How & Why to Ruck for Weight Loss & Strength | Michael Easter & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I want to shift us to rocking. I really dislike rocking, but now you got me rocking. So tell us

00:00:10.380 | why rocking and things like it are so valuable and are distinctly different than like, quote,

00:00:15.880 | unquote, hitting the gym. So I'll tell you how I sort of came to this realization, started writing

00:00:22.500 | about this in the first place, is that when we were in the Arctic, we're hunting, right? So when

00:00:29.300 | you look at why humans are good at running, and by the way, we're good at two things. We're good at

00:00:36.420 | running and we're good at caring. And I'll tell you why we're good at caring. So the reason we're good

00:00:40.800 | at running is because we evolved to run long distances to chase down animals in the heat

00:00:46.160 | and spear them. So humans are really good at cooling ourselves in the heat, right? And we can run these

00:00:51.980 | long distances. Other animals can't manage their heat. So we'd slowly but surely run down animals.

00:00:57.640 | Eventually, they would get too hot, they'd topple over from heat exhaustion, and then bam,

00:01:01.180 | we'd kill them. Okay, so this is a theory called, it's called persistence hunting.

00:01:06.400 | So we won the thermoregulation game.

00:01:08.520 | We run the, won the thermoregulation game. Yeah. So we can, we sweat, we don't have much fur,

00:01:13.620 | and then our bodies are also designed for this type of persistence hunting. There's a guy at

00:01:19.760 | Harvard, Dan Lieberman, who had this, I think it was in 2004, paper about this, how the reason we're built

00:01:26.220 | the way we are, one of the key reasons is so we could run long distances for persistence hunting.

00:01:30.020 | So I'm familiar with that research, right? I'm like, oh, that's really interesting.

00:01:34.360 | Cool. I'm like, yeah, this explains why I have like, you know, these big butt muscles, these arched feet,

00:01:39.460 | whatever.

00:01:42.020 | So we go up to the Arctic, we're hunting, eventually successfully hunt a caribou,

00:01:47.220 | and we, you know, we're taking every usable part of it we can, so we load our packs with all this

00:01:53.760 | weight, it's like a hundred something pounds in this damn pack, and start walking back to camp.

00:02:00.060 | And I'm just thinking about this research about, okay, humans evolved to run long distances so we

00:02:04.840 | could hunt. Great. But what happens after you actually kill an animal? You got to carry that

00:02:11.240 | damn thing back to camp, right? And so it occurs to me, well, wait a minute, we're also pretty unique

00:02:17.300 | among animals in that we can carry weight. Like no other mammal can just pick up weight on its own

00:02:23.020 | and carry it a long distance. It's like, huh, that's interesting. So I just start looking into this,

00:02:29.040 | and yeah, humans are the only mammal that can pick up a weight and carry it a long distance,

00:02:34.600 | and it absolutely shaped us into who we are. It allowed us to really conquer the globe, because we could

00:02:40.460 | take tools into the unknown, right? We can walk, we can cover these long distances in our two legs

00:02:44.820 | and our feet. Our hands are freed up to carry our tools, to carry whatever it might be, and it really

00:02:49.520 | turned us into who we are. Now, the thing is, is when you look at running, plenty of people run,

00:02:55.540 | right? Like running and marathons, that is a popular activity. But how many people are just like

00:03:01.420 | carrying weight as a regular form of exercise? The answer was really not that many. So I'm thinking

00:03:08.580 | like, okay, who actually still maybe does this? And it turns out it's the military. So rucking is sort of

00:03:15.040 | the main activity of physical training in the military, just throwing weight in a backpack and

00:03:21.680 | going for a long walk. And I've actually started to sort of even shift my language from using the term

00:03:28.040 | rucking to simply saying walking with weight or weighted walking. And the reason for that is, is if I tell

00:03:34.540 | my mom, hey, you should ruck, she goes, oh, okay. And she types in ruck and she goes, the hell is this

00:03:39.500 | military stuff, Michael? I'm 75 years old. So I've started to call it more walking with weight. So it's a little

00:03:46.160 | more approachable for the masses. But I think the benefit of it is that you're getting cardio stimulus

00:03:52.120 | because you're covering ground. But you're also getting strength work because you've loaded your

00:03:56.900 | skeletal system, your muscular system. And that comes with a lot of benefits. You kind of got this

00:04:02.060 | two in one. So it generally will burn more calories per mile than walking or running. And that is simply

00:04:08.740 | because you've added extra weight. Of course, if you're running, you might cover more distance in the

00:04:13.040 | same amount of time. But if you just compare it by distance, it's burning more calories. And I think it's

00:04:20.340 | one of these activities that can really fill in gaps in people's training. And to what you sort of

00:04:26.760 | alluded to in your question is there's a variety of reasons it fills in gaps. But one of them is

00:04:31.040 | simply that it gets people outside. Like there's a lot of gym people who are like, yeah, I lift all

00:04:37.460 | the weights, but like I'm not doing that running thing. A lot of people can't run and like, oh, by the

00:04:41.380 | way, walking feels a little too easy. I'm not going to do that. So if you can throw some load on someone

00:04:46.060 | and have them go for a walk, it gets them outside, helps them preferentially burn fat,

00:04:51.480 | it seems compared to something like running. So there's this interesting study. And I'll caveat

00:04:56.020 | this by saying it was a very small study. I think it was only 12 people because they could only find 12

00:05:00.680 | crazy enough people to do it. It was on backcountry hunters in Alaska. And so these guys carry these

00:05:05.860 | heavy packs out into the mountains for a week or whatever. And they test them and they ended up losing

00:05:10.600 | a significant amount of weight, but it was all from fat. They actually gained like a very minute

00:05:16.340 | amount of muscle. And that really shouldn't happen in the context of going out and losing weight,

00:05:21.860 | right? You're probably going to lose fat along with muscle. But with this, they ended up losing

00:05:25.800 | mostly fat. So I just think it's this amazing activity that we really wove out of our lives due to

00:05:33.020 | technology. Humans evolved to carry. People were carrying babies all the time, like every day in

00:05:40.620 | the past. We'd go hunt and we'd have to carry all the meat back to camp. We would carry food that we

00:05:45.660 | gathered, like gathering. We're hunters and gatherers. Gathering is literally walking around,

00:05:50.140 | finding some food, carrying it, finding more, carrying it back to camp. And then we got, you know,

00:05:56.080 | cars. We got grocery carts. We got XYZ. We got furniture dollies that we don't carry as much.

00:06:04.420 | And I think we've lost a really important form of human movement and physical activity that we're

00:06:11.740 | literally born to do. And so my suggestion to all the listeners is get some weight and carry it.

00:06:19.100 | Easy to throw some weight in the backpack and go for a walk. And it'll be good for you.

00:06:24.160 | How much weight and how far? So if someone is just starting, I tell them to start light. I think,

00:06:30.960 | so after I published The Comfort Crisis with the, there's a chat, there's an entire chapter on

00:06:35.780 | walking with weight or rucking. I got all these people in the military, rucking destroyed me.

00:06:42.200 | Okay, well, how much did the military start you with? A hundred pounds. It's like, well, yeah.

00:06:47.320 | It's like, if you did anything at that intensity immediately, just immediately went into like

00:06:54.200 | the red, you're going to get injured. You know, it could be squatting. It's like, yeah, I tried to

00:06:59.100 | max out on my deadlift every time I deadlifted the first time I deadlifted. Therefore, no one should

00:07:03.400 | deadlift. You need to ease into this. So I tell people, women can start with anywhere from five to,

00:07:10.780 | say 20 pounds to just, um, men, anywhere from 10 to 30, depending on your fitness level.

00:07:17.820 | I would rather have someone really ease in and sort of get used to it. Cause a lot of people will say,

00:07:23.180 | yeah, I went a little too heavy and it really sucked. Like I want you to sort of on ramp slowly.

00:07:27.560 | And then from there you can build up over time. And so I have plenty of, you know, women who might

00:07:33.940 | weigh 130 pounds who now use 30 pounds, which is a significant amount of weight. Um, I'll have men

00:07:41.060 | who, you know, maybe they started with 20 and they're like, that's way too light. Like I, I just have too

00:07:45.800 | much of a base of fitness. It's like, okay, good. Well, I'm glad we started there though. So we know for

00:07:49.400 | sure. And then they've ramped up to say 40, sometimes 60. I mean, for me, I generally,

00:07:56.320 | my sort of go-to weight is probably 35 to 40 pounds. And I find that that's a weight where

00:08:02.340 | it's uncomfortable. It's challenging, but it's also not so soul crushing that I'm like,

00:08:07.480 | I got to end this walk. I guess this absolutely sucks. I can still enjoy it. And of course I'll go

00:08:12.200 | heavier. Sometimes if I'm going really far, sometimes I might be like 20 pounds or something.

00:08:16.440 | You know, I think it's really just like start light, take a walk, see how that feels.

00:08:21.800 | You know, it doesn't have to be too complicated. Yeah. I said, I hate rocking, but, um, I love the

00:08:27.900 | way I feel afterwards. Maybe that's the form of exercise. I don't like there. I just outed myself

00:08:32.140 | as not liking. I find that, um, it forces me to pay attention to some of the smaller stabilizing

00:08:40.420 | muscles. Like you can't be as loose with your gate. You have to be pretty thoughtful, especially if

00:08:44.900 | you're hiking. Um, you can't stride too long here or there. You, you just naturally keeps

00:08:50.880 | you moving more like a pack mule, uh, which I think can be helpful. Um, and I do notice

00:08:56.980 | that when I take off the rucksack or the vest, um, on a different day and I, and I run, I definitely

00:09:03.680 | feel faster and lighter just by way of comparison, probably a real, real change too, due to the state

00:09:09.240 | small stabilizing muscles. This thing about losing more body fat, we'll get, we'll get

00:09:12.820 | people motivated. Yeah. People love, people love that. I think it's also a good tool for

00:09:16.720 | runners because the injury rate is much lower. So if you're within a reasonable amount of weight,

00:09:20.620 | like of course, if you go up to these crazy weights, so I generally tell people, if you

00:09:24.280 | just want like a firm number, don't go over 50 pounds. Um, if you want a more sort of dialed

00:09:30.660 | in number to your body weight, don't go over a third of your body weight. There's a lot

00:09:34.360 | of military research that suggests that, but even for me, like I don't go up to a third of my body

00:09:39.280 | weight all that often, unless I have a really good reason I'm training for something like

00:09:42.940 | backpacking or hunt or something. Um, so if you're in a, within a reasonable amount of weight and not

00:09:49.300 | too heavy, um, the injury rate is exceedingly low. It's not that much higher than the injury rate of

00:09:54.760 | walking and walking is pretty safe. Do you ever experience the kind of, uh, crossover of understanding

00:10:03.380 | between, uh, your physical pursuits and your, um, creative intellectual pursuits? Like, do you find

00:10:10.060 | that for instance, if you, you rock that there's a certain, that you start to recognize where the

00:10:15.000 | resistance is, is it putting on the pack? Is it, uh, you know, a third of the way through you tend to

00:10:20.640 | feel pretty good. Do you notice those contours and do they map to the contour of sitting down and,

00:10:26.060 | and writing, um, that it's hard at first, then it gets easier. And then at some point there's a

00:10:30.660 | breakthrough or else it just plain sucks the whole time.

00:10:33.040 | I think so. I'd like to hear your experience with running, but my experience with running is that

00:10:38.840 | the first, say three miles, they suck. You know, this is hard. Like things just start, you just feel

00:10:47.680 | like resistance. And then eventually, usually after say mile three, all of a sudden I feel like,

00:10:53.340 | oh, I could do this forever. I could do this the rest of the day if I wanted to.

00:10:56.660 | But if I don't go through that first three miles, I'm never going to get to four plus or whatever it

00:11:01.620 | is. And I do feel like that's the same, um, with writing where it's, it's challenging at first,

00:11:07.140 | the things aren't moving, but then things just, things start to move, you know, and you, but you

00:11:11.820 | need to, you need that buy-in. Like you need the, you're not going to have those amazing four plus

00:11:17.040 | miles after mile four or sentence after the 20 paragraphs you deleted. If you don't run the first

00:11:24.000 | three miles or write the first 20 paragraphs.

How & Why to Ruck for Weight Loss & Strength | Michael Easter & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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