With the summer winding down, I’m going to start concentrating on strength again and less taxing conditioning. Would rucking be a good way to make up some of the difference and keep my fitness levels up? I would be using a 30 pound plate in my ruck, and the pace would be between a 16-17 minute mile.
For some added info, My total weekly lifting totals about 5 hours, and I would still log between 2-4 miles of running a week with some short and quick conditioning workouts consisting of burpees / push-ups / kb swings etc.
An interesting question that I admittedly don’t have a lot strong feelings about. Nevertheless, I will throw some words at this and see what sticks.
Rucking is definitely an activity that could be used to meet or exceed the aerobic training component of the physical activity guidelines, though it is not especially low fatigue or transferrable to other activities. In its defense, I think most conditioning types produce mode-specific adaptations so this isn’t unique to rucking.
I think you’d be better off by doing a variety of conditioning modes that you prefer. Rowing and cycling are probably the least fatiguing, but if you like rucking…ruck on, man.
Thanks for the response jordan! That’s basically what I would be using it for , meeting conditioning guidelines. I do throw rowing in my routine sometimes ( maybe once a month honestly) and biking has been something I’ve done all summer, nothing crazy, usually 10-12 miles on flat land through parks.
Just to add my anecdotal $.02… I tried rucking for conditioning but ultimately found it too difficult to get in the appropriate heart rate range. Rucking on relatively flat ground with 30 lbs and at a ~16:00/mile pace only kept my HR in the 100-110 bpm range. I started using hills which certainly helped get my HR up, however, it’s a) not nearly as enjoyable to me and b) you have to go back downhill, which allows your HR to drop so you have to go back uphill pretty soon to keep it from dropping too much. So now there’s a potential logistical problem if you’re limited on hills, because you have to go up the same hill(s) over and over. I enjoyed it originally, but once I realized it wasn’t hard enough I had a hard time making it harder but still enjoyable.
I suppose I could’ve tried simply going faster instead, but that would have been tough to do without actually running.