Hiking with a heavy backpack can be rucking fun — and good for you

From her Jeep in the Ultra Coffeebar parking lot, Angie Howard pulls out the goods. A backpack bearing 20 pounds of steel, a backpack open to however much you want to haul and a 20-pound weighted vest. 

The vest looks bulletproof, a genre of clothing I’ve never actually seen up close, and it wows me. I choose the vest. She straps on one of the backpacks, and off we ruck.

I’d been messaging members of the Rucking Asheville Facebook group, asking if anyone would be willing to take me, a newbie, on a ruck. I struck gold when Angie offered. Angie, 44, is an emergency medical technician from Asheville, and she knows what she’s doing.

Rucking is the act of carrying a weighted backpack while walking. Pretty simple. The word comes from rucksack, U.S. Army lingo for backpack. Most serious ruckers make that backpack very heavy and that walking very difficult, for many miles or hours, over extreme terrain. The practice is directly drawn from Army Special Forces training.

I have never rucked. The closest I’ve come to Green Beret training is wearing a green beanie on a dog walk. And yet, I’m deeply compelled by the idea of huffing it around town or through the mountains with a weighted pack. It sounds like the kind of suffering I like in my exercise. And so, in the two days between when Angie agrees to take me on a ruck and when I meet her, I decide I need to train. 

I convince my almost-3-year-old to heave herself into the backpack we used to carry her around in when she was much smaller, and I tromp with her around the neighborhood. She sings at the top of her lungs, and I think, “OK, yeah, this might be fun.”

Rucking through the wreckage

Angie and I walk up Depot Street in the River Arts District. There are construction crews, piles of debris along the river and a mix of businesses that are open and not. Tropical Storm Helene is where our conversation begins inevitably.

Angie was working her EMT shift when the storm hit. She was connecting emergency services and critical care transfers for Mission Hospital. “I was in charge of communication,” she says. “But when someone told me that Asheville was an island with no way in or out, I just could not believe her. Me, in charge of communication, and I didn’t believe that communication.” We’re quiet for a moment, breathing hard, as a dump truck rumbles by. 

Angie started rucking before she even knew what rucking was. Years ago, she was training to become a firefighter, and part of the training required carrying a 50-pound backpack, simulating what firefighters wear. “I liked it,” she says. “It was fun training.”

People ruck, she continues, for various reasons — to lose weight, to stay in shape, to train for something. “I’ve done a lot of virtual challenges, like ‘[ruck] 50 miles this month.’ And so I’ll just do a mile here and a mile there. Even at work,” she says. “I can just strap on my ruck and walk laps. You can do it anywhere.” 

A few days earlier, I talked to another serious rucker, Ben Seidman. Ben, who is 35 and lives in Leicester, started rucking in 2008 after hearing about it through CrossFit. Quickly he began competing in events put on by major rucking company Go Ruck, which organizes races that are six, 12 or 24 hours long.

“You’re carrying a ruck the whole time — 25 or 30 pounds, plus anything you want to bring like food, water, layers of clothes,” he tells me. 

And then, “You have challenges, along with the other people in the race. Like, you have to carry telephone poles or water jugs,” or once, a giant cooler taped closed which, at the end of the race, was revealed to be filled with their celebratory beers. “You’ve been carrying your own reward!” the race organizer told them.

“Being in a group who shares the same idea of fun, the camaraderie is unlike anything else,” Ben says. He did 10 Go Ruck events over a decade and loved it so much, he joined the military.

I have him repeat this to me, to be sure I have it right. And I do. In addition to running a chimney company called Flue Fighters, Ben is now an active member of the National Guard, because of rucking.

“It spoke to the masochistic part of my brain to pay for this kind of torture,” Ben says, laughing. 

Then he gets more serious. “Rucking is more than physical. It’s mental,” he says. “When you do something hard and overcome it, then the next time something hard comes along, you think, ‘Hey, if I could do that, I can do this.’”

Fitness for anyone

Angie and I leave the main business strip and begin walking uphill. The rucking doesn’t yet feel hard, per se, but it is noticeably different walking up a hill. I think about the extra weight my legs are carrying, plus what the muscles in the rest of my body are likely doing to compensate for it. And I also notice that, unlike when I run, my knees aren’t screaming.

Dan Carmack, a physical therapist with Breakthrough Performance, tells me he’s seen many people turn to rucking in the last year. “I think of it as a training shift,” he says, “a way to get a low-level strength stimulus in an outdoor environment.” It can be especially useful for people new to training or sensitive to heavy weights.

I ask if he sees a lot of rucking injuries, wondering if there’ll be juicy stories. “Not really,” he tells me. “Kind of the opposite, actually. People who are dealing with injuries from other activities take up rucking as something that won’t impact their training.” 

This is especially true for people who are battling osteoporosis, Dan says. You need impact to develop bone, and the weighted pack can help.

 “There’s also a very low barrier to entry. You can ruck with anything, a weighted vest or a few books in a backpack.”

His advice for newbies? Start gentle in distance, intensity and weight. If someone has a background in hiking, even just carrying what you’d normally use as a daypack, is a starting point.

Ben and Angie both agree, telling me it’s easy to get started and that there are lots of places to go. They ruck in Bent Creek, along the pathways in the River Arts District, on golf courses and trails, and even around their neighborhoods. All you need is somewhere to walk.

Angie ends up taking it mercifully easy on me for my first ruck. “This is mostly a men’s sport,” she says. “I don’t know many women who do this. Probably because it’s mostly connected to the Army and firefighters and cops and EMTs. But there are a few.”

I straighten my shoulders, narrow my eyes, looking as tough as I can.

The Rucking Asheville Facebook group isn’t very active these days. There doesn’t seem to be much of a rucking community around town right now. But I’ll tell you plain enough, there should be.

It’s good for you. It requires no special material. And, best of all, it’s fun.

And this Sunday morning, when I have some free time, I’m planning to fill my backpack with books like the writer nerd I am and head out on the trail.