It's Rucking Good For You

I'm trying to up my cardio game this year. I'm playing a weekly 5-a-side game of football (soccer), and including some high-volume sets in my weight training. Together these could be classed as 4 "leg days", so I've been looking at options for additional cardio without adding high stress/fatigue, having already switched out a weight training session to accommodate the 5-a-side. My go-to for cardio is walking, so I've dusted off my rucking equipment, so at least one of my weekly walks has me carrying some added weight in a rucksack.

Comparison between my normal walk and a 10kg rucksack on the same 3m route:

	Walk	Ruck	(+ Change)
Calories (kcal)	382	538	(+41%)
Avg Heart Rate (bpm)	124	144	(+16%)
Max Heart Rate (bpm)	137	166	(+21%)
Duration (mins)	45	49	(+9%)

Take the calories with a pinch of salt as fitness trackers are generally nonsense, but the heart rate scores are fairly accurate and seem to confirm that this is significantly more of a cardio workout, whilst still retaining the low-impact benefits of walking. Over the coming weeks I'll be adding more weight, so will be interesting to see that impact on these metrics...

This does take me back to my original weight loss a number of years ago. To maintain my 1 stone monthly loss rate, I started going for 2 walks per day instead of 1, as effectively I went from a rucksack with 44kg in it to no rucksack at all - simple physics tells us it takes more energy to move more mass, and this helped make up for that lost calorie burn rate ( I did a lot of dumb things like this during that period). Now, I'd recommend that weight loss be driven solely by diet, and whatever influence exercise has on that is just a bonus - there can be enough of a swing in calories burned in moving the heavier version of yourself around, that the diet at the lower weight is what's really going to control any rebound.

Oh, and the weighted rucksack can also be used for safely adding load to push-ups and chin-ups