Urban “Rucking” Takes Fitness to a New Level

Chester “C. Edziu” Pacana currently serves as the vice president of sales and recruitment at DeRosa and Associates in Jamestown, Tennessee. As a conservative wealth management planner, he focuses on helping clients safeguard their principal investments and secure their retirement. Away from the office, Chester Pacana enjoys traveling, hiking, and the lesser-known sport of rucking.

Rucking is an activity that involves purposeful walking with a rucksack or backpack strapped to one’s back. While rucking through mountain terrain is just hiking, rucking in cities simply goes by the name of “rucking.”

As a sport that improves cardiovascular fitness, it does demand a degree of energy, endurance, and commitment. It can burn as much as three times the calories that walking does. But because the weight of the backpack can vary, rucking is accessible for people of all ages and degrees of fitness and strength.

By increasing the weight of the backpack, a person can experience increased resistance in the shoulders and back, promoting an increase in strength without the addition of unneeded physical bulk. Increasing the pace of movement speeds up these gains even more. People experienced in the art of rucking point out that walking with a weighted pack is actually a core exercise for United States’ military special forces team members.

The Physical Benefits of Rucking

As a conservative wealth management planner and managing agent at DeRosa & Associates Inc., Chester “C. Edziu” Pacana educates clients about term, whole, and indexed universal life insurance policies and assists government workers with retirement planning. Beyond dispatching his professional obligations, Chester Pacana enjoys rucking.

Common in the military, rucking involves walking with a weighted backpack to improve cardiovascular endurance. In the military, soldiers will often march for hours, if not days, with rucksacks stocked with equipment and provisions. Thanks to companies like GoRuck, which manufactures specialized backpacks for rucking and hosts rucking events, the exercise is growing in popularity among civilians as a form of training.

Arguably an ideal aerobic alternative for people who don’t like running, rucking offers the added benefit of facilitating the growth of muscles in your back, core, and shoulders, depending on how much weight is in your pack. Moreover, it has been shown to have roughly the same aerobic benefits as running, but with less risk of injury, and can also help improve posture, relieve back pain, and strengthen your hips. Perhaps the best part of rucking is that you can do it anywhere and at any time of day.