enveloped by this thing. The second point that you made is, and this kind of applies more to longer distances and heavier loads. But I'll give you an extreme circumstance so people can understand it. It's like if you got £300 and you put it in a backpack and put it on someone, say some random guy, chances are it would of course be uncomfortable. It would be too heavy, but it would still be able to stand because when the weight is at your back, you can kind of lean in and you have something to resist against that sort of balances you. Now, if you take that same £300 in the form of a weight vest and strap it on someone, they're probably going to collapse. And that's simply because there's nothing to really lean into, to resist against. It just sort of covers you like this super heavy blanket and you fall. Now, of course, most people aren't using insane loads, but that begins to matter at sort of everyday loads when you're going across a long distance. So if you get really tired and your sort of form starts to falter, with a vest, you've got nowhere to go to sort of maintain proper form. Whereas with a pack, you know, just to kind of lean forward and you'll be Able to maintain proper form. And a good case study of this is through hikers. So backpackers who do, you know, month long hikes where they're hiking every day. Now, those people could figure out some way to have a contraption that keeps their gear on their front and their back. But no one actually does that. Every single person uses backpacks. And that's simply because when you're covering long distances and a lot of miles, the backpack just becomes way more comfortable, keeps your form better, leads to fewer issues. And so for me, that's kind of the answer there. And then I'll add one more thing, is that the vests, especially the military style ones, you kind of look like you're gonna maybe throw a coup against your hoa as you're walking through the neighborhood. You know, it's just like, what is this dude wearing a bulletproof vest? Should I be concerned? What's going on here? Just sort of a weird look. Whereas a backpack, it's like, you know, people wear backpacks all the time in all different public places. Pretty normal.
- [40:42]
Brett McKay
All right, so go, just go with backpack. Make it simple if you're getting started.
- [40:45]
Michael Easter
Yeah.
- [40:45]
Brett McKay
So let's talk about weight. When you're first starting out, how much weight should you start off with? So, you know, we learn from the military, you don't want to go above a third of your body weight. When you're first starting out, what weight should you pick?
- [40:56]
Michael Easter
I mean, I tell people a go to is 10% of your body weight. Some people might find that too light at first, but I would rather you start light than start super heavy and get out there and go, oh, my God, this is the worst thing I've ever done. I don't ever want to do this again because you can always add weight later on. And that allows you to get your body used to it, to sort of build up some fitness, and then you can just sort of add from there. I realize this is called the art of manliness, but I'll point out two things, differences between men and women with the starting. So I think women will sometimes start too light. They might only use, say, five pounds and it's a little too easy. So I would encourage women, you know, you want it to be uncomfortable, shouldn't feel soul crushing. But like, don't be afraid to use, you know, 15 pounds instead of 10. With men, we tend to have the opposite problem where we, you know, go online and look at photos of Navy seals and think, you know, I'm just going to load this sucker up. I would Discourage that at first. I think you want to kind of build a base where you're used to it. You want some muscles that have been underused to sort of develop, and then you can start adding some weight from there. Gotcha.
- [42:06]
Brett McKay
And for weight, there's all sorts of different options. It can be as easy as when I first started rucking. I just used a bunch of bricks, tape, tape together. That was it. It was pretty rudimentary. But you could use books, you could use a milk jug filled with water. Or then you can get as fancy with like, the ruck plates that they have available.
- [42:25]
Michael Easter
Yeah, there's a lot of options. I think your milk jug idea is really good. And the reason I like that is because if you get out on your initial rucks and you're like, oh, I'm starting to fade and I still have, you know, three miles to get home, you can always just dump out the water and you'll be fine. So that makes it rather accessible. Things like sandbags can also be good because you can kind of find the right weight. It also sort of molds to the bag nicely. Bags of rice, some people will use dumbbells. If you use a dumbbell, I would suggest you wrap it in a towel so you don't have this steel weight digging into your back the whole time, which can be uncomfortable. But really, just get creative. Like, the thing just has to weigh something. When you load it, you want it tight to your back and you're good to go.
- [43:10]
Brett McKay
Yeah. So besides having it tight to your back, is there placement that's better for comfort, like up high, in the middle, low. What should people think about there as far as comfort and avoiding injuries?
- [43:22]
Michael Easter
Yeah, I think generally, if you can have the weight higher, do. That's not always easy to do or practical if you're just kind of using random stuff you find around the house. I mean, one way to fix that is to put maybe like a, you know, a little cardboard box or something at the bottom of your.
- [43:38]
Brett McKay
Or towel.
- [43:40]
Michael Easter
Towel. So it elevates the weight. And then do keep it close to your back. You also want it secure. You don't want the weight sort of flopping around every step because that can just kind of alter your. Your walking patterns. So tight to your back, secure. A little bit higher if you can get it higher, and then just go out and walk.
- [43:56]
Brett McKay
And then when you first start out, how long should a ruck be? Like, you start off with a mile, two miles. What are you looking at there?
- [44:03]
Michael Easter
I just tell people if you have a normal walking route in your neighborhood that you do, let's say your walk with your spouse after dinner is two miles. Just do that. It's a good way to start. I would discourage that phenomenon where we choose a new exercise and we decide to just go all in with crazy distances. Because pretty much with any exercise, doing too much too soon is the main driver of injuries. So it's like, yeah, just do your kind of normal walk and see how
- [44:32]
Brett McKay
it goes in terms of frequency. How often can you ruck without running into overuse injuries?
- [44:38]
Michael Easter
So I like to say that if humans couldn't carry every day, we would have died off as a species a very long time ago. But that said today, because we carry so infrequently, it might make sense to have a rest day between days that you ruck. But another option is to simply use more weight some days and less weight others. For me, I'm rucking nearly every day, and that's because I have to walk my dogs every day. So I just look at it as, look, I can get more from every step if I just throw this ruck on when I walk the dogs. And I've been totally fine. I mean, I'm not carrying crazy loads. I've just sort of found, okay, what's a good go to weight? And this is a recommendation for everyone. What's a weight that feels uncomfortable? You know, it's there, but it's also not soul crushing. And you feel like you could walk a really long distance with it without tapping out. So for me, that's about 35 pounds. That's what I wear when I'm walking my dogs. If I'm going a really long distance, let's say I'm doing a 12 mile walk, I might bump that down to say, 25, 20 pounds. But sometimes, like, if I'm training for a hunt or, you know, a big backpacking trip, I'll go heavier than 35. I'll use 45 or 50. 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. 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. That will get you ready for the mountains. And it's one that I love. And because you're on a treadmill, you don't have to worry as much about injury 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 on your back, well, now that ankle, that would have been a sort of minor little spring that can become a real problem. But with the treadmill, you don't really have to worry about curbs. You didn't see, crop in the road, things like that. And there's a little bit of give to the treadmill. So most people tend to not ever get injured doing that.
- [46:47]
Brett McKay
You know, you mentioned how you, you ruck whenever you walk your dog. That's something you talk about in the book, is that you can just ruck whenever. Like you don't have to make like rucking. Like I'm setting aside time for a ruck. You can just put on a ruck sack or a weighted vest when you're doing chores around the house. Like, I've done that. Like I'll do that every now and then. It's like, all right, we got a bunch of chores. Put on the weighted vest and make it a little bit harder. And yeah, it doesn't destroy you, it's a little bit harder. But after you're done, you're not like, oh boy, I'm beat. I need to. It's been a day recovering.
- [47:16]
Michael Easter
Yeah, exactly. For another book I'm working on, I had this really long thru hike through southern Utah. It took like 45 days. 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. And that really sort of slowly got my body ready to be able to carry that weight. And I'm burning more calories just doing my everyday tasks that I already had to do.
- [47:43]
Brett McKay
Have you noticed for people who are doing rucking as a civilian activity for fitness, are there common injuries you see with this population? And if so, what are some of the things you can do to mitigate those injuries?
- [47:57]
Michael Easter
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. And I think that's just because we rarely carry weight in backpacks anymore. So it's like you throw some weight on your shoulders, they're going, what the hell is this? We haven't done this since you were in high school. But that discomfort isn't necessarily injury. It's just your body saying, what the hell are we doing here? A way to fix that is pretty simple. It's to just do a dead hang from A pull up bar. So just hang like with your body slack, your arms totally straight for say 30, 60 seconds because the weight is pulling down on your shoulders that almost elongates them and that seems to sort of fix that over time. And eventually most people's shoulders adapt and it be it fixes the problem really quick. Another one is blisters. Anytime you start adding weight to your body now, there's more pressure on your feet and so blisters can definitely happen. My advice there is, if you get a hot spot, don't let it devolve into a crazy blister. Try and treat it. That's pretty easy. I mean a lot of it is just your feet need to get tougher over time. But just don't push yourself so far into the red that now we've got a real blister problem.
- [49:15]
Brett McKay
Going back to that dead hang. Even if you don't ruck. I recommend that for anybody. It's one of the best things I do for my shoulder. Especially if you're a bench presser. Shoulder presser, you know, you get really tight in your shoulders, you might have a shoulder impingement. Do the dead hang. Make it a regular part of your fitness activity. It'll help your shoulders out a ton.
- [49:36]
Michael Easter
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. And if you want to level it up, you can just do single arm hangs like as you progress. But I agree with you, that's something I try and do every single day, even for just 30 seconds.
- [49:49]
Brett McKay
So you're a big proponent of this thing called the 2% mindset. In fact, your substack is called 2%. What is the 2% mindset and how do you apply it to rucking?
- [49:59]
Michael Easter
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. 2%. 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. 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. So the 2% mindset, it's not really about the stairs though. In that study, to me it's like this overarching idea of being willing to embrace short term discomfort to get a long term benefit. So yes, it's the stairs, facing the discomfort of the stairs to get to that second floor instead of doing the easy thing. But you can apply that to so many different areas of your life. 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. 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. Like, to me, that feels like a massive win. It's like if you got to walk down to your mailbox, like in our neighborhood, our mailbox is set away. It's like a, you know, quarter mile away or whatever. If I could just throw a ruck on, I'm getting more from every step. And if I do that every single day that I get the mail, like that's going to add up a lot over time. If I'm vacuuming, throw on the ruck. If I'm doing a nightly walk with my kids or whatever, I'm going to throw on the ruck. 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? For example, my doctor, great dude, he started wearing a ruck as he was doing rounds. So he's literally walking around the hospital all day visiting patients and he just rolls in and consults with people and he's got this pack on and it's like, to me, that is awesome. Because he already has to do rounds, it's not impeding his ability to do his job in any way. 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. I think that one problem with the way that society views exercise is we view it as this separate, distinct thing from our normal lives. Right? It's like we got our 30 minutes in the gym where we run on a treadmill. It's a special little time. And then the other 23 hours and 30 minutes of the day were totally sedentary. But to me it's like, how can I just add more activity into my life? How can I make the things I already have to do a little bit harder so that I can live better?
- [52:55]
Brett McKay
Yeah. I love the whole idea of the 2% mindset, and I know I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but be a 2 percenter has become A motto in our family.
- [53:03]
Michael Easter
Awesome. I love it.
- [53:05]
Brett McKay
So whenever we're at the airport, especially, that's when you. You see stairs, because there's almost always stairs next to the escalator. And we tell our kids, okay, McKay's are 2 percenters. We're taking the stairs.
- [53:18]
Michael Easter
I love it.
- [53:19]
Brett McKay
Yeah. So let's say you've been rucking for a while and you want to challenge yourself. Any challenges you'd recommend for people to try out after they've been doing this for a while?
- [53:29]
Michael Easter
Yeah, 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. I've, of course, adapted them for the average person, so there's a big list there. But I think just, you know, it could be using a certain weight for a certain distance. 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. That gives me incentive to keep rucking all year, so I'm able to handle those loads when I go into the mountains. And that in itself is a good challenge. It's like, all right, we're going to try and do 20 miles a day. We got 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. And so I think 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.
- [54:29]
Brett McKay
I love it. Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
- [54:35]
Michael Easter
Probably the best place to find me is on my sub stack. It's called 2%, as we talked about. And the website is 2pctct.com There's a lot of rucking material on there. You can find links to the book on there. And the book is, of course, available at pretty much anywhere you buy books, which I think for the vast majority ofpeople is Amazon.com now, so.
- [54:55]
Brett McKay
Fantastic. Well, Michael Easter, thanks for time. It's been a pleasure.
- [54:57]
Michael Easter
Yeah, thanks a lot, man.
- [54:59]
Brett McKay
My guest today is Michael Easter. He's the author of the book Walk With Weight. It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can learn more information about his work at his website, 2%, and you can find that@TW O pct.comct.com it's a great substack. One of my favorite newsletters. Check it out. Also check out our show notes at AOM is Ruck where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
- [55:20]
Michael Easter
Foreign.
- [55:27]
Brett McKay
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIN podcast. If you haven't done so already. I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a podcast or Spotify. It really helps out a lot and if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time's Brett McKay remind list they win. Podcast with Poor Put what you've heard into action.
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