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What exercise can you do in 20 years is probably the one you should be 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 rucking?
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 evolved to carry weight for distance.
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 and that's awesome.
Rucking will burn more calories per mile than running.
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 going to talk about your new book, Walk With Weight.
We're going to be very rucking focused, but I want to 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, Las Veganite, Yeah.
Uh, his name is Alex Honnold.
You might've 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?
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 just thought it was 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 kind of 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 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 25 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?
He lives in Vegas.
He's the big ruck guy.
I just got his contact info.
I met a mutual friend of his who was like, you guys should connect because you're both in Vegas.
And I was on his mailing list for a bit.
I was like reading his whatever, you know, his content.
I think I read his book maybe.
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 somebody doesn't exercise in other ways, it's probably better to do that than nothing.
But I'm kind of like, why not take off the pack?
It's more of an older guy longevity thing, right?
Why not run or like run gently or I don't know.
Or if nothing else 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.
But I'm like, why go downhill with weight on if you don't have to?
All right, next question.
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 climber. animal rocker in the entire world and that's because humans are unique in that we evolved 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 and so now i'll have to text him and say this came up 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 i'll climb a rock if he carries a weight for the sake of carrying a weight right Yeah, let's get you two guys together and you can sort of cross-pollinate your passions.
I love it.
Yeah, he seems awesome.
On the topic of rucking, before we 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 you know, over time, have kind of shaped humanity.
Is that a fair... Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
Like I said 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.
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 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 because 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.
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 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 later.
And so I think maybe try putting it back in and see what happens.
The evolutionary aspect of this is super interesting.
For many years probably.
You know, with the publication of Born to Run it entered the mainstream consciousness, this idea that we were born to run.
And that tracks back to persistent hunting and all of these things that you're referencing.
You're not completely rewriting that, but you are kind of revisiting it to supplement it with 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 I'm familiar with the Born to Run paper, which was in Nature, I think, in 2004.
It's by this anthropologist, Dan Lieberman.
Then the Born to Run book comes out and it sort of makes this argument that humans evolved for long distance running.
And the reason 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 fell over from heat exhaustion.
And then we would spear them, right?
And this would happen over like 7, 15, 20 miles.
So what makes humans unique is that we can cover those long distances, but really effectively in the heat.
Because 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 them.
Great.
That's how we would hunt an animal.
But then what happens once you actually hunt the animal? you got to carry it back to camp.
It's sort of like the next day, you know, dot, dot, dot, that got missed in that, in that synopsis.
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 ended 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 110, probably 20 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.
You got to bring it back to the village.
Yeah, you got to bring it back to the village.
And so I start kind of thinking, oh, that's kind of 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 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 them.
And I just kind of 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, 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 where 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 because we had to carry them around.
Right?
Humans take a long time to develop compared to other animals.
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 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 rucking, I would say, is walking with weight in a backpack or a weight vest.
Now, I have started to use more of the term walking with weight.
And I'll tell you why that is.
It's because the term rucking came out of the military.
So back about 400 years ago, German hunters were calling the packs that they would hunt with rucksacks.
So that term sort of held for backpacks that would be used for, let's say, rougher pastimes.
You're hunting warfare, whatever it is.
And the military adopted the term to be.
The rucksack was what you kept your 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.
It's just marching with your gear on.
So they started to call it rucking.
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 150 pound backpacks.
You look like a special operator in these vests.
Yeah.
And so I was like, okay, well, that's a little bit of a turnoff 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 walking with weight is something that was pioneered by the mothers.
It's the mothers that are carrying the children and carrying the water on their heads back from the well, and all of this.
I think, a lot of walking with weight.
There's a lot of gratitude and thanks that have to be given to the women and the mothers for this practice or, You know, the fact that it has become part of our humanity, I think.
Totally.
I mean, backpacks or 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 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?
Now you start putting food in them.
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 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.
The first would be injuries.
So the data on running injuries... is all over the place.
There's one famous study that found that 20 to, I believe it's 79% 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 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 30% of your body weight.
Like I use 20% 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'm 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 12 times your body weight in force with every time you land right.
And it's 3x when you're walking.
When you're rucking.
Obviously it's going to 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?
So generally, if you think about it per mile, that's a good way to sort of measure this.
Rucking will burn more calories per mile than running.
So the rate is anywhere from 20 to – you can go all the way up to like 200 more, just depending on what the load and terrain is.
But generally, you will burn 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 three sets of 10 reps and you do eight different exercises, how much time are you actually exercising?
You're like 20 second set.
I'm going to rest for two minutes, another 20 second, like you're not really burning that many calories.
Right.
But you're assuming you're going to, you know, kind of like at least 85 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 lifting is more for strength and muscle rather than calorie burn.
But I just like to point that out because 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 maybe the most underappreciated aspect of it, is the fact that it's putting you out in nature, in a dynamic environment.
And there's not only health benefits to this, physical benefits to this, but also 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 David Reikland.
Awesome dude.
He's basically looked at 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.
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 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 part of our brain that needs to be worked.
And there's evidence from, there was a study, I think it was conducted in the UK.
I'm going to forget the specifics, because I write down all the specifics in the book and then they just go out.
But it looked at about 400 different jobs and it looked at their risk of Alzheimer's and dementia.
And the jobs with the lowest rates of Alzheimer's and dementia were cab drivers and ambulance drivers.
And I 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 for me practically is, if you're going to 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 going to run out on this trail.
I've never been there before.
I'm going to try and find my way.
I'm going to do this loop.
And guess what?
I'm probably going to get lost for a second.
But that's the entire point, because I'm going to 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 in Las Vegas.
I live in Las Vegas.
I know it's in Chinatown.
OK, I can kind of get I know how to get to Chinatown pretty much.
And then I'm going to have to pick up all these cues along the way, rather than just offloading this part of my brain to Google Maps.
And I had to do this, I'll say.
And yeah, this is like it's like, how dare you?
You know, these beautiful navigations in our cars now, you know.
And I had to.
I'll tell you man, for another book I'm working on.
I did this really long through hike 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 got to 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 25 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 because it's just not a part of our brains we work anymore.
And there's something really satisfying about it because you have like a clear mission.
I need to get here.
And I'm going to 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 comeback now.
Maybe they all got lost.
Yeah, maybe they did.
I mean ultra running.
There's certain ultra like the Barclays Marathon has an aspect of that in it where orienteering becomes a big piece.
But And 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 have a little compass and a map and you got to 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.
We're going to go out in 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 process of navigating the outdoors, is that when you're on trails as opposed to roads, you're burning 28 more calories.
Is that true?
So it depends, right?
So that was like an average.
I think that was from a University of Michigan study.
It, 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 28 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 that
I'd be curious to know how that breaks down between the physical exertion aspect of it and just the brainpower required to do that navigation.
My instinct would be that it's much more about the brainpower 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.
Just having to think about what you're doing just makes it so much harder.
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I mean this 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 modern world that we compartmentalize exercise as this other thing that we do.
You know, either before or after you know we're living our life and we do it in practice.
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 that we get from these activities when we're doing them in unbridled nature.
I think so.
Because the gym environments and the treadmill you're controlling, for all these variables that get reinserted when you're outside.
So we talked about, one, the navigation, but two, you're exposing yourself to nature.
And that comes with a lot of psychological benefits.
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 72 degrees, and i think there is a case for getting out and exposing yourself to different temperature swings.
Right, sometimes You want to be a little too hot.
Sometimes you want to be a little too cold because it's like a stimulus that your body has to figure out.
And for me, a lot of it is mindset, too, especially if you're out on a trail or something.
The wilderness.
And nature, to me, has always been the greatest teacher, because it forces you into positions where things are never going to 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 100 degrees out.
And I did that.
Mm-hmm.
I can probably handle this next Zoom meeting that I'm dreading.
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 after is sort of – orthogonal to all of these life hack optimization things that we see these days that people are very into.
How do you think about the distinction or the contrast between life optimization, health optimization, fitness optimization and the true resilience that can't be rushed and has to be earned 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 and my XYZ is.
I can't start my day unless I do my 19-step morning routine.
I that 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.
But I don't think it 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 where 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 them 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.
It's not a strict binary.
I think they have their place, but the point of them is to develop a more intuitive, integrated kind of connection with yourself.
And if you're outsourcing everything to these other things, you're missing that opportunity.
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 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 100s, I could tell you, without looking at a pace clock like, what my split was or what my time was, because you, just you know yourself that well.
And I think these tools are you know, they're just fancy versions of stopwatches 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 a 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 know like oh, I feel this way.
So I know that this is where, you know, my exertion level, 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 danger becomes getting fixated on how the numbers rise and fall each day.
Well, then they become self-predictive.
Yeah, and a lot of the metrics in fitness training, I mean, they're wrong.
They're some degree of wrong.
It depends on what the... number you're looking at on your fitness tracker is.
I play around with a lot of them.
I think that 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 I have one device that I use that tells me my biological age is like 32.
And I have one that tells me I'm 60.
You know what I mean?
So, yeah, don't overinvest too much in those things.
But I do think they're helpful.
And they can be good accountability partners.
And there is value in understanding that 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, No, that's the American tradition.
Everyone just set a New Year's goal.
Yeah, most people aren't going to meet it, but like, who cares?
At least it gives you hope.
There's a sense of hope when you start a practice and some subset of the population will continue that on and they will change.
So I think that New Year's resolutions, having these big goals at the beginning of the year, I think it's great.
Because you probably learn something even if you only do it for a week.
Do you do this yourself?
Well, I will say that my New Year's resolution is to finish this other book I'm working on right now.
You and me both, brother.
I got one.
That's my focus as well.
Yeah.
Now, the good thing is that we are contractually obligated to our New Year's resolution.
It's been made for us.
Yeah.
And if we decide to bail, we got to write a check and hand it back to the publisher.
So 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.
Yeah.
Like a big outdoor task.
So I've got to kind of stay ready for that.
What is it?
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 45 days.
Granted it was for a book.
Um, So we'll see what it is, but it also kind of focuses my training to be thinking more about what's going to 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 going to 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 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, Alright.
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 because that'll help you live longer.
It's like no, not really, You need to be strong enough and have enough muscle because 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 a 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.
Yeah, do hard things.
There's a lot packed into what you just shared.
Essentially, you want to be perpetually adventure ready 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 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 and, 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 on, you don't want to look like a 205 marathoner, right.
Exactly, because when you hand the 205 marathon or the 50 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 and a five-minute marathon.
The bodybuilder who can't walk up the stairs.
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 going to 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.
And then weightlifting.
I think enough that you're maintaining strength and building it.
Usually 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 that stuff.
You don't track any of this stuff.
For me, it obviously is landscape dependent, right?
If you're going up a hill, it's going to be higher.
But I would say if I'm carrying say, 35 pounds around my neighborhood with my dogs, I'm probably low end of zone two, because I take a lot of phone calls and I can have a phone call fine.
Now, if I hit a hill at the same time, I'm going to be like, I might get a little bit breathy.
Yeah.
If the terrain is dynamic and you have enough weight, then you're going to have like a lot of fluctuation in there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This sort of leads us into a discussion around the health span and longevity aspects of rucking that you talk about in your book.
And just on the heels of what you just shared about being super medium.
You don't want to.
You don't want too much muscle.
You need a certain amount of muscle.
Are these ideas in in conflict or is there a parallel here that I'm not seeing?
I would say you want.
So it's kind of like, what are we measuring?
Right.
I mean, if we're just measuring the muscle in itself, it's like OK, but what's the overall end goal here?
To me it's like, it's well, it's be able to live how you want to 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 going to 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?
They tend to be small.
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 going to go out for a run because well, that really sucks, because it pounds my knees, because I have all this extra bulk on me,
Everything has a cost, right?
So to me, I think the answer is, again, I'm going to repeat myself.
But being at a size where you can do endurance work and not suffer, you're not going to be the best.
You're not going to be the 205 marathoner, doing enough strength work that you can do the tasks of everyday life and more, but not having so much of either that now you're sacrificing one for the other.
The ultimate hybrid athlete, like a true hybrid athlete.
Yeah.
People get really interested in like all these different like VO2 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 on that mountain if I gave you a pack?
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 strong.
Also, you had to navigate and figure things out.
That tells me something's working up here in between your skull.
And you've exposed yourself to all these great sites, 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 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, OK, what are we measuring for?
Usually it's like, well, it tells me your endurance is good.
It's like, OK, well, couldn't like a run up a hill do that, too?
Well, it seems a little bit easier to me.
You know, it's just we get a little bit.
It just gets really complicated to me.
So I think 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 20000 bill for something that a hike up a mountain could have told you for free.
Sure.
I mean, this is sort of a test case for the scarcity loop, is it not?
Like we'd much rather focus on the latest supplement or some new study that came out about a margin case.
Like we love these these 1% 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 it is like yeah, maybe no no, 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 an 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.
But the VO2 is just a proxy for all these other things, that there are many different ways you can measure them.
It's like, why do we care about VO2 in the first place?
It's like, well, I want to live long.
Why do you want to live long?
Well, because I want to 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, it tells me you've got your VO2.
You're good to go.
From a healthspan perspective, it's this two-in-one 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 right, but you're also working on your bone density without kind of the jarring aspects of running, cycling.
That kind of overlooks the bone density thing, because you do need some kind of like impact to stimulate that.
What else 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 exercises is going to burn a lot of calories.
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 would say these are small studies.
But there was one that took these Alaskan backcountry hunters.
And it tested their body fat and a bunch of different health markers.
Before they went out for a hunt, they were out in the mountains, I think, for 10 days.
And when you're on a backcountry hunt, you're carrying weight, you're gearing 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 10 pounds, let's say.
You would think that when people lose weight, some of that's going to come from fat, some of that's going to 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 significantly, but just enough.
So I think there is something, almost not to give you 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 back country trips where I'm having to have a heavy pack the whole time.
I'll come back and I'll be anywhere from 10 to 15 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, weigh in for a UFC fight.
So I'm just like ripped.
And so I do think that there's a strong case 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 went back, when I was in editor at Men's Health, that was like can we get a fat loss headline on that magazine?
I don't love this.
Can we just sprinkle some fat loss?
That will always get engagement, no matter what.
Sprinkle some fat loss on there.
Especially in January, but 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.
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.
There's also physical components where these different reflexes get trained, like this sort of neck correct reflex gets trained.
You have babies when their heads tip, they'll pop it back up.
That gets trained.
Grip also tends to get trained.
There's this gripping reflex where they're clinging on to that's getting trained.
Yeah, just all these different good things are happening.
And I think 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 trains.
And today we've shifted that away in a lot of cases, right?
If you're moving across, if you're walking through your neighborhood with kids probably going to 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?
Because it does seem to lead to some good developmental things.
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I love the lived in authenticity of these experiences.
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I want to get into the how of it all.
And to do that, Tyler, can you bring I've got a little show and tell here.
I want to give people some actionable advice 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.
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 like.
You know makes it like 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, And obviously it distributes the weight between your chest and your back.
So there's that.
And then we have these, which you're seeing more and more of.
This is like a lighter weight vest made by a company called Amorfo.
I'm sure there's a bunch of different kinds of these.
That first one is like first responder 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, it looks like a wetsuit.
Like an NFL player 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 this.
And my intuition was always that it would be healthier or better or easier on your body if the weight was evenly distributed.
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 weight 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 backpack.
Now with a weight vest, with it loaded in your front and your back in the research.
Having it loaded that way leads to a more normal walking gait.
So your walking mimics how you would walk unloaded.
So that might lead you to think, oh, well, then that's better.
Because when you have the weight on your back, what happens is you tend to tip slightly forward your torso to sort of like balance the weight, if you will.
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 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 vest 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 400 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 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 wearing them, they're moving, they get tired and they start to slump in this thing and they've got this weight just dragging them down.
Whereas in 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 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 tireder 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 going to start to lean forward, right, to balance that out.
Isn't that when you talk about maintaining a healthy, good posture, isn't that?
Does that become problematic, or are we built to handle that?
I would say for most weights, we're built to handle that.
So, of course, if you had hundreds of pounds in the pack, or say 100, 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 really interesting.
This is something I learned reporting this book, and I was like, wow, that's interesting.
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 pack on your back 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 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 pretty well.
And I think a lot of.
Back issues are tied to a weak core.
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 has to do with the safety of this for people who do have a history with back issues.
And I say this as somebody who's still recovering from, I had spinal fusion surgery. this past May.
So I'm eight months post-surgery and everything is going well.
But those bones take 12 to 18 months to fully fuse.
And so I'm still not able to do anything that's going to compress my spine.
So this is probably something I still have to defer. for a little bit.
But assuming you haven't had spinal fusion surgery and you just maybe you have like a mild or relatively mild kind of chronic back situation, can this be helpful?
Is this going to exacerbate that problem?
Well, I would tell everyone if you're going to try it, definitely ease in.
And I would say that, whether or not you have a back issue, I think one problem is that this is more for men.
I will say but they see rucking, they see military, they go all right, I'm throwing 70 pounds in this pack and I'm going to go for a walk.
It's like, maybe let's lighten that up a little bit.
I tell people to start with, say, 10% 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.
For some people, they might find it way too light and they'll need to add another 10 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 your 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 working with an individual.
But I will say Stu McGill, who's a back health expert up in Canada.
One tool that he uses to rehab the spines of some of his injuries cases that he sees is is he does have them ruck with a weight in a backpack.
And that seems to help some of those patients because it kind of gives your spine this light sort of like decompress the things, gives it some like light motion.
And that seems to lead good things to happen.
But again, ask your doctor.
The other argument in favor of the backpack versus the vest has to do with, Like this is something that Kelly and Juliette Starrett 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 not really gonna work for them.
But beyond that, it's constricting the chest cavity in a way that is impeding the body's ability to breathe freely.
I'm a founding member of a brand called Walkfully that makes weight vests.
They're coming out in end of February.
I went to the website.
I didn't see any gear.
It was like a program.
Yeah, the gear will be out in end of February.
So then we'll start populating it then.
But we have a weight vest that avoids that issue.
We've cut it, so it's not going to be, the weight isn't going to be on your chest hanging off there, so it's um.
That makes it good for women, that also makes it better for anyone, because weight isn't on your chest constricting your breathing.
Because 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 going to evaporate.
You're going to overheat.
So 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 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 to do it.
I just love that about it.
Makes it just really universal for everyone.
Kids can do it.
My mom, who's in her 70s, i mean kids are already doing it.
They're back, you know, they're wearing backpacks all all day with lots of books and well, i don't know, they used to have books in them.
Now it's all digital yeah, 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?
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'm also thinking about, like you know, campaigns.
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 you differently.
I think you should.
So I think throwing weight in a backpack and going for a walk, or throwing on a weight vest 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.
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 11 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 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 farmer's 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.
I think that's really beneficial, too.
It does a lot of really good things for the core, and it's also really practical.
Like you actually have to pick up stuff and carry it in real life.
Yeah.
You know, whereas like a, like a dumbbell curl.
It's a life skill.
Yeah.
It's like dumbbell curls.
Like how many, how often do you actually do that?
You know, 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
Yeah.
And they're, they're compound movements.
Yeah.
For the beginner.
I'm assuming that most people who listen or watch this podcast are at least interested in fitness, probably have some modest level of fitness at a base level.
But like any new thing, less is more in the beginning.
So start with 10% of your body weight.
Do your walk, right?
There's no set distance here.
No.
Right?
Do what feels manageable for you.
Is there anything that people should be conscious of regarding their posture and how to hold themselves?
I know that some of these rucksacks 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.
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 going to be more powerful.
So if people have done long backpacking trips, they know that like the hip belt is priceless.
Now, if you're using a weight that isn't that significant, like yeah, it'll help a little bit, but like your shoulders are going to 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 leaning way too far forward.
That suggests you have too much weight.
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?
It seems to me, or at least in my limited experience of doing this, That the more weight that you put on, the more important the footwear becomes.
Because if you're wearing like a high stack, like running shoe, you're setting yourself up especially if you're on a dynamic trail for like, rolling your ankle or, you know, falling right.
You want a more kind of like stable soled. type of shoe for this?
Like, is there something specific 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 walking with weight.
There was a study, it was a military study.
One thing that's interesting about all this research I did for this book is A lot of the research comes from the military, because rucking is like the fundamental form of training for soldiers.
And so they've been studying it for years.
And just now the sort of more mainstream research institutions are catching up.
But there's a study that basically took a group of cadets.
Half of them had effectively normal running shoes that are just sort of stable with a little bit of – with some drop, 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 timeline.
It was either like – four, eight, 12 weeks, something like that.
And then they track their injury rates.
And the cadets that had the minimalist shoes 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 shit barefoot at first.
Yeah.
But like, I want to 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 create a plan to set you back another two years after this.
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... rise in popularity in this.
So like it's all down to you.
I mean, you're the mouthpiece on this whole thing.
Like you've set in motion like this domino effect.
And I think participation in rucking is up something like 40% in recent years.
And there's been 150% surge in social media engagement around this, which is nuts, right?
And you're patient zero for this whole thing.
I would say it's weird.
Because I think where it started and I'm not, I'm kind of one of those people.
I'm just like I don't want to.
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 rucking companies and things like that.
Um, it's kind of niche.
I wrote the comfort crisis.
I had a chapter that was at the back of the book that was about rocking and had information about rocking.
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.
And you're like, that's awesome.
Yeah.
Like real world impact.
That's awesome.
Because those people are doing it because I don't maybe that 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 XYZ.
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 70s.
And they're like, yeah, we started putting on these packs when we were at 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 I said though, it doesn't happen unless there's people, like you as well, who are willing to talk to me.
And then that gets amplified and it goes, you know, it's like a big network effect, really.
Yeah, it'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 don't need to go do any kind of crazy thing anymore.
I did that and I learned what I needed to learn.
I don't need to continue to tap that well anymore.
And in the wake of this surgery, it's just like I want to be sound in mind, body spirit, as best as I can.
And, you know, I'm going to turn 60 in the fall.
And, you know, I need to think about these things differently than I ever have.
I can't expect to recover the way that I used to.
And 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 rocking 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 20 years is probably the one you should be doing now.
Sure, your intensity, Sure.
Might be different.
But I'm kind of wired the same way where I've, you know, gone out and done things that definitely took a toll.
And now I'm kind of I don't know if I'm totally done with that, unfortunately.
But I am starting to think of like.
I noticed myself making different decisions about how much weight am I going to take when I do this rock.
Do I really want to do that lifting exercise?
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 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.
I think it 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 going to be challenging for us, but not soul crushing.
And along the way, we can have a conversation.
I couldn't run with my mom.
I couldn't cycle with my mom.
I could go just walk along with my mom.
That'd be fine.
But by adding the pack, now we're both getting a little more out of it.
I'm friends with, have you ever had John Deloney on the podcast?
Okay.
He's got a great podcast.
He's with the Ramsey Network, a relationship guy, a doctor.
I should call him Dr. John Deloney.
I'll give him his credit for all those years he spent in school.
He's talked 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.
Damn me.
And he realized you know what?
I can just throw on a pack, 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 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 train all day or do a crazy race than do what is truly uncomfortable for me, like stare into my wife's eyes and tell her all my fears, or go to a very intense therapy retreat or something like that.
You know what I mean?
Your comfort zone morphs.
And I think the problem with someone like myself, like an endurance 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 end up staying there and then it becomes a very comfortable zone for you.
And I don't know that there's enough conversation around that.
You know you can get stuck and then it becomes an impediment to your growth potential as a human.
You know, 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 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 want to go on a 45 day hike?
Yeah.
You know, yeah, it's going to 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, that's going to, I don't know about that.
You know, we're talking like go to the dark cave retreat place.
Right.
Or do you want to go have dinner with the neighbors?
And I'm like, what the hell am I going to say?
You know, it's like, that's, I think you're totally onto something I wrote about.
Um, I had someone, one of my subsect people, cause I write about my Sogi a lot on that.
And They were like, well, I ran a marathon and that was my Misogi.
I finished it.
And then I did a 50 miler.
Then I did a hundred miler.
Like, do I just keep going 200?
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 That's really out of your comfort zone.
Cause 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 realized 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 going to talk about?
But then it's like you give that enough time and you sit there and then all of a sudden the magic starts to happen.
You know,
But marinating in that and really trying to get honest with yourself is to realize how astute we can be at 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 really do a fearless inventory on your motivations.
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, because 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 bellwether for 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 going to be alone, that I'm not going to be loved.
Testing that when I can, when I'm brave enough, has been, I think has been useful for me.
It doesn't always go perfectly, but I think it's you know, 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 got to 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 risky situation, you're risking that love right.
Like you're not sure how that's going to 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,
It definitely helps.
But at a certain 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 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 means to not feel or check out.
You know, it can be anything, literally.
This entire podcast.
I've made this joke many times before.
It's like it's a ruse to avoid writing or having to do other things.
You know what I mean?
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.
Yeah, I feel I still feel home 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.
I like to kind of compare it since I got sober to life, kind of being like the stock market some days it spikes and 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.
Um, for me I've had to kind of like relearn how to have fun and how to just like let off, because 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, 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?
Yeah, over the long stretch of time, it's just been, you know, an upward trajectory.
But it's not a linear thing, you know, at all.
And 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.
But always in my mind, I never doubt that I need it or that I'm like over it or healed or cured.
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 they're still, you know, like there's.
It's still the primary blueprint for, for how I live every day.
And uh 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 have a weird sleep schedule where I'll fall asleep at 8 and wake up at like 3.30.
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.
Like I wrote on Christmas morning.
You know I was up three, 30 AM on Christmas morning and wife and family woke up at you know seven, 30.
I'd gotten in four hours of writing.
Like there's no better way to spend a Christmas to me.
Like people say 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 that.
I mean, i try and exercise every day.
It doesn't always happen.
I'm pretty soft on myself now.
I used to be like hard on myself if i missed a workout or i would like insert it 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 going to survive.
If you don't do this bike workout for 45 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 reframed my kind of obsessive relationship with fitness, because I've been forced to not do anything other than walk, walk without weight, 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 going to have...
Kelly Starrett come down and teach me all sorts of stuff that I need to learn.
Awesome.
And I have this unique opportunity to kind of rebuild my body from the ground up, which is exciting because 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 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 I really want to work out, you know, like once.
You know, once I start writing or the workday starts, it's it's it's much more difficult to make sure that I get that physical exercise in.
So these two things often are at loggerheads with each other, like should I work out, should I write?
And so I get decision fatigue around that.
And now I'm just solving it by saying okay, I'm going to work out first, but I'm restricting the amount of time because, left to my own devices, I'll go too long, or whatever.
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 3.30 in the morning, it's totally fine.
Yeah.
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'm thinking about starting to do some workouts in the morning once i get the book done.
Can you?
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.
Oh, did I say that?
I will say 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 is like, no, I don't.
Because 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 the 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 I think you have 100,000 people, more than 100,000 people there.
And you're publishing three times a week there.
Three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
And it's an incredible resource for anyone who is not familiar.
The page or the account, I don't know what you call it on Substack, it's called 2%.
And everything you publish there, it's just value driven.
It's not chaff, ton of work, but I love it.
I think 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 do with it?
So I started the Substack a few years ago, right after I'd finished Scarcity Brain.
And 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 mindset, 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 sounds like, oh yeah.
And it's great.
And I do put I mean I put a lot of work into it because sub stack for people who aren't familiar, 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.
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 got to 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 awesome.
I wasn't sure if it was going to work out, but it's worked out.
I think it's working out pretty well.
Yeah, it's good.
I mean, there can't be very many substackers 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.
I'm glad you like it.
As we kind of like wrap this up, I want to make sure that people understand that 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's.
It's part kind of manifesto but also kind of practical, 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 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 group.
I would imagine that's going to continue to grow.
Yeah, I've never done one.
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 weight vest 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 that.
Awesome, man.
Well, uh, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it, man.
Super fun to see you.
And you know, once I have a sign off from the doc, uh I'm going to 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.
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