July Longevity Challenge
July Longevity Challenge - Rucking
Regularly raising your heart rate through cardiovascular exercise is key to staying healthy and feeling great as you age. Activities such as running, cycling and swimming are well-established methods for achieving this raised heart rate, but recently rucking has grown in popularity as a low impact, sociable and accessible alternative.
Rucking evolved from military training practices and involves walking an extended distance while carrying weight on your back. It can be performed with just a rucksack and any heavy items you have available, such as dumbbells, water bottles or rocks, or you can buy specialised rucking equipment. Once you have that, all you need to do is walk! You should aim to take as few breaks as possible so that you can keep your heart rate elevated. Trying to include some time going uphill will also help you to achieve the desired heart rate, and rucking in the outdoors with friends is a great way to make the experience more enjoyable and rewarding.
The benefits of rucking
- Rucking is an incredibly effective way to improve cardiovascular fitness. Just 10 weeks of rucking once or twice per week has been shown to significantly increase VO2max - a crucial measure of fitness and longevity [1].
- Unlike many other forms of cardiovascular exercise, including running and cycling, rucking builds muscle throughout your body, working your upper body and core as well as your legs, so with rucking you don't need to worry about cardio day impacting your muscle mass.
- Rucking also strengthens your joints and bones and is lower impact than other forms of exercise, especially running, so you are at less risk of injury and will reduce your risk of degenerative diseases later in life.
- Rucking improves functional fitness, meaning that it strengthens the muscles and movements that you use most regularly in your day-to-day life and so helps you feel healthier and carry out daily activities more easily.
- Although you can ruck on a treadmill, rucking outside brings added benefits to mood and cognition, with studies showing that spending time in nature can decrease stress, anxiety and depression [2, 3].
- The fact that everyone can carry different weights to achieve their desired intensity means that rucking is also a wonderfully sociable and inclusive form of exercise that enables you to build relationships and spend quality time with friends or family.
The challenge
For this month’s challenge, we want you to do some rucking and share your experience of it with others in our community.
If you’ve never tried it before, the aim is to give rucking a go and see if it is something you would like to integrate into your regular regime. If you’re already an experienced rucker, then this is a great opportunity to push yourself on how much you can carry and how far you can go.
Have a look at the different challenge levels in the graphic below and be sure to join our Zest Monthly Longevity Challenges community.
