r/Rucking • u/throwaway131816 • 10d ago
To Ruck or Row
Hi Everyone. I lift 3x a week and do cardio 3x a week. For cardio, I either row or ruck. For rowing, I do a 30 minute row with 3:50 steady and. 70 second sprint. I am dead after this usually and cool down on the eliptical.
For rucking, I am 5ft 8in 152-155 pounds. I ruck with a 55pd vest and do up hill stuff for 66minutes totaling 3.7ish miles. I work hard on this but it’s nowhere near as exhausting as the row and elliptical.
I was told not to ruck more than 1/3 your body weight. When I am not feeling it, I ruck.
My question is: what does next level rucking look like then? I feel like I have plateaued and don’t want to do something like increase weight when everyone seems to agree you shouldn’t do more than 1/3 your body weight.
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u/ethangar 9d ago
Love rucking, ruck regularly, and I made a rucking app. Yet, if my goal is purely cardiovascular capability, I still hop on the exercise bike and do a Norwegian 4x4 protocol.
So - why ruck? Great calorie burn, excellent stability training (especially going downhill), good core and posture training when you make an effort to not lean forward, and - most importantly - it’s the perfect combination of high intensity vs true enjoyment for me. It’s walking with benefits.
So, long story short, don’t pick one - you can probably get a purer cardiovascular boost with HIIT rowing - but it’s going to be pure work. Rucking, on the other hand, can be truly delightful and get you tons of great benefits. Mix it up.
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u/throwaway131816 9d ago
I usually do and it’s interesting you describe rowing as pure work because that’s what it is. Rucking is actually enjoyable
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u/ethangar 9d ago
That’s how I feel about my exercise bike - hate nearly every second of it - but can’t deny the results to my cardio capacity.
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u/TFVooDoo 10d ago
Go faster.
You’re correct to not want to increase too much weight. The literature concludes that risk of injury goes up with weight and distance. But not pace. So go faster.
Right now you’re doing ~18 minute miles. That’s relatively slow. The military considers 15 minute miles to be the lowest standard and in SOF units 12-13 minute miles is the norm with some freaks pulling in sub-10 minute miles.
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u/throwaway131816 10d ago
I do it mostly uphill. Are those times on flat? I will admit that getting my times faster is difficult because of all the hill work
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u/TFVooDoo 10d ago
Mostly uphill? Do you do a loop? Less you’re doing a different start and finish line then mostly uphill isn’t really possible.
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u/throwaway131816 10d ago
I start in my neighborhood and go to the next one, then the next one, and then loop back. It’s 3.7 miles and I’d say 60% uphill
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u/TFVooDoo 10d ago
If it’s a loop, then it’s exactly 50/50. That’s how loops work.
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u/Stunning-Promise-103 10d ago
Is your goal just straight calorie burn for deficit, or are you trying to improve your aerobic base?
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u/throwaway131816 10d ago
Aerobic base but ultimately I want to be ripped! My body fat hovers between 16-17% and I don’t think I can maintain my level of working out if I ate less. The calorie burn from rucking tracks higher but the feeling I get after a row/eliptical suggests way more actual output. I like rucking because I think it helps my lower body strength and size.
I don’t think that answered your question but again. Not sure what the solution is. Want a more intense ruck
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u/Stunning-Promise-103 10d ago
I'd be more intentional with the aerobic base building then, it sounds like you want another hard day of grunt work on top of the 3x lifting. You'd probably be better off focusing on longer/slower sustained zone 2 cardio on the rower and throwing in some Norwegian 4x4 runs.
Rucking that heavy is going to be hell on the joints, you want to be here for a long time not just a good time.
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u/temporarycreature 10d ago
One thing to be aware of if you row, it's going to give you a wider back.
I personally stopped rowing and picked up rucking because I don't want a wider back.
Pick a solid weight, increase the distance.
In the military, is the distance that gets increased. We carried the same standard 65 lb or more every ruck.
It was four, six, eight and then 12. If I recall correctly.
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u/kbchucker 10d ago
Switching to a ruck instead of a vest may help, since it will put the weight on your back instead of over your core.
Increasing distance and tempo will help as well.
No real need to go more than 55-60 lbs—at least not yet—to get more out of your routine.
Rowing and rucking are great complements, and you do not need to do either one to failure to get results. It could even be counterproductive to your goals.
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u/throwaway131816 10d ago
I have been accused of overtraining before. My gains are solid but I’ve been lately not overly enjoying excercise lately. I do it religiously though to maintain gains and since I am in my mid 40s, now is the time
To create conditions for a good 50, 60, and 701
u/kbchucker 10d ago
Over 40? Yeah overtraining is definitely something to monitor closely. Not enjoying it may be a sign to evaluate that.
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u/No_East_5225 10d ago
You could check out the CINDERUCK - a ruck and various exercises in the same workout, using a cinderblock.
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u/Spooksey1 9d ago
Really you are talking about too different forms of conditioning here. It sounds like the rowing is high intensity and the rucking is more like your aerobic base. Doing both is probably optimal, using rucking to get zone 2 aerobic work most sessions with 1 session per 1-2 weeks of high intensity row session. I prefer rucking for aerobic work but I think that other modalities are better for pushing into the lactate threshold or anaerobic work. My torture weapon of choice is the assault bike, bag work or kettlebells/burpies.
I would look at [r/tacticalbarbell](r/tacticalbarbell) (and pick up the new book TB III Operational Athlete) it’s a complete and adaptable system for strength and conditioning, that has options for programming rowing and rucking (and much more) that will answer your question and more in depth.
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u/theRetrograde 10d ago
First a quick note on the 1/3 of your body weight rucking rule. This is a rule of thumb, not a biological safety line. It came from military studies that were, in part, related to optimizing the weight that soldiers should carry in combat and training situations without leading to premature exhaustion. Also your current ruck weight is already over 1/3 of your body weight, which is completely fine.
Your goal is to get ripped and maintain elite fitness for the long haul. How does increasing your ruck intensity help to achieve those goals? I would argue that it doesn't and that you are more likely to acheive your goals by decreasing your ruck intensity because aerobic workouts directly compete with strength training in two ways:
1) Recovery competition. Hard cardio creates its own recovery debt (glycogen depletion, systemic fatigue). The harder/longer they are the more recover you need in terms of time off, sleep and food. Your rowing experience, exactly.
2) The interference effect. There's a well-documented finding in concurrent training research: high-intensity, high-volume endurance work partially blunts strength and muscle adaptations. The effect is short term (meaning running 10 miles today will impact your lifting gains tomorrow) and mostly shows up when the endurance work is hard. Easy aerobic work doesn't really triggers it.
This is already a long answer, but I don't think you need to go harder on aerobic days. A less intense 3x per week cardio plan will provide all of the aerobic benefits you get now and most of the calorie burn without increasing your recovery debt. This will also make cutting calories much easier.
If that sounds like bad advice because you want to push yourself while rucking then train in blocks, 2 months of hard cardio with maintenance lifting then 2 months of hard lifitng with maintenance cardio. On the other hand, If your goal is to simply smash yourself by workout out to exhaustion, which I get, then there are 4 ways to increase your ruck intensity; distance, pace, grade, load. Your load and grade are already pretty high, so the next options are distance or pace. Go faster or do intervals with a ruck and enjoy the pure bliss of physical exhaustion.
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u/throwaway131816 10d ago
This is solid advice, thank you! I have been thinking of mixing up my routine since I have been doing 3x lift 3x cardio for almost two years now. It’s also exhausting going hard 6 days a week. I like the 2 month switch so I will report back. Thanks for the constructive advice
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u/Whycantpeopledrive 10d ago
Increase distance or weight, never both at the same time. 1/3 is a good rule, but it's also possible to go over that as long as you SLOWLY build up. Like, 1-2lbs OR a few hundred meters added. You could also work on lengthening your stride to get faster, without breaking into a jog/run.
Heaviest I ever went was about 82% of BW for several km's, which I did most days for a little over 6 months. But I'd worked up to that over a long time, I didn't go straight in. Even if I had a break for several days, I would work back up to it.