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What exercise can you do in 20 years? This is probably one year. Doing now. Michael Easter is a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and a world-renowned writer. Michael's distilled down one of the most impressive arguments for incorporating our ancient biological needs into our modern lifestyle. What is rocking?
Rucking mixes endurance and strength in one. The greatest human rucker is the greatest animal rucker in the entire world. And that's because humans are unique in that we evolve to carry weight for distance. This is the thing that I I can finally do that gets me outdoors, that makes me feel good, that has helped me lose weight, that has improved my fitness, and that's awesome. Rucking will burn more calories per mile.
We've kind of missed the boat on this thing that we're really good at and has a ton of benefits. Maybe try putting it back in and see what happens. Good to have you here, Michael. Thanks for coming back. Likewise, man. It's always good to be back.
Our last episode was very popular. I have every expectation that the audience will be equally enthusiastic about this one. Lots to cover today. We're gonna talk about your new book, Walk with Weight. We're gonna be very rucking focused, but I wanna start this conversation in a very particular place. I want to show you a clip from a podcast I did with your fellow Las Vegan, Los Las Veganite. Yeah. Uh his name's Alex Honald. You might have heard of him.
I asked him a question and he gave a very interesting response. Have you seen this this uh enthusiasm around rucking that sort of has suddenly appeared? Yeah you must think like, Well, I'm built for that. I could do it I could go like all day with that. Well yeah, I can. But I'm also like That's so I decided it's stupid. Like if you don't have to carry weight, don't carry weight, you know. I don't know. I love... I mean, because...
As somebody who does enough stuff where you have to carry a heavy backpack, I'm kinda like, If I don't have to carry the heavy backpack, I'm just not carrying extra weight. Like it's crazy to me. I I saw this guy on the trail actually. I was hiking with June a couple of days ago and this guy went by. with this full on weight vest. I had to be like twenty five pound weight vest walking his dog.
And I was just like, You're literally just carrying little balls of lead up the mountain and back. That's psycho. Do you know this guy, Michael Easter? Uh so I lives in Vegas. He's the big ruck guy. I just got his contact info. Um I met a mutual friend of his who was like, You guys should connect because you're both in Vegas. And I I was on his um his uh
his mailing list for a bit. I was like reading his his whatever, you know, his content. I think I read his book maybe. Um and yeah, I think I'm totally into most of what he writes, but I'm like rucking, I don't really get it. But if something if if somebody doesn't exercise in other ways, it's probably better to do that than nothing. But I'm kinda like, why not take off the tackle? It's more of a older guy longevity thing, right? When when gently or I don't know. Or if nothing else
r like just hike with a day bag with a lot of water, drink your water and then trot down with no weight. You know, it's like that's a or dump your water and but I'm like why why go downhill with weight on if you don't have to? All right, next question. Yeah okay sorry. Awesome. What say you, my friend? So Alex Honnold is the greatest rock climber of all time.
in the human world. But if you expand that out to all different animals, he's not good. There's plenty of other primates who would just kick that guy's ass going up. Spicy take. Yeah. Just kick his ass. But with rucking, The greatest human rucker is the greatest animal rucker in the entire world. And that's because humans are unique in that we evolve to carry weight for distance.
So there's no other mammal that can pick up a load and carry it a significantly far distance. So that act, this act of carrying weight, it really does make us unique among all other species. So I would turn that back to him and say, Well, if you look at the grand scheme of time and space Humans have been carrying weight to survive and do it better than they ever have climbing up rocks. Before we close the chapter on Alex, uh did you guys ever connect?
We did not connect. We texted um we've texted a little bit, but we've never managed to connect. Well both of us probably travel until now I'll have to text them and say this came up and this has to happen. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure that you guys that you guys connect. I'll make him a deal. Yeah. He's uh I'll climb a rock if he carries a weight, for the sake of carrying a weight.
Yeah. Let's get you two guys together and you can you can uh sort of cross pollinate your passions. I love it. Yeah, he seems awesome. get really specific about that. Essentially your thesis is that walking with weight is the most fundamental and underutilized human exercise, providing a missing link to lasting physical and mental wellness.
And if there's a corollary to that, it's that this is one behavior or activity that can help the human animal attune their lives to the ancient rhythms that uh, you know, over over time have kind of shaped humanity. Yeah. Is that a fair? Yeah. I think that's a fair assessment. Like I said uh moments ago, humans evolved to pick up weight and move it for distance. So once we
We evolved from primates, came out of the trees. Um there was actually what led to the fact that humans can walk on two feet in the first place is there was all this climate change happening in the jungle like six million years ago. And the primates that could go longer distances, uh, were able to find more food and survive because it was like pushing out fruit. So fruit became harder to find.
And so slowly but surely natural selection basically favored these primates that could walk on two feet because it was a lot more efficient. And then once we got up onto two feet, All of a sudden we have these free hands and all of a sudden we can start carrying stuff. And humanity really exploded after that'cause we could take tools into the unknown. We could use our hands to manipulate things, create tools, all these different things. So it's really kind of the foundation when you look at like
Again, what are humans physically good at and unique at? It's covering long distances on two feet, often while carrying weight. And I think one of the big points of this book is that when you look at fitness today, Plenty of people run, plenty of people go to the gym and lift weights. We have cycling, we have all these things. Um, but not many people carry weight as a form of
fitness and physical activity. And so my case is all those other things are great. I'm not saying trying to say that rucking is the only thing that a person should do, but I am saying, hey, we've kind of missed the boat on this thing that we're really good at and has a ton of benefits, which we can get into. And so I think that's a good thing.
maybe try putting it back in and see what happens. Mm-hmm. The evolutionary aspect of this is super interesting. Um for many years, probably uh you know, with the publication of Born to Run, it entered the mainstream consciousness, this idea that we were born to run. Um and that tracks back to persistent hunting and, you know, all of these things that you're referencing.
You're not completely rewriting that. You're you're but you are kind of revisiting it to supplement it with the I th this thing that got missed, which is, yes, we're born to run, but we're even better at covering great distances with load bearing weight. And and that is really essentially, you know, what advanced
uh humanity from the caves into building civilizations. And this gets missed in the whole conversation around kind of holistic well being. Yeah. As a practice that is fundamental to, you know, kind of our DNA. So my aha moment for this is um I'm familiar with the Born to Run paper, which was in Nature, I think in two thousand four. It's by this uh anthropologist Dan Lieberman. Then the Born to Run book comes out, and it sort of makes this argument that humans evolve for long distance running.
And the reason um that we did is we would use long distance running to hunt. So in the heat in Africa, we would run down animals until they basically uh fell over from heat exhaustion. And then we would spear them, right? And this would happen over like seven, fifteen, twenty miles. So what makes humans uh unique is that we can cover those long distances, but really effectively in the heat.
'Cause we have this sort of built in air conditioning system with our sweat. We can basically just tolerate heat more than other animals. So we chase these things down until they gas out because of heat, spear'em. Great, that's how we would hunt an animal. But then what happens once you actually hunt the animal? You gotta carry it back to camp. Yeah, right. Sort of like the next day. Exactly. So I was out hunting um in the Arctic. This was for my book, The Comfort Crisis.
Um we were up there for like a month. So we end up hunting this caribou and we have to pack it back to camp. And it's like, you know, these things are huge. So my pack has a hundred and probably twenty pounds of caribou in this thing. And we have to hike it back to our camp across the tundra. It's about five miles. The tundra is, by the way, like the worst thing you could ever walk on. It's like beach sand, basically. It's uphill.
one of the hardest things physically I've ever done. But as I'm doing that, I'm thinking about that idea in the Born to Run papers, like, yeah, humans evolved to run so we could hunt and then Yeah, but then we also have to do this carrying thing. And so I start kinda thinking, Oh, that's kinda interesting. I wonder what other animals can carry. Well, there's ants, but they don't go that far. They're also not mammals.
Well, there's kangaroos, but it's only when they're with their young and their pouches. Well there's horses.
mules, but wait a minute, they can't actually carry anything for distance unless we put the weight on'em. Mm-hmm. Right. And I just kinda ran out of runway effectively. I was like, Wow, that's actually maybe we're unique because we can carry weight for distance. So then I got home and background is I'm a journalist, so I start reading papers, talking to researchers and Just sort of became this rabbit hole of
walking with weight that I went down. And you ended up going to visit Daniel Lieberman to discuss this very thing. Yeah. Visited him at Harvard. Um and he is the guy who really found the whole born to run thesis. And when I brought up the carrying thing, he was like, Yeah, that's we're we're unique for that as well. And he, you know, he pointed out, For all of time humans were carrying
Often. This could be our kids,'cause we had to carry them around, right? Humans take a long time to develop compared to other animals. Um, anytime you wanted water, like today you just flick on the faucet and water comes out. It's like great. But in the past, you would have had to walk to the water source and then you have to carry that all the way back to your village. So we are constantly carrying and that really shaped us. And when you look at
what it does to the human body. I think there's a lot of uh benefits that are unique to carrying that you don't necessarily get from running or lifting weights alone. Before we go further, let's define our terms a little bit. Like what is rucking? What does that mean? So rocking, I would say, is uh walking with weight in a backpack or a weight vest. Now, I have started to use more the term walking with weight, and I'll tell you why that is. Is because the term rucking came out of the military.
So back about four hundred years ago, um German hunters were calling the packs that they would hunt with uh rucksacks. So that term sort of held for backpacks that would be used for, let's say, rougher pastimes. You're hunting, uh, warfare, whatever it is. And the military adopted the term. To be the a rucksack was what you kept your, you know, gear in if you're a military member.
And marching with your weighted rucksack was the key form of training. It always has been for militaries throughout time is just marching with your gear on. Um so they started to call it rucking. Um the term sort of took off for the act. But when I started to use the term around, say my mom or my wife. They Google rucking and what do they get? They get these soldiers with these like hundred fifty pounds. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, well that's a little bit of a turn off because
The term rocking has taken on a really military bent, I would say. And so I've started to shift into walking with weight to make it a little more approachable and not as scary. The added irony being that uh walking with weight is something that was pioneered by the mothers. It's the mothers that are carrying the children and, you know, carrying the water on their heads back from the well and all of this. I think the
You know, a lot of walking with weight. There's a lot of uh gratitude and thanks that have to be given to, you know, the th the women and the mothers for this practice or you know, the fact that it has become part of our humanity, I think. Totally. Eva I mean backpacks or d carrying packs, they were invented by women for carrying babies.
So before that invention, moms are carrying babies around all the time in their arms. And so you only have one free hand the whole time. So once um and this happened a very long time ago. Once women created carrying slings and packs for babies, all of a sudden you have the baby close to you, so it's safe, but now you have two free hands.
And so that really expanded the productivity of the tribe because now you have someone who can gather food as they're also tending to a child and humanity kind of exploded from there. And then of course The next logical step is, well, if we can carry a kid in these things, what else could we carry in these things? And now you start putting food in'em. Then the hunters of the tribe go, Well, we could carry some meat in these, we could carry other tools and just sort of took off from there.
From a health perspective, give me the reasons why rucking is something you're you're so bullish on compared to hiking. jogging or running to answer Alex's question, like why not just run? So when it comes to why not just run? I'll make two key points. Uh the first would be injuries. So the data on running injuries is all over the place. There's one famous study that found that uh twenty to I believe it's seventy-nine percent of runners get injured in a year. That's really high.
And I think anyone who's listening to this that has ever run, I'm sure you've been injured by running, right? Plenty of people have bad news for running. But when you look at uh walking with a weighted pack or a weight vest, injury rate is way lower. It's basically a little bit higher than walking, and walking's injury rate is like 1%. That's it. Of course, if you use way too much weight, then the injury rate goes up.
So in the book I advocate for using weights that are never more than about thirty percent of your body weight. Like I use twenty percent of my body weight, not significant weights. And then the second point as it relates to running that I would make is that rucking mixes endurance and strength in one. So you're getting endurance because you're covering ground.
But you're also getting a strength effect because you have weight on your body and you have to carry that weight. So you get a more muscular effect as you're getting your cardio. You're sort of combining those two things into one. So if you're pressed for time, to me it's like, all right, this is a pretty good option. And I'll also add, I am not saying people shouldn't run, people shouldn't lift, people shouldn't do whatever. My greater argument is that.
walking with weight is incredibly effective and useful for people. And so how can we weave it into all the other things you're doing? I think I heard you say that when you're running, you're exerting uh twelve times your body weight and force with every with every time you you land, right? And it's three X when you're walking. When you're rucking, obviously it's gonna depend upon how much weight you put in your rucksack, your backpack, or what's on your vest.
Like in the in between, you have running on one end of the spectrum, you have walking on the other, you know, rucking is somewhere in the middle from kind of a strength and calorie burn perspective, what are the differences there? Yeah, so generally per if you think about it per mile, that's a good way to sort of measure this. Um Rucking will burn more calories per mile than running.
So the rate is anywhere from twenty to you can go all the way up to like two hundred percent more, just depending on what the load and terrain is. But generally you will burn uh more calories per mile compared to running. And then lifting People generally overestimate how many calories lifting actually burns because you're going you know, if you do th three sets of ten reps and you do eight different exercises How much time are you actually exercising? You're like
Twenty second set, I'm gonna rest for two minutes, another twenty second, like you're not really burning that many calories. Right. But you're assuming you're going to uh you know, kind of like at least eighty-five percent of your capacity.
You are, you know, kind of stimulating muscle growth as a result of that. It's just a different sort of thing. Yeah. I think the point of uh lifting is more for strength and muscle rather than calorie burn. But I just like to point that out'cause some people will Like oh I got a Killer calorie burning weightlifting workout in today. And it's like, eh, maybe burn like 150, 200 calories. Like, don't eat that back. A big piece of this and and maybe the most underappreciated aspect of it.
is the fact that it it's it's putting you out in nature in a dynamic environment. And there's not only Health benefits to this, uh, you know, physical benefits to this, but also uh cognitive, like brain health benefits to being out on a dynamic landscape where you're being stimulated in a way that you're just not when you're lifting weights in a gym or you're running on a treadmill. Absolutely. I'll give props to a researcher. He's at USC now. His name's uh David Reichlin. Awesome dude.
He's basically looked at um how your mind I'm simplifying this, but how your mind works when you're out in the an environment that you have to navigate effectively. Right. So if you're outside and you're having to figure out where you're going. You're taxing your spatial navigation. You're having to take in all these things happening around you. Um, and if you're on a trail,
it just ups the ante even more because now you're going, all right, how's my foot placement with every step? Right? Is there a rock here or whatever it might be? And so that um sort of mental work that happens when you're out in an open environment having to run, especially if it's somewhere new. I'll put a point in there saying new environments are better.
That navigation is really important for brain health. So, humans, in addition to walking with weight, we also evolved to navigate. We're navigating all the time. That doesn't happen as much today. for a few reasons. Uh one, we kind of do the same thing every day. So we're just familiar with everything. Two, when we do go to a new place, like I got to this uh lovely new studio, we just pop it in Google Maps. Don't have to figure it out. You just follow the blue dot.
And we lose something because that's like a very specific uh part of our brain that needs to be worked. And there's evidence from There was this study I think was conducted in the UK. I'm gonna forget the specifics'cause I'm I write down all the specifics in the book and then they just go out. But um it looked at about four hundred different jobs and it looked at their risk of um Alzheimer's and dementia.
And the jobs with the lowest rates of Alzheimer's and dementia were cab drivers and ambulance drivers.
And they think the reason for that is that these people are constantly having to navigate all these new environments. So they're working this very specific part of their brain that evolved for navigation that most jobs are not working. That's fascinating. Yeah, so I think there is a case Like to me the takeaway f for me practically is If you're gonna go exercise outside, whether it be on your bike, whether you're rocking, whether you're running.
Sometimes you should go into new environments where you have to figure things out. Like I'm just gonna run out on this trail. I've never been there before. I'm gonna try and find my way. I'm gonna do this loop. And guess what? I'm probably gonna get lost for a second. But that's the entire point because I'm gonna have to figure out, okay, well, how do I get back to where I started? But you can also, if you want to be even lazier about it.
even just driving, don't use Google Maps all the time. Like you go, Okay, I need to go to this restaurant uh in Las Vegas. I live in Las Vegas. I know it's in Chinatown. Okay, I can kinda get I know how to get to Chinatown pretty much, and then I'm gonna have to pick up all these cues along the way rather than just offloading this part of my brain to Google Maps. Mm-hmm.
And I had to do this, I'll say and we Yeah, this is like a i it's like how dare you you know. These beautiful navigations in our cars now, you know. I know. And I had to I'll tell you, man. For another book I'm working on, I did this really long through hike um through southern Utah and it's not a trail, it's a route. So you have some general directions of where to go, but you gotta figure stuff out. You're just out in the open desert going through canyons, across mountains.
And the navigation element That mental component of that and we're hiking twenty five miles average a day with weight on our backs, that was almost as hard as the physical stuff. It just adds this extra layer of complexity, of challenge. I would end the days just physically fried, mentally fried.
But it was very satisfying'cause it's just not a part of our brains we work anymore. And there's something really there's something really satisfying about it because you have like a clear mission. I need to get here. And I'm gonna use my brain to figure that out. There's a sport called orienteering that's all about this, right? It's not a rucking sport, but you never hear about people who do this sport.
Maybe it's poised for a for a comeback now. Maybe they all got lost. Yeah. Maybe they did. I mean ultra running, you know, there's certain there's certain ultra like
the Barclays Marathon has, you know, an aspect of that in it where, you know, orienteering becomes a big piece. But Um, I guess the ultra running world has sort of enveloped that that sport on some level, but there was a pure sport called orienteering where it's like you b you have a little compass and a map and you gotta figure out how to get from where you are to the other place. Yeah. I think people still do it. There's still like orienteering
competitions and organizations. I should I should look into that. Yeah, this could be your next thing. You and me. We're gonna go on the woods with a map and a compass and figure it out. The other stat that jumped out at me on this nature aspect of rucking or just the the the process of navigating the outdoors is that
When you're on trails as opposed to roads, you're burning twenty eight percent more calories. That was from Is that true? So that it depends, right? So that was like an average. I think that was from a University of Michigan study. It d of course depends on the trail. So if you're on like a really flat, you know, perfect like it's just nice and sandy, not like that bad, might be lower than twenty eight percent.
per mile, but if you get on something that is has a lot of rocks, a lot of challenges, then it might be higher than that. And that's simply because you're having to put in more effort per step. Right. The ground is a little shakier. More ups, more downs, more times where you have to sort of sidestep around things, all all that. I'd be curious to know uh how that breaks down
between the the the physical exertion aspect of it and just the the brain power required to do that navigation. I uh my instinct would be that it's much more about the brain power piece than it is about the physical aspect of that navigation. I don't think that study delineated between the two, but I will say that tracks with me. The just having to think about what you're doing just makes it so much yeah. Harder. This episode is brought to you by Caraway.
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overlaps and dovetails into, you know, what you've written about in the past and the comfort crisis and scarcity brain. We're so acclimated in our in our modern world that we compartmentalize exercise as this other thing that we do, y you know, either before or after, you know, we're living our life. And we do it in
these contained environments with fluorescent lights, with machines, you know, and in front of televisions and the like. Not only does that kind of rob us of the joy of those human experiences, but it's also interfering with maybe some of the most powerful benefits. um that we get from these activities when we're doing them in, you know, unbridled nature. I think so. Because the gym environments in the treadmill you're controlling for all these variables.
Right, that get reinserted when you're outside. So we talked about one, the navigation. Um, but two, you're exposing yourself to nature and that comes with a lot of psychological benefits. Um, there's a variety of reasons for that, but the research consistently shows that going out into nature improves uh your happiness, decreases stress levels, does some good things um to your immune system. Like all these good things happen when you're out in nature.
Two, you're also having to deal with the elements. Like now we live at seventy two degrees. And I think there is a case for getting out and exposing yourself to different temp temperature swings. Sometimes You wanna be a little too hot, sometimes you wanna be a little too cold,'cause it's like a stimulus that your body has to to figure out. And for me a lot of it is mindset too, especially if you're out um on a trail or something.
The wilderness in nature to me has always been the greatest teacher because it forces you into positions where things are never gonna be perfect and you really have to do sort of figure things out along the way and just make it work. And that to me kind of becomes a lesson that I can take back into my normal life and go. All right. Well, I was on that cliff in southern Utah that I had to go down the canyon and it was a huge pain in the ass and it was a hundred degrees out and I did that.
I can probably handle this next Zoom meeting that I'm dreading. Like I'll be fine. We'll survive. Well the goal is resilience, right? Ultimately. You're building resilience with every one of these experiences that you have. And what's interesting about that is how the resilience that we're really uh after is sort of uh
orthogonal to all of these life hack optimization things that we see these days that people are, you know, very into. Like how do you think about the distinction or the the contrast between like life optimization, health optimization, fitness optimization, and the true resilience that, you know, can't be rushed and has to be earned, you know, in the elements. Big picture to me.
Resilience is about Can I accomplish this task or figure things out when I have fewer resources and more is stacked against me? Where it feels like when you look at fitness optimization I can't go on a run unless I have my Garmin because then I won't know exactly what my pace and my heart rate of my XYZ is. I can't start my day unless I do my nineteen step morning routine. I can't there's all we're inserting a lot of these practices.
People sometimes go off the rails if they can't have things perfect. And it gives you this illusion of control in a way that you're improving things. Um But I don't think it m always measurably does. And I think if you can strip away all that and just be a person that can
attempt to accomplish things when you have fewer resources, when the odds are stacked against you. You're going to go into that abyss and you're going to trust yourself, I'm going to figure that out. Well, you're probably going to learn something down there. And I think a lot of it a lot of the optimization stuff, I mean I think it can be good because, you know, there's different types of people. Sometimes like you get someone who's new to exercise, they want to improve their health.
Like yeah, give'em an aura ring so they know how many steps they're taking. That's great because that having that measurement shows you kind of where you're at. But I think some of these things can tip into like this illusion of progress and control that Maybe isn't really founded in reality. Yeah, i i it's not uh a strict binary. You know, I think they have their place.
But the the point of them is to develop a a more intuitive, uh, you know, integrated kind of connection with yourself. And if you're outsourcing everything to these other things, you're missing that opportunity. Like I I just remember in my early swimming days before heart rate monitors and garments and you know, before there was an internet and all of that. Like after a set, you know, take a heart rate or whatever and you start to f
get to know like, oh, this is when I feel this way, my heart rate's probably this. You know, you're making that kind of mental, you know, that mind body connection until you've done it for a zillion hours. And then, you know, on a repeat repeats of a hundreds I could tell you without looking at a pace clock like what my split was or what my time was because you you just you know yourself that well.
Um and I think these tools are, you know, they're just fancy versions of stopwatches and and putting your finger on your neck to figure out your heart rate. But you should use them so that you are, you know, developing that connection with yourself. But if you're missing that part, then you become reliant upon them. You're outsourcing everything and
that's not the point, right? Like that's moving you away from the greater goal. But the person who doesn't need them or maybe use them and kind of knows all that stuff and doesn't need you know, then they can go out in the world and they they know like, oh, I feel this way, so I know that this is where
you know, my exertion level at you know, at this phase means this and I know that that will mean I'll need to eat this and have this much sleep, et cetera. So you become a self contained, you know, organism. Yeah. Yeah, I think you made a great point that there's kind of like this balance where they can be a good on ramp to developing that awareness, but once you've developed it, it's like you don't really necessarily need it. And the the danger becomes
Um getting fixated on how the numbers rise and fall each day. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of then they become self predictive. Yeah. And a lot of the I mean a lot of the metrics in fitness traffic I mean they're wrong. They're some degree of wrong. Depends on what the
number you're looking at on your fitness tracker is. But I mean a lot of people I play around with a lot of them. Uh I think that, you know, though they they can create a baseline. So if they're wrong, they'll be consistently wrong and you'll just know the point is to look for variations.
But, you know, I have one device that I use that tells me my biological age is like thirty two and I have one that tells me I'm sixty. You know. So you know what I mean? So yeah, don't Don't you know, don't over invest too much in in in those things, but I d I do think they're helpful. And they can be good accountability partners, uh, and you know, you there is value in understanding that, you know, you can't improve something that you're not measuring.
But it's your relationship to the measurement, I suppose, which brings up a broader conversation around like goal setting and you know, we're in the new year, New Year's resolutions, like these are analog versions of the same thing, right? Like how do you think about setting goals and intentions and visioning like we're in the new year. Do you have a practice around that or what does that look like for you? I saw a lot of stuff online about how
People shouldn't set New Year's goals this year. That was like a wave and I'm like Oh, that's the American tradition. Everyone just set a New Year's goal. Yeah, most people aren't gonna meet it, but like who cares? At least it gives you hope. There's a sense of hope and you start a practice and some subset of the population will continue that on and they will change. Um so I think that New Year's resolutions, having these big goals at the beginning of the year, I think it's great.
You should probably learn something even if you only do it for a week. Do you do this yourself? Well, I will say that uh my New Year's resolution is to finish this other book I'm working on right now, which is a You and me both, brother. Like I got I got one I'm uh that's my focus as well. Yeah.
Now the good thing is that we are contractually obligated to our New Year's resolution. We have to It's been made for us. Yeah. And if we decide to bail, we gotta write a check and hand it back to the uh publisher. So that that would be mine. I think for me, like having some In the sort of health wellness space, having some big thing I do each year can be kind of guiding. The Masogi. Yeah, like a big outdoor task.
So I've got to kinda stay ready for that. What is what is that for you this year? Or do you keep that quiet? I don't know what it'll be this year. It'll probably be in the fall. I mean, last spring I did that hike I mentioned. That was That was a long one. It was like forty five days. Granted it was for a book. Um So we'll see what it is, but it also kinda focuses my training to be thinking more about what's gonna what's gonna actually work outdoors.
And so for example in the walk with weight book I talk about like if you're just thinking purely in terms of health, longevity, performance Like how should you be thinking about training? And to me, being prepared for outdoor stuff is like the ultimate path to that.
Because most times in the outdoors, especially if you're out there for a long amount of time, you're having to carry weight, right? You probably got a backpack full of gear or something. So you have to have enough muscle to be able to carry that. At the same time, you're also covering a lot of ground. So you can't be overly muscular because then you're just carrying dead weight. So you kind of find this like sweet spot in body size.
You're training your endurance, you're training your strength, you're also having to think about, okay, how do I resist injuries so that I'm gonna have to bake in what are exercises that are going to actually translate to getting my body across a super long trail, down a canyon, back up it, and not roll my ankle and not blow out my knee and not hurt my and all these other possible horrors that could happen along the
trail. And so that really I think sort of guides my training and has and has been useful. And I think when you look at the data around, you know, body size, strength, endurance, it kind of hits the sweet spot for all the things in the sense that it gives you enough for everything. All right. So a good example would be like strength and muscle right now. There's kind of a message you need to have as much muscle as possible'cause that'll help you live longer.
It's like, no, not really. You need to be strong enough and have enough muscle'cause at a certain point, just packing on muscle for the sake of it, your body's not having to carry around all this stuff it doesn't really need and it's still taxing your system.
So to me it's about like finding the sweet spot. And the sweet spot I think can be found by mimicking what humans have always done, which is move across outdoor landscapes and do hard things. There's a lot packed into what you just shared. Essentially you wanna be perpetually adventure ready. Mm-hmm. And in order to do that, you need strength, cardiovascular fitness, and the the the aspirant body type is what you call super medium. Right. And that is a way of distinguishing between kind of
aesthetic fitness versus truly functional fitness. So i explain in a little bit more depth this idea of super medium. Yeah. So I call this Super medium on my sub stack. We've got a nice crew who all chases super medium fitness. But it's basically the idea of, like I just said, you want
Enough endurance, but you also don't want to tip so far into endurance that you're shedding all this muscle and when you have to actually throw a lot of you don't want to look like a two oh five marathoner. Right. Exactly. Because when you hand the two oh five marathon or the fifty pound pack. Well, now he's in trouble. Right. At the same time, you don't want to be adding on so much muscle that now all of a sudden you're a
Two days in the five minute marriage. The bodybuilder who can't walk up the stairs. Yeah. It's trying to find that sweet spot between those two. And the best way to achieve that balance in addition to rucking would be What? I think rucking is a great on ramp to that because again, you're having to work your muscle. So your body's gonna go, Okay, well I should probably keep this stuff around because I'm having to carry heavy things.
Running is good, any form of cardio. I mean, I'm kind of ambiguous with cardio. I'm just like, you know, do what you like. I count rucking as a form of cardio. Um and then weight lifting I think enough that you're maintaining strength and building it. Usually for like two, three days a week is usually fine for most people, I would say. When you're rucking, what is your average heart rate?
I don't track. Like are you you don't track any of this stuff? No, I'm for me it would uh it obviously is landscape dependent, right? If you're going up a hill, it's gonna be higher. But I would say if I'm carrying, say, thirty five pounds around my neighborhood. with my dogs, I'm probably low end of zone two'cause I take a lot of phone calls and I can have a phone call flying. Now if I hit a hill at the same time I'm gonna be like
I might get a little bit breathy. Yeah, if you're if you're if the train is dynamic and you have enough weight, then you're gonna have like a lot of fluctuation in there. Yeah. Yeah. This sort of leads us into um a discussion around the the health span and and longevity aspects of of rucking that that you talk about in your book. And just on the heels of what you just shared about being super medium. You don't wanna you don't want too much muscle. You need a certain amount of muscle.
Are these ideas in in conflict or is there a a parallel here that I'm not seeing? I would say you wan so it's kinda like what are we m measuring? Right. I mean if we're just measuring the muscle in itself, it's like, okay, but what's the overall end goal here to me? It's like it's well it's to be able to live how you wanna live and go out and do interesting things. So I think a lot of the data would suggest like
Strength is actually what we care about. Right. I mean, like at a certain point you could argue, all right, well, if you have more muscle, that way if you start to waste away, there's more of you to start wasting. So you're gonna be in a better spot. It gets down these rabbit holes. But I think When you look at like the longest lived people, they're not big people. Right.
So I think if you're just using your body, using your strength, not having so much muscle that all of a sudden you're not gonna go out for a run because, well, that really sucks because it pounds my knees because I have all this extra bulk on me. Um Everything has a cost, right? So to me I think the answer is Again, I'm gonna repeat myself. But being at a size where you can do endurance work.
And not suffer, you're not gonna be the best, you're not gonna be the 205 marathoner. Doing enough strength work that you can do the tasks of everyday life and more. Um But not having so much of either that now you're sacrificing one for the other. Mm-hmm. The ultimate hybrid athlete, like a true hybrid athlete. Yeah. People get really interested in like all these different like VO two tests and what was this and that and that. And to me it's like the ultimate longevity test is
Can you just go hike up that mountain? Like if I told you right now, can you go hike your ass up of that mountain if I gave you a hack? That's way better because one, okay, well, that tells me your endurance is pretty good. Well, you have this pack, tells me you're probably pretty strong, your lower body's strong. Also, you had to navigate and figure things out. That tells me something's working up here and between your skull. And you've exposed yourself to all these
Great sights, great views, great sounds, like a lot of good things are happening. And I think that sometimes we can get so down the rabbit hole of like This marker, that marker, this test, this whatever. It's like, no, just go out and do something real. And if you can do it, well, that tells me you're probably in a pretty good spot. There's a lot of wackiness in the health span extension uh world at the moment. I'm sure you've seen plenty of it. There's so much people can measure.
There's just so much and I think it becomes overwhelming at a certain point. And really it's all just like kind of a marker for like what okay, what are we measuring for? Usually it's like, well, it tells me your endurance is good. It's like, okay, well couldn't like a run up a hill do that too? Well that seems a little bit easier to me. You know, it's just it i we we get a little bit
It it just gets really complicated to me. So I think uh one of my big messages is like taking which I do in my sub stack is like how do you take all this stuff and make it translatable and more actionable and approachable. Because if you did everything that, you know, the sort of rabbit hole Instagram says you'd be taking 50 tests and you'd have a
you know, twenty thousand dollar bill for something that a hike up a mountain could have told you for free. Sure. I mean this is this is sort of a a test case for the scarcity loop, is it not? Like we'd much rather Focus on the the latest supplement or some new study that came out about a margin case. Like we love these. these one percent sort of things that are out there.
when in truth what's really moving the needle is like, hey, maybe like carry around something heavy for a while, you know, and it's like, uh yeah, maybe no, no, I I want like look at this over here, the shiny new thing that's gonna like make all my dreams come true. Yeah, I think that having a n and I I wrote about this in Scarcity Brain too, is I think that having a number gives people Certainty. And that's relaxing. If I see that VO2 number go from whatever 40 to 50.
I've made it. I'm definitely improving. Mm-hmm. But the VO two is just a proxy for all these other things that there are many different ways you can measure them. Right. It's like why do we care about VO two in the first place? It's like, well, I want to live uh long. Well, why do you want to live long? Well,'cause I wanna do I wanna have these different experiences and blah blah blah.
It's like, well, why don't you just go out and do the experiences? Because it sounds like to me you're saying you need a certain VO2 to have these experiences. So if you just go do them now, well Tells me you've got your VO two. You're good to go. From a health span perspective, it's this two in one uh activity. You're getting strength and you're getting cardio. I guess there's sort of an optimization argument to be made for that. You're getting double your bang for the buck.
But you're also working on your bone density without, you know, kind of the jarring aspects of of running, you know, cycling that kind of overlooks the bone density thing, because you d you do need some kind of like impact to stimulate that. What else uh do we know or not yet know about the kind of lifespan
possibly lifespan extending aspects of this activity. I think one thing I didn't touch on is that it seems to be Good for fat loss, maybe uniquely good, and that probably goes back to the fact that as you're carrying weight You're having to burn energy, right? Like endurance exercise is is gonna burn a lot of calories. Um, but because you have that weight on your back, it's almost like
Your body has to hang on to the muscle in order to carry it. So there are some small studies. I will say these are small studies, but there was one um that took these Alaskan backcountry hunters. And it tested their body fat and a bunch of different health markers. Um, before they went out for a hunt, they're out in the mountains, I think, for ten days.
And when you're on a backcountry hunt, you're doing a lot of you're carrying weight, your gear in your backpack, you're doing up and down mountains all day across different terrain. And they all lost weight. They lost, I can't remember the exact number, like ten pounds, let's say. You would think that when people lose weight, Some of that's gonna come from fat, some of that's gonna come from muscle. Like in most cases when a person loses weight.
Some will come from fat, some will come from muscle. But when these guys got back, all the weight they lost was from fat. They were able to hang on to muscle. Muscle slightly increased. Not s uh significantly, but just enough.
So I think there is something almost um not to give you s sort of magic, but I do think there's something And that's that's pretty unique to this form of activity. Yeah, very unique. Yeah. Um And I'll say I've experienced that myself, like when I've done long backcountry trips where I'm having to have a heavy pack the whole time. I'll come back and I'll be anywhere from ten to fifteen pounds lighter. This is like, you know, over the course of a month. Um, but I don't think I've lost much muscle.
And I come back and I look like I could go, you know, way in for a UFC fight. So I'm just like ripped. And so I do think that there's a strong case um that it could be uniquely good for fat loss. And that's a good thing. People love to hear that. Yeah. Lose the fat. When I when back when I was in
editor at Men's Health that was like, Can we get a fat loss headline on on that magazine? I don't love this. Always get engagement. Yeah. No matter what. Sprinkle some fat loss on there. Especially in January, but uh uh any time of the year, I suppose. The other thing I didn't expect was the impact on infant development. When an infant is being carried by an adult. Explain that. Yeah, so...
When you are carrying a infant, a lot of really good things happen. Um one is brain development because the infants say on your shoulder or whatever it is, so they're looking out and seeing the world almost as you are. So if I'm carrying a baby and we're talking, baby is picking up What is he doing? How is his face working? So there's a big like social component where they're seeing how you're interacting with other people as you carry them.
Um there's also physical components where these um different reflexes get trained, like this sort of neck correct reflex gets trained. You know babies when their head stipped, they'll pop it back up. Uh that gets trained.
grip also tends to get trained. There's this um gripping reflex where they're they're clinging onto you. That's getting trained. Yeah, just all these different good things are happening. And I think the the point I make in the book is that, you know, for most of human history, We started by carrying our kids all the time, but then we put them in these slings or packs or whatever it was, and they were there with us getting all these good things that being carried trained. And today we've shifted
that away a l in a lot of cases. Right. If you're moving across uh if you're walking through your neighborhood with kids, probably gonna be in the stroller. If you're at the grocery store, it's in the basket and you put the basket in the shopping cart or whatever. I don't have children, so I don't know how what people are doing. But I think there is a case for asking yourself, how can I carry my infant more often?'Cause it does seem to lead to some good developmental things.
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I wanna get into the how of it all and to do that, Tyler, can you bring w I've got a little show and tell here. I wanna give people some Actionable advice on on how to get started here. Walking with weight can mean many things. It can mean a rucksack, which is essentially a backpack that you can fill with books or rocks or plates or what have you. I don't have one of those here, but I do have.
This, which is one of those like weight vests. This thing is incredibly heavy. I bought this like a couple years ago. I don't know. It's got these plates in it. You know, that have like you know, makes it like a kind of like a bulletproof vest. Yeah. You know, these like we can get into the differences about of between uh backpacks and weight vests at some point. Yeah, with like a bunch of these things in there, right? And uh
And obviously it distributes the weight between front and your chest and your back. So there's that. And then we have These, which you're seeing more and more of. This this is a uh like a lighter weight vest made by a company called Amorpho. I'm sure there's a bunch of different kinds of these. That first one is like first responder uh or you know special operator gear, right? And this is like
I feel like you wear this one if you're training for the combine or something. Yeah. Like an NFL player would would train in something like this and it's more like form fitting, but also a vest and the weight is evenly distributed, even though it's much less. A rucksack or a backpack All the weight is on the back. Yeah. And my intuition was always that
It would be healthier or better or easier on your body if the weight was evenly distributed. Mm-hmm. But what I learned in reading your book is that that's actually not the case. Yeah, I think for most people Most of the time, if you had to choose one, I would steer people into a backpack. And there's a handful of reasons for that. I'm not saying white vests are bad at all. They're great. Like big messages
That you carry weight is far more important than how, but if you had to pick just one, I would suggest um backpack. Now with a weight vest with it loaded in your front and your back. In the research, having it loaded that way um leads to a more normal walking gate. So your walking mimics how you would walk unloaded.
So that might lead you to think, oh well that and then that's better. Because when you have the weight on your back, what happens is you tend to s tip slightly forward your torso to sort of like balance the weight, if you will. Um but in the real world what happens is Once you've walked for a longer time with the weight vest, especially if it's one the size of that and is heavy, um, people tend to get tired.
And when you get tired with that weight around you, you almost have nothing to resist against. So you got nowhere to go. So I'll give you an example to understand this. If we were to take a like 400 pound weight fest and I were to put that on you, you would just collapse, right? You'd probably just fall. Now, if we took that same hundred four hundred pounds and put it in the backpack, You could probably still stand.
And why is that? It's because you've got something to actually resist against. You could lean forward, you could balance it, so you can still keep moving. So once you get tired with a weight vest, especially if it's heavy, your posture starts to just go to absolute shit. You've still got this weight pulling down on you and you start to see problems. So um you've had Kelly and Julia Starret on the podcast. Yeah.
So they see a lot of issues with the military uh members they work with because they're wearing these really heavy body armor things. They're w wearing'em, they're moving, they get tired and they start to slump in this thing and they've got this weight just dragging them them down. Whereas on the backpack, you can still move and have something to resist against and keep your posture in a solid position.
A good example of this would be um through hikers, right? Through hikers could choose to carry their gear any way they want. A gear company could surely come up with some vest thing that carries your sleeping bag in your back, your food in your front, whatever it might be.
But all of them are putting their stuff in a backpack. And why is that? It's because it's way more efficient the farther you go and the tire you get. Interesting. So if you're going long distances and you have a heavy pack and it's all on your back. You're gonna start to lean forward, right, to balance that out. Isn't that when you talk about maintaining a a healthy, good posture, isn't that does does that become problematic or or are we built to handle that?
Uh I would say for most weights were built to handle that. So of course if you had hundreds of pounds in the pack, or say a hundred or more than a third of your body weight, whatever it is, I think you might start to see some issues. But what happens is when you put the weight on your back, and this is this is really interesting. This is something I learned reporting this book and I was like, wow, that's interesting. Um, when you put weight on your back.
It actually removes tension from the muscles on your back. You actually work your back muscles less with a reasonably weighted than you do just standing. So you're like, how the hell does that work? That's because your abs start to engage much harder. So they pick up the slack of those uh back muscles that have essentially been sort of shut off in a way. And so
That's one reason I like the backpack is because it works your core harder. When you start to tip, your core has to really engage. Those back muscles sort of shut off. Your core picks up all that slack and you engage your core um pretty well. And I think a lot of
back issues are tied to a weak core. Um having a weak core can set you up for other injuries down the road. So I think it's just a nice little way to improve your core strength without having to do boring planks and bird dogs and all those exercises that we do. That leads me into my next question, which is has to do with the safety of this for people who do have a history with back issues. And I say this is somebody who's, you know, still recovering from I had spinal fusion surgery.
this past May. So I'm eight I'm eight months post surgery and everything is going well, but you know, those bone those bones take uh twelve to eighteen months to fully fuse and so I'm I'm still, you know, not able to do anything that's gonna compress my spine. So this is probably something I still have to defer. for a little bit. Um but assuming you haven't had spinal fusion surgery and you just maybe you have like a a a mild or or relatively mild kind of chronic back
situation, um, can this be helpful? Is this going to exacerbate that problem? Well, I would tell everyone if you're gonna try it, definitely ease in and I would say that whether or not you have a back issue, I think one problem is that uh this is more for men, I will say, but They see rucking, they see military, they go, All right, I'm throwing seventy pounds in this pack and I'm gonna go for a walk. It's like
Maybe let's lighten that up a little bit. Um I tell people to start with say ten percent of their body weight at first. For some people that might actually be a little too heavy and you'll know and you can just back off. Um, for some people they might find it way too light and they'll need to add another ten pounds. So starting light, I think, is Really important when you start. Um, the reason is
You just kind of want to ease into fitness things. Right. It's like you don't want to do too much too soon because that's when problems can happen. Not to mention, if you're the first time you ever go out with a weighted backpack, it feels like a death march. You're probably not going to do it again. You won't enjoy it. So by starting light you can be like, Okay, I've kind of worked my way into this, I know how it feels.
it's not entirely comfortable, but I can do it and then you can add more weight from there. To answer your question about back pain and injuries, I think it's case specific and I would of course defer to the doctor uh working with a individual. But I will say, um, Stu McGill, who's a back health expert up in Canada. one tool that he uses to rehab the spines of some of his um injuries cases that he uh sees.
is he does have them ruck with a weight in a backpack. And that seems to help um some of those patients.'Cause it kinda gives your spine this light, sort of like decompresses things, gives it some like light motion and that seems to lead good things to happen. But again Ask your doctor. The other uh argument in favor of the backpack versus the the vest. uh has to do with
breath, right? Like this is something that that that Kelly and Juliette Starret talk a lot about. Like if you first of all, these vests, especially if there's a lot of weight on them, not great for women, right? Like this is this is not really m gonna work for them. Um but beyond that It's constricting the chest cavity in a way that is impeding uh the body's ability to, you know, breathe freely. Yeah.
I'm a founding member of a brand called Walkfly that's uh makes Wait Fest. They're coming out in end of February. I went I went to the website, I didn't see any gear. It was about it was like a program. Yeah, the gear will be out in uh end of February. So then we'll start populating it then. Um but we have a weight vest.
that avoids that issue. We've cut it so it's not gonna be the weight isn't gonna be on your chest hanging off there. So it's um that makes it good for women. It also makes it better for anyone'cause Weight isn't on your chest constricting your breathing. Cause when you do put in some of the more military style ones that you see with weight vests, where you have a plate on the front. Plate on the back. Yeah, having a bunch of weight right over your rib cage can make it harder to breathe.
Not to mention, it makes it so sweat can't do its job if you start to get hot because sweat needs works by evaporative cooling, right? So if you're not getting if you're like putting a bunch of steel over your sweat, it's not gonna evaporate, you're gonna overheat. So Um, to that point, I think that's where a backpack is helpful because it keeps the weight off your chest, or a weight vest where the weight isn't compressing your chest, more or less.
It also removes all barriers to entry. I mean, pretty much everyone has a backpack, right? Like you can go buy your fancy you know, rucksack or whatever, but uh you can just, you know Put a little bit of weight in your backpack and you're good to go. Yeah, that's one of the things that I love about this is
You don't need a membership. You don't need to go buy a bunch of stuff. If you have shoes that you can walk in and a backpack around the house and something that weighs something, you can start. It's like that wordsworth quote, to begin, begin. You could literally pause this episode right now and probably find everything you need, um, to do it. And I just love that about it. Um Makes it just really universal for everyone. Kids can do it.
My mom who's in her seventies. I mean kids are already doing it. They're you know, they're wearing backpacks all all day with lots of books in well, I don't know. They used to have books in them. Now it's all digital. It's not which brings me to this question around Um the diff like walking with weight can mean many things, right? Like is there
uh something specific about like we talked about, you know, the what happens when you have it on your back, but you could be, you know, carrying bags in each arm, right? Is there is there Value in that? Is that different? Is that similar? Like, is there an argument to do that instead? Like I and I'm also thinking about like
You know, Cam Haynes, he like when he has people on his podcast, he makes them like go up this mountain and carry like big rocks and stuff like that. You know, they're they're carrying them in front of them. They're not putting them on their back. Right. Each will impact uh you differently? I think you should so I think w throwing weight in a backpack and going for a walk or throwing on a weight list if you have one.
is like kind of the foundation. But I do think that there is a case to be made that if you're working out at a gym or you're outside or whatever, to find different ways to carry items. Like when you shift the weight all the way to the front, it's going to change the musculature that's worked. Um, if you're carrying things at your side, you're taxing your grip, you're taxing your core strength. There's a lot of different carrying exercises you do. I did a Substack article about this that was like
eleven different ways to carry weight or something like that. And I kind of break down the benefits of each of them. But to me, like kind of practical takeaway um for people listening is You know, go out and do your long walks with your pack or your weight vest or whatever you're doing. But if you're strength training in the gym, Something like farmers carries or suitcase carries.
Or if there's a sandbag in the gym and you just walk with it in front of you for a few sets, you can go a little bit heavier. Um, I think that's really beneficial too. It does a lot of really good things for the core. Um and it's also really practical.
Like you actually have to pick up stuff and carry it in real life. You know, whereas like a bar like a dumbbell curl life skill. Yeah, it's like dumbbell curls like how many how often do you actually do that? You know, you you don't. I'm not saying don't do it, but I'm just saying like this is actually Things that will train you to deal with the stuff that life through. And they're they're compound movements. Yeah.
For the beginner, I'm assuming that most people who listen or or watch this podcast are at least interested in fitness, probably have some modest level of fitness at a at a base level. But like any new thing, Less is more in the beginning, so start with ten percent of your body weight. Do your walk, right? There's no set distance here. No. Right. Do what feels manageable for you.
Um, is there anything that people should be uh conscious of regarding their posture and how to hold themselves? I know that some of these rucksacks uh will have they'll have like chest straps and also maybe around the waist as well, like that are intended to kind of stabilize this weight. Is that important? How do you think about that? Well I think about it two ways. I mean I think one If you can just start with the backpack you have at home.
That's probably the right answer in the beginning. And then if you enjoy it and you feel like you're benefiting from it, I think you probably will. then upgrading to gear that has the hip belt and the little chest sternum strap can be useful. The point of those is that it just distributes the load uh around your body more than just entirely on your shoulders. So the hip, the hip belt.
puts the load on your hips, which are gonna be more powerful. So if people have done long backpacking trips, uh, they know that like the hip belt is priceless. Mm-hmm. Now if you're using a weight that isn't That's significant. Like, yeah, it'll help a little bit, but like your shoulders are gonna be fine. I think when it comes to posture, it's just like, just try and walk as you normally would. You don't want to be a little
way too far forward, that uh suggests you have too much weight. Um, but it's also okay to be tipping forward slightly because that's what your body naturally does when you put a load on the back. What about footwear? Uh it seems to me, or at least in in my limited experience of of of of doing this.
that the more weight that you that you put on the more important the footwear becomes because if you're wearing like a a high stack like running shoe, uh, you're setting yourself up, especially if you're on a a dynamic trail for like rolling your ankle or, you know, falling, right? You want a a more kind of like stable sold type of shoe for this. Like is there something specific that that that you prefer or how do you think about this? First I'll say it's probably
A good idea to avoid really minimalist shoes when you are uh walking with weight. There was a study, it was a military study. Uh, one thing is that's interesting about all this uh research I did for this book is a lot of the research comes from the military because it rucking is like the fundamental form of training for um soldiers. And so they've been studying it for years and just now the sort of more mainstream um research institutions are catching up.
But there's a study that basically took um a group of cadets, half of them had effectively normal running shoes that are, you know, just sort of stable with a little bit of d with some drop, um with some arch, and the other half got minimalist running shoes. and they had them ruck for a while. I can't remember the exact um timeline. It was either like, you know
four, eight, twelve weeks, something like that. And then they track their injury rates and the cadets that had the minimal issues had a significantly higher risk of injury. That's because when you're putting weight on your back, your feet are having to do a lot more work. There's just more that needs to happen. So if you have a shoe that has some drop, some support, that takes some of that stress off of your feet and can lower your injury risk. So I tell people
Like with shoes, it's kind of what do you think is comfortable? You know, find something with some stability, find something that feels comfortable. Um, to your point. Maybe not something that's on like a super high platform if you're on a trail. But a lot of it honestly does just come down to comfort. But I would I would say like don't try this ship barefoot at first. Yeah, but like I wanna go in all extreme from the get go.
It's my wiring. That's why I'm injured. That's why I got spinal fusion surgery. Here's what we'll do. I'll I'll create a plan to set you back another two years after this and we'll discuss you. We'll go we'll go Perfect barefoot. Right when I'm about to be able to like, you know, return to normalcy. Like just cut me off at the knees. Things were going so well and then I did a podcast. I know. You know. It's crazy how
ha the rise in popularity in this. Like it it it's all down to you. I mean you're the you're the mouthpiece on this whole thing. Like you've set in motion like this domino effect and um I think participation in rucking is up something like forty percent in recent years and there's a been a hundred and fifty percent surge in social media engagement around this, which is nuts, right? Mm-hmm.
And you're patient zero for this whole thing. I would say it's weird. Um Because I think w where it started and I'm not Yeah, I'm kind of one of those people. I'm just like, I don't wanna I definitely don't want to take credit because there's a lot, you know, I think what happened is that. There was already people who had rocking companies and things like that. Um it's kinda niche. I wrote the comfort crisis. I had a chapter that was at the back of the book that
was about Rucking and had information about Rucking. For whatever reason, it resonated with people. The right people read it who had platforms like you. And they had me on and that spread the word and they started doing it, and it just sort of had this like amplification effect. The craziest thing.
is when I will be in my neighborhood in Las Vegas and I see someone walking around with like a weighted pack or a weight vest and I see them all the time now. The other day I saw more people doing that than I did running. You're like, That's awesome. Yeah. Like real world impact. That's awesome. Because those people are doing because I don't maybe they maybe they weren't doing anything. I think one of the things that I have loved is that
I've got a lot of people who say I don't like to run or I got injured running. So I was doing this sort of like gym cardio. I hated that too. I was on the elliptical, but this is the thing. that I can finally do that gets me outdoors, that makes me feel good, that has helped me lose weight, that has improved my fitness, that has X, Y, Z. And that's awesome. That's like the coolest thing ever. You know, I get messages from people.
From women who have walking groups who are, you know, in their seventies and they're like, Yeah, we started putting on these packs when we read the comfort crisis and we love it. You know, we're called the mother ruckers or whatever. And you're just like, Hell yeah. The mother ruckers. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. But like like I said though, it doesn't It doesn't happen unless there's people like you as well who are willing to talk to me.
then that gets amplified and it goes, you know, it's like a big network effect really. That's cool. I mean, the older I get, my fitness goals are really around, you know, kind of just longevity and being like adventure ready. Like I I I don't need to go do any kind of crazy thing anymore. I I did that and I learned what I needed to learn. I don't need to continue to tap that well. And in the wake of this surgery it's just like I wanna be sound in mind, body, spirit a as best as I can.
and, you know, I I'm gonna turn sixty in the fall and you know, I need to think about these things differently than than I ever have. I can't expect to recover the way that I used to. And uh, you know, I just want to be able to, you know, enjoy my life for as long as possible and, you know, experience the breadth of experiences that are available to me.
And things like swimming and rucking that are, you know, gentler on the body but also producing the same, you know, these these fitness effects are, you know, becoming increasingly more important to me. Yeah. I think it's like What exercise can you do in twenty years? This is probably the one you should be doing now. Sure. Your intensity.
Might be different. But I'm kinda wired the same way where I've, you know, gone out and done things that definitely took a toll. And um now I'm kinda s I don't know if I'm totally done with that, unfortunately. Um but I am starting to think of like I notice myself making different decisions about how much weight am I going to take when I do this ruck? Do I really want to do that lifting exercise? Like what is is there a safer alternative that I could do?
Do I need to end this weight workout with some finisher that brings me to the cusp of death. I'm like, no, I'll I'll I'll probably be okay. I'm thinking a little more long term. I do think one of the things I love about walking with weight is there's uh I think it's has a lot of social components in the sense that I could go for a walk with my mom, who's 70, and I could take say 35 pounds, 40 pounds. She could take 10. We would both get a workout.
that's gonna be challenging for us, but not soul crushing, and along the way we can have a conversation. You know, I couldn't run with my mom. I couldn't cycle with my mom. I could go just walk alone with my mom, that'd be fine, but by adding the pack now we're both getting a little more out of it. Um I'm friends with have you ever had John Deloney on the podcast? Mm mm. Okay.
He's got a great podcast. Um he's with the Ramsey Network, a relationship guy. Uh Doctor. I should call him Doctor John Deloney. I'll give him his credit for all those years he spent spent in school. He's talked ab about on his podcast how He always felt like, I need to work out. I need to work out. You know, he's got kind of that wiring that you and I do.
But then he would feel like he was giving up family time because he needed to work out. And so when he would get that family time, he'd be sitting in his head going, man, I've skipped that workout. Yeah. Damn me. And he realized, you know what, I can just throw on a pack. And my wife and I can go out and go for a two hour walk. Now all of a sudden I'm getting this time to connect with my wife, but I'm also getting in a workout because I've got this pack on. We can still have a conversation.
And it's allowed him to get in those workouts while still accomplishing these other social aspects. And I think that's awesome. I've been thinking a lot about my relationship to my own creature comforts and also to uh my relationship with being outside of my comfort zone. And one of the things that I've recognized and acknowledged about myself is that many of these things that are considered outside of my comfort zone have become my comfort zone. Like I would much rather
go out and like train all day or do a crazy race, then do what is truly uncomfortable for me. Like stare into my wife's eyes and tell her all my fears or, you know, like like go to go to a very intense, you know, kind of
Therapy retreat or something like that. You know what I mean? Like your comfort zone morphs. And I think the problem with someone like myself, like an endurance an like oh, an ultra endurance athlete, is that Like you go and you do these things and there's a lot of external validation that comes with that and everybody's like, Oh, he's so far outside of his comfort zone and it's like, yeah, but
Am I? You know what I mean? And then you you end up staying there. And then it becomes a a a very comfortable zone for you. And I don't know that there's enough. conversation around that, you know, it's you can get stuck and then it becomes an impediment to your growth potential as a human, you know, in in in all aspects of like mind, body, spirit, well being.
Do you think about this? Like what is your perspective on that? As somebody who like me is is prone to these extremes and likes to explore them. I will say I think I've had the same experience that you do. I can hear a little bit of myself in there where it's like You wanna go on a forty five day hike? Yeah. You know, it's yeah, it's gonna be really hard, but like I assume I can probably manage it. And I kind of love that zone where it's like,
Hey, do you want to go on a meditation retreat for a day? And I'm like, phew That's gonna be I don't know about that. You know, we're talking twenty four hours. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Or do you want to go have dinner with the neighbors? And I'm like What the hell am I gonna say? You know, it's like that I think you're totally on to something. I wrote about um I had someone one of my subsec people, because I write about Masogi a lot on that and
They were like, well, I ran a marathon, and that was my Masogee. I finished it, and then I did a fifty miler. Then I did a hundred miler. Like, do I just keep going two hundred th I'm like, well, it sounds like you're good on the running. Sounds like you've kind of accomplished that. I think the question is, you know, what what is that thing that you fear?
That's really out of your comfort zone. Because it sounds like that the running thing has become the comfort zone for that person, even though it is going to be uncomfortable to your point. And so how can you start to sort of dabble in that? And I struggle with that for sure. But I'm
I'm trying to be better. I've always been kind of like a social hermit and I realize I need to get out a little more and so I've started to connect with people in Vegas and do things like that. And I will say at first I was like, Why am I doing this? What am I gonna talk about? But uh but then it's like you give that enough time and you sit there and then all of a sudden the m the magic starts to happen, you know? But marinating in that and and really trying to get honest with yourself.
uh is to realize uh how uh you know astute we can be at like lying to ourselves. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I'm doing this, you know what I mean? When you get down to brass tacks and you're and and you really do like a a fearless inventory on your motivations, like are you running towards something or are you running away from something? And I think you know, the litmus test question is really like what are you avoiding? You know,'cause
Every choice you make is on some level an attempt to avoid something else, right? And so getting clear on the things that you're most prone to avoid. Is a pretty good um bellwether for, you know, where your comforts are and where your discomforts are. Yeah. I had a friend who's worked with a lot of people getting sober and he told me. All these people I've helped, all of them, it all just comes down to
People don't want to be alone and they want to be loved. That's what it all comes down to. And I feel like if you start to look at what you're avoiding there for me at least. There's a lot of times an underlying fear about rejection that I'm gonna be alone, that I'm not gonna be loved, testing that. when I can, when I'm brave enough, uh, has been I think has been useful for me. Doesn't always go perfectly, but I sure but I think it's um you know, and and like look, sometimes you have to
That is like an act of getting out of your comfort zone and forcing your hand. Like sometimes you just gotta get into position where things might be scary to learn this sort of greater truth. Yeah. Getting out of my physical comfort zone is so much easier than getting out of my emotional comfort zone. And, you know, I will go do all of those things.
Because on some level, the kind of approval that is baked into that serves that need to feel loved. You know what I mean? Whereas if you allow yourself to be emotionally vulnerable in a in a risky situation. you're risking that that love, right? Like you you you're not sure how that's gonna play out. Yeah. And that's
for me at least, and I think probably for a lot of people, like more uncomfortable than like setting the alarm a half an hour earlier or like making sure you go to the gym. You know, these these sorts of things that we tend to associate as you know, being outside your comfort zone type of behaviors and activities. Yeah, I think so. And I think sometimes like when people begin to
for lack of a better term, clean up their life when things like exercise or whatever it might be get adopted. Um, it definitely helps, but at a certain p point if it sort of keeps getting pushed, it can be its own sort of escape. Sure. I feel like we, you know, you and I ha are are blessed with tools that allow us to recognize that in ourselves because of because of recovery.
Because I'll use anything compulsively as a as a means to not feel or check out. You know, it can be anything, literally. This this entire podcast, I've s I've made this joke many times before, is like it's a ruse to avoid writing or having to do other things, you know what I mean? Um So I guess the point I'm making is that comfort zones and discomfort come in in a complexity of of colors and shades, right? And and developing an astuteness and awareness of that
I think can be a powerful tool to think about the decisions and the behaviors that you're engaging with in your life. Yeah. I think you're spot on with that. How's the recovery going? It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Got a good group of guys in Vegas. Wonderful group. I'm definitely the least tattooed among the group. But I feel I still feel home. Um yeah, it's good man. It's you know, it's a everyday and just
Peeling the onion, if you will. You have ups and downs. Um, I like to kind of compare it since I got sober to life kind of being like the stock market. Some days it spikes, some days it goes down, but if you pull back in the long arc of time, since I got sober, that line has just gone crazy up over time. You don't have the the the spikes that you had when you were when you were out there though. You know, it's like
Like it's much it's a much you know, the the spectrum of ups and downs is much more compressed. Yeah. Lows aren't as low. For sure. For sure. Um for me I've had to kind of like relearn how to have fun and how to Just like let off. 'Cause for me drinking was like that's what made me feel comfortable and like I could connect with another person totally, you know? It's like if you just put me in a smoky bar that plays George Jones And there's a bartender who's gonna keep that place open all night.
That was like heaven to me. All was right with the world. Mm-hmm. And so when that goes away, then it's like, well, where the hell do I find that? Turns out it's a lot harder to find that. by doing all the internal work, but I do think it gets deeper and it's more interesting. That's for me. What's been your experience? Um Yeah, over the long stretch of time it's just been, you know, an upward trajectory. Um, but it's not a linear thing, you know, a at all. And uh I've gone through
phases of of of kind of being detached from it and phases of being really plugged in. Uh and I've had, you know, I've had I've had every variety of experience in it and I wouldn't I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know. Um it is like the most you know, I I consider, you know, my sobriety the most important thing because without that I don't have anything and and And I'll vacillate in how plugged in I am to
the program and to the people. Um But always in my mind, I never doubt that I need it or that I'm like over it or healed or cured. uh and as simple and as annoying as So many of those slogans and the steps and the tools can be. There's a vastness to it. They have the capacity to kind of handle everything. And um there's still, you know, like there's it it's still the primary blueprint. for for how I live.
Yeah. Every day. And uh same here. And yeah, you know, I can be misanthropic, you know, like not as social as I as I was back then, but I'm okay with that too. And my priorities in life are different. Yeah. So Yeah, that's that's about where I am. What are like your daily non negotiables?
Pretty simple. I write every day. No matter what. Yeah, no matter what. Luckily I'm a I have a weird sleep schedule where I'll fall asleep at eight and wake up at like three thirty. And so I have I do that too. I did that today. Did you? Awesome. Your publisher will love hearing that. And so I have four hours of writing before things start to happen. And I love that time. Just like me, the dog sleeping, coffee, and I can just kind of like zone in and figure things out.
On like I wrote on Christmas morning. You know, I was at three thirty A. M. on Christmas morning and wife and family woke up at, you know, seven thirty. I'd gotten in four hours of writing. Like, there's no better way to spend a Christmas to me. Like people th sound it's like work, it's like No, that's not like yes, that's how I make a living. But it's also how I live.
You know, that's kind of one of the things that really makes me feel alive is like getting despite the hell of it, it's like you get the right sentence, you get the right thing to flow, you connect the thing and it's just like bam, this is awesome. Um so that's I would say my non negotiable. And then I rest of the I mean I try and exercise every day. It doesn't always happen. I'm pretty soft on myself. Nah, I used to be like hard on myself if I missed a workout or I would like
inserted at a time that was selfish. You know, there's shit going on and I'm like, I gotta go work out. My wife has to deal with the dog or who's going crazy or whatever it might be or some other thing. And I think I'm better at realizing, you know what, you're gonna survive if you don't do this bike workout for forty five minutes. You'll be fine. What about you? I mean it's similar. I think the the maybe the difference for me is um I mean
recovering from this surgery has has reframed my kind of obsessive relationship with fitness'cause I've been forced to not do anything other than walk. Uh walk without weight, uh, I should say. Now I'm slowly emerging from that and I have this opportunity to redefine my relationship to fitness, which is sort of exciting. I'm actually gonna have
Um, Kelly Starrett come down and teach me all sorts of stuff that I need to learn. You know. And and I have this unique opportunity to kind of rebuild my body from the ground up. Which is exciting, uh,'cause it's like wiping the slate clean. Like I'm completely starting over. Like forget about everything I've done. Like how do I stand properly? How do I walk? You know, like
beginner's mind with all of that, which is exciting. But one of the things that challenges me is that I am I'm a morning person also and that's when I am my most creative, but it's also the time that uh I really want to work out. You know? Like once you know, once I start writing or the work day starts. it's it's it's much more difficult to make sure that I, you know, get that physical exercise in.
Um so these two things often are at loggerheads with each other, like should I work out, should I write? You know, and so I'm I'm I ha I get decision fatigue around that. And now I'm just Okay, I'm gonna work out first, but I'm gonna I I'm restricting the amount of time. Mm-hmm.'Cause it left to my own devices. I'll just I'll go too long or whatever. Uh and that way I'm not exhausting myself before I have to sit down and write and I'm also not
using up a ton of time and if I wake up at three thirty in the morning it's totally fine. Yeah. I'm I have a book due in mid March. And so I'm in that phase where it's like everything has to be writing. Um, I'll always write in the morning, but I am thinking about starting to do some workouts in the morning once I get the book done. Can you say anything about the book or is that under wraps? I listened to a podcast um from a wise author.
the other day and he said he was working on a book and he didn't want to talk about it too much because the creativity Go somewhere, the Muse? I think it's best to lock it down. Yeah, it was you talk about it when it was done. Oh, did I say that? I will say I've I've shared what I'm working on with a few people, but not publicly. And when I'm just asked by, you know, a random person, it's like no, I don't
'Cause you you then it feels like you've done something and you haven't done it like I'll talk about it when it's done. Well, I do feel like sometimes you don't know what the book is until the book is like done and you've gone through it.
And you go, here's oh, here's what this for me anyways, here's what this book is really about and here's how we need to get it more aligned with that. So if I start talking, I mean it's it's definitely focused on mindset in a way, and I did this long hike to sort of tell That story. So I got that. narrative down and all those pieces, but like kind of landing the plane on the core insights of the book is still in the process. We're still in the air. Yeah.
You're prolific on Substack. You've built a a a tremendous community there. Like I think you have a hundred thousand people, leap more than a hundred thousand people there. Um and you're publishing three times a week there? Three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And it's an incredible resource for for anyone who is not familiar the page or the account, I don't know what you call it on Substack. It's called two percent and everything you
Published there is just, you know, it's just value driven, you know. It's not chaff at all. Like it's really well thought out. It's a ton of work, uh, but I love it. I think th the reason I started it is because In the book world, you put out a book, people like it or they don't, whatever, and then three years later you have another book and you don't get like this real time
ability to write about things that are happening in the moment or things that are coming into your mind. Or even when you're writing a book, you have all these ideas that you're like, oh, this is actually really useful, but for whatever reason it just doesn't work in the book. So what do you what do you do with it? Mm-hmm. Um so I started the Substack a few years ago right after I'd finished Scarcity Brain. And um
I love it. It's great. It just gives me an outlet to cover things that I think are interesting and useful to people in the realm of fitness mindsets. general health, um, and the community is awesome. That's what's really cool about it. So we've got like a robust comment section where like I know the people in it now. Yeah. You're like, oh that's that's Sansa, yeah. Oh yeah. And it's great. And I do put I mean, I put a lot of work into it because Substack for people who aren't familiar. Um
it does allow you to put a paywall up. And so I send out every Monday, that one's always free, it always will be. Uh Wednesday and Friday, you'll eventually hit a paywall. And so for me the question is always, would I pay for this article? And if the answer is no, and I'm cheap, so there's a high bar the answer is no, I gotta go back to the drawing board and make sure that this is valuable. So yeah, I do I mean I'm still doing in journalist mode.
Reading tons of studies, talking to different sources across the board. But I love it. It's it's awesome. I wasn't sure if it was gonna work out, but it's worked out rolling. I think it's working out pretty well. Yeah, it's good. I mean there can't be very many sub stackers that are like doing better than you. I mean you've really you're hitting a home run over there and you're just delivering incredible value. I appreciate it. Ma'am glad you like it.
As we kind of like wrap this up, uh I wanna make sure that people understand that um walk with weight, you also you have like a lot of practical advice in there in terms of like gear and also like training programs. Like it it It's part kind of manifesto, but also kind of practical guide. So if people are curious or interested, it y you're literally giving them everything they need to
understand the value proposition as well as like the how to aspect of it. Yeah. I mean the book really did come out of the fact that I wrote that chapter in the comfort crisis on rucking. Rucking sort of took off I became sort of a go to resource and I started getting all sorts of questions from people all over the world about it. And I've just sort of taken the questions I get most frequently and answered those all. What weight should I start with?
What if the weight's too heavy? What sort of shoes should I I mean, just all this tactical stuff, but then to your point I sort of open with I like how you use the word manifesto. I hadn't heard that one on that book and that's good. A case for walking with weight and why it why it is unique to humans, what its benefits are. And so yeah, hopefully people find it useful.
There are uh they're not races, but like organized rucks now, like long distance you can go to these places and, you know, do it as a gro I I I would imagine that's gonna continue to grow. Yeah, I've never done one. Um But I imagine they'll probably increase in popularity. I mean for me though the magic is like seeing the
You know, the lady in my neighborhood in the white vest. Sure. Walking around. It's like that's awesome. All right. Well, any final thoughts for people to take home with them as they start to think about incorporating this into their life? I do not, but I will say
If you need me or have a question, I am on Substack. People can DM me. You can write questions in the comments, and I will do my absolute best to answer them. If it's a rucking specific question, it's probably going to be answered in the book. Um if it's a question about anything else, happy to happy to fill it. Awesome, man. Well uh thank you.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it, man. Super fun to see you. And you know, once I have uh sign off from the doc, uh I'm gonna root you out and uh force you to go out on some kind of situation with me somewhere. I like a good situation. Especially with you. That'll be good. Anyway, um thanks Michael. Appreciate it. Cheers. Yeah, thank you. Peace.
All right everybody, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I really do hope that you To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed. Visit today's episode page at Rich Roll.com where you will find the entire As well as my books. Support the podcast the easiest. It's free actually. All you gotta do is subscribe to the show on Apple. Yeah. Leave a review or drop. Sharing your show. with friends or on social media.
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