As I turned 18, I haven’t walked for more than 1 hour non-stop or done a real hike.
Drive or walk? Given a choice, most Indians will opt for a car no matter how short the distance. Well, now a 46-country study has shown that we are among the laziest countries in the world. India is ranked 39, with people averaging only 4,297 steps a day. - Economic Times June 2017 (small sample size, but it’s 2017 and just gotten worse since!)
I had already been in a gym for 2 years by then and got pretty great ‘gym results’. But I lacked strength in practical everyday life.
One of the biggest reasons was that I wasn’t actually using my muscles.
You don’t have to use all your gym muscles to keep them (looking at you ‘functional’ trainers!)
But the less you use them, the harder you make life. Especially if your level of activity outside the gym is very very very low.
So it was February 2016 when I borrowed 2x 22lbs (10kg) plates from the gym, rode to the nearby hill and started climbing.
It was tough, having never walked uphill with weights. The 44lbs killed me.
I remember the day very clearly, a bunch of people passed me by with a motorbike and asked me if wanted any help. “What are you even doing!?”
My mind was just so preoccupied thinking, “How the fuck am I so weak!?”
44lbs isn’t a lot, when I was 17 I had deadlifted 440lbs (200kg) and even won the state juniors powerlifting title. But lifting 44lbs up the hill was the hardest thing I had done till then.
This was around the time I understood how I was only ‘specifically’ strong and not really fit. I looked great and it could get me a lot a likes on Instagram but I wasn’t fit.
A few months later I did my first ever real hike!
I hiked the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, a 130 miles (210km) going all the way up to 5400m and coming back down.
I didn’t think of it as a ruck back then, I didn’t even think of it as a hike. It was almost a pilgrimage for me.
I had dropped out of college and left Goa with everything I owned in a single backpack a month earlier.
I had a little more than $200 to my name as I started the hike and the money barely made it to the end.
But the hike was a challenge for me, I believed that if I could do this I could do anything.
And that’s exactly what happened.
I reached the top taking everything I had!
Within less than 2 years of the hike, I had built one of the world’s top 100 travel blogs and started working with some of the largest SaaS companies in the world.
The idea that I could travel the world or do anything I want was more of a reality.
The hike played a pivotal role and why I look back it as a pilgrimage. I believed that
If I could do this, maybe everything everyone has ever told me about who I am, what I can do is wrong. Even what I tell myself. I am capable of more.
So that’s how my first accidental ruck changed my life.
Rucking as a sport entering my life was less dramatic.
In late 2021 I rejoined the gym after a 6 year break, to help region the energy that was lost due to the world of 2020.
My average walking distance was down by 25% a year after the lockdowns and I felt very lethargic and found myself choosing the couch over a beautiful hike more often. I didn’t like that.
I also got back into listening to fitness content more often, and that’s when I came across Michael Easter in 2022.
I’d heard of GORUCK in 2017 for travel backpacks so knew about rucking and even used their bags (but only for travel).
But the Comfort Crisis helped get me to start ‘rucking rucking’ for real in 2023.
One day during early spring 2023 I was in Cyprus and I decided to just do it!
I packed my backpack full of books from the Airbnb I was staying at, even put a metal vase, to make it heavier and went out on a ruck.
I ended up walking 20 miles (32km) that day, and rucked around 62 miles (100km) over the month.
6 months after I got into rucking I was able to walk more than a marathon 29 miles (47km) in a single day to test if achieving infinite energy is possible (which it is).
And finally to end 2023 off I did the Peak of Balkans a 119 miles (192km) hike across 3 countries: Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, with a 40lbs (18kg) backpack
I’m still new to rucking and only done it for around 200 miles (300km) but it’s bound to be a part of my future just as it was a part of my past. And hoping to have you join me on that journey as I share all the things that seem to work for me.
See you on the trails!
- Jeremy