Women have been carrying weight longer than men. Before nomadic groups and hunter-gatherer societies, women carried the most important kind of load: children, both before and after birth–something we call “front load rucking.” Evidence suggests that women evolved to adapt more efficiently to movement changes that come with carrying and caring for children. Whether they were carrying a child or walking alongside one, women couldn’t walk at their optimal unweighted pace. So women’s hips–the joint, not the total pelvic width–adapted in such a way that reduces the metabolic penalty that comes with traveling at a slower pace.
Women’s ability to move with weight was hugely important to foraging societies . When the task of foraging was left to the women, how far they could travel in a day determined their gathering radius, especially at higher latitudes where days are shorter for much of the year. The reduced radius meant the whole group had to move more frequently. In this way, women had an important influence on the movement patterns of foraging groups. And when these groups moved, that meant taking their entire lives with them, before the advent of pack animals.
Because the human body evolved to carry weight, it responds to load carriage optimally. Early humans obviously didn’t have weight rooms with specialized machines to target specific muscles. So, a full-body activity like rucking hits our muscles in a way that our bodies respond to. If you lack strength in your back, rucking will improve it. If it’s your core, rucking will improve it. Rucking will target the weak links in your body while still working all the other pieces of the load carriage puzzle. The body was built to ruck. Rucking will build the body.
So rucking is nothing new for women (even more than men; they were made to do it and got really good). But most women today aren’t aware of the specific benefits of rucking for them. Only 19% of women achieve the recommended amount of strength training per week. Rucking solves this problem without the creepy guys watching you do squats. Studies show that raw physical strength bears a strong negative correlation with mortality in older women and, in many ways, gives a much better picture of health than more common metrics like BMI, which fails to account for lean muscle mass in favor of simply using total weight.
More specifically, rucking offers benefits that go beyond just longevity. Walking is already a popular form of exercise, but rucking can burn twice as many calories and almost as many as running in roughly the same amount of time while building strength. Carrying weight also improves bone density and can even prevent the development of osteoporosis; something women are more likely to struggle with. Women have less bone density to begin with and lose it at an increasingly faster rate as they age, so rucking is especially useful as a preventative measure against osteoporosis and other bone issues, even in younger women.
Rucking is also suited for some of women’s more acute ailments. The most common reason for back pain (yes, including back pain from a heavy front load ) comes from poor posture, which puts excessive strain on muscles in the back. Rucking pulls the shoulders back and naturally retrains the posture of the person carrying the weight while building up more back strength to take the load off of the source of pain. While rucking excessive weights (in military training weights get up to 80, 90, 100+ lbs) can be harmful to the back, lighter loads (anywhere from 10 lbs up to 1/3 body weight) build strength without rthe isk of overworking your back.
There is also evidence that rucking can alleviate some of the other types of woman-specific pain. An Indian study found that over a 3-month timeframe, core strength training was more effective than heating pads at relieving pain from cramps . Other research suggests that core strength may reduce lingering back pain associated with pregnancy .
While all of these benefits can be obtained through other various exercises, rucking’s combination of strength and aerobic training provides a unique mix of benefits that other forms of training can’t match. Fewer resources exist for anything woman-specific, but strength training is both a preventative measure as well as an effective non-surgical, non-pharmaceutical option for a variety of women’s health issues.
