Rucking — Blog — Healy Chen

Everyday I ruck

These days I’ve been carrying a 30-pound weight in my backpack on my walks to and from work. It serves to add a bit of exercise to my otherwise normal routine. To get a modicum of strength and cardio training during those 20 minutes of walking. And all it takes really is a few taped up bricks. I of course did not go the cheap route. I instead spent nearly $300 on a new backpack and a weight that fits in it perfectly.

I don’t do things half-arsed.

Rucking the 30-pound weight made me realize one thing: people of a larger size (read: fat) essentially carry around this weight all the time. They don’t get to take the weight off once they arrive at work like I do. The increased pressure on the joints and the back is significant. I certainly feel it in my knees and shoulder area. This is what it would be like if I were 30 pounds heavier. Which I was, way back in my college days. The freshman 15 gets to us all.

And I’ve been determined since then to live a lean and healthy life. Sort of ironic that in finding a new way to exercise, it has also reminded me of how I used to be. That is some built-in motivation! What I am looking forward to is taking the 30-pound weight on long hikes. It’s a great and easy way to add some difficulty to some of these hiking trails that lack heavy elevation.

No pandemic 15!

A few weeks back I went to Kaiser to get an annual physical. The first time in over four years! My last checkup was way back in 2018. Then I got lazy, and then the pandemic happened. Now that things have largely gone back to normal, it was time to check that I myself am normal.

I no longer have any pandemic weight gain! Last September I went to a wedding, and my suit definitely felt a bit tight in certain places (neck, waist, and thighs). Fast forward to this month, and I measure out at within five pounds of my 2018 weight. Walking to and from work five days a week seems to have helped a lot, because I didn’t really change my exercise regiment. As a result, at the wedding I went to last week, the suit that I got tailored eight years ago fit just fine again.

The last book I read is The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. In it, the author mentions a great way to exercise is to simply carry heavy things. That walk you go on can be made more difficult and challenging with a backpack and some weights. Apparently, carrying a significant load over long distances is a staple of our armed forces. It make sense: we’ve all seen soldiers overseas with those impossibly enormous packs.

Reading that inspired me to put weights in the backpack I wear to work. It’s a cheap and effective way to add a training dimension to something I have to do every day. If that twenty minutes of walking can count as exercise, then I can avoid having to schedule in additional workout time for the week. Because I plan to do a half-marathon later this summer, so I have to get back into running shape.