‘I Walked With A Weighted Vest For A Week

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It seems everywhere we look on our social feeds, everyone is donning a weighted vest or packing their rucksacks for their walks in pursuit of a low(er) form of exercise intensity. It turns out that whether you prefer to don a rucksack (see: ‘rucking’) or walk in a weighted vest, semantics aside, carrying things over long distances is a killer move for upgrading our cardio efforts. Acutely aware of these benefits, I was keen to suit up my daily walks for a one week challenge.

In fact, this wasn’t the first time I’ve built loaded carries into my daily routine. For years I would carry heavy equipment up a steep hill for a 15 minute hike to reach an outdoor training spot for my personal training clients. In doing so, I’d inadvertently received the rewards of feeling the fittest and strongest I’d ever been. Something I have greatly missed now that the commute to my desk is particularly light in comparison.

Author of The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter is also a strong proponent for rucking or walking in a weighted vest, especially for women, and believes it is the solution for the modern day dilemma of a chronic sedentary lifestyle. In Easter’s 2% newsletter he explains: ‘The human body is built to ruck, to carry weight over distance.’

It’s something that humans through the ages have naturally taken to, explains Easter, ‘We’re the only animals that can carry stuff far. As we evolved, we’d use this skill to hunt and gather, move resources, and bring tools into the unknown.’

An area of increasingly more interest, Easter adds that more and more health scientists are realizing that rucking might be the best exercise for women. ‘That’s because rucking gives women unique benefits that other exercises don’t,’ says Easter.