A comment on the NYT article "This Full-Body Workout Fits in a Backpack/Rucking, which is simply walking with a weighted backpack, is a great way to combine strength training and cardio without setting foot inside a gym."
The commenter's visualization is short-sighted. After the first time, you can walk both ways with a full pack. You can also just be a student/teacher, walking with the same textbooks, back and forth to school.
When I was a law professor, though, I used to cut up my casebooks into cover-free booklets so I could walk to school without carrying any significant weight. I thought that was the smart way to make getting to work healthful and pleasurable. I'd see the occasional ROTC student with a big knapsack or an earnest runner with weight plates in his backpack, but I'd never noticed the word "rucking."
I'd heard of a "rucksack," but isn't that just another word for "backpack"?
The word "ruck" has a lot of meanings (according to the OED): "A loose scrum formed around the person with the ball... To squat, crouch; to cower; to huddle together... to crease or wrinkle... to cause to form untidy folds or ridges... To criticize severely; to rebuke, reprimand, chide; (also) to nag... to fight, to brawl... A crease, wrinkle, or ridge, esp. in fabric; (also) a fold, a pleat... A rut in a road... A quarrel, a row; (later also) a fight, a brawl, esp. between groups of people... A flourish... used by a notary to distinguish his work and prevent forgery... To belch.... To draw or drag in a specified direction with or as with a rake... To give off an unpleasant or unwholesome odour or fume; (now chiefly) to give off a powerful and unpleasant smell; to stink... A gregarious Eurasian crow... A gigantic mythical bird of prey... A mass of cloud moving quickly, esp. above lower clouds...."
But the "ruck" in "rucksack" isn't any of those. It's "ruck," meaning "back," from German, so "rucksack" is "backpack."
But "ruck" is a cool word, what with all that crouching and squatting and wrinkling and nagging and brawling and belching and notarizing. I love the crows and the odors and the clouds and the gigantic mythical bird of prey. And the scrum.
Does the word "rugby" come from "ruck"? No, "rugby" comes from the proper name, "Rugby" — "Rugby School in Warwickshire, where the game developed in the 19th cent."
The Roc/Ruck, by Charles Maurice Detmold, an illustration for "The Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor."
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53 comments:
"Ruck up" - from my Army days.
In the US Army (and I assume the Marines) backpacks are called rucksacks or just rucks and, according to your MOS (Military Occupation Specialty), which I don't think they use that terminology any more, you quite often go rucking.
Here is a video of some guys trying to qualify to go to ranger school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1U3AjiFG_4
Looks like fun, doesn't it.
Anyway, I started rucking a couple of months ago, though nowhere near the intensity of what those potential rangers are doing, as part of my physical fitness routine and it is an excellent way to combine cardio with strength training.
Be careful out there ...
Unlike weighted vests that evenly distribute weight to your front, back, and sides, a weighted backpack places the resistance solely on your back. If you decide to go this route, Ahmed says to start with a 5- to 15-pound weighted backpack.
...
It’s critical to use weighted vests and backpacks correctly, especially if you have a history of neck or back problems, such as a herniated disc or spinal stenosis, or you’ve recently had surgery.
Walking with a weighted backpack
Not only does rugby come from “rugby league football”, but soccer comes from football played under the rules of the football association, or “Association football”, with “association” shortened to “soccer”.
Stick to a good hike. Hauling around heavy backpacks full of books is bad for the back. The Mayo Clinic did a study on this a few years ago.
That casebook reduction was a pretty clever hack, as they say. A student would never think to do that because the student wants to resell his book. But then, it might have been easier to resell cut up as you describe.
Ignoring "ruck" -- back in the day I went to school with a guy who had back pain issues. He'd fill a backpack with books and then wear it standing bent over this desk as a form of therapy. It looked very weird to me. My question to him was whether he'd feel better by not putting such a heavy and twisting strain on his back. On top of this, the student fashion of putting backpack over one shoulder rotates the back and is a recipe for pain. Humans have weak backs because they are bipedal and tall.
In 1969 the Beatles sang "Carry that Weight. In 1965 I carried Gail's books home from school - no backpacks in those days.
In 1975 as a young teacher teenage girls carried my books in the halls.
As an aging surfer young groms I take to the beach carry my surfboard from the van to the water. And when the time arrives - sooner rather than later - what friends I have left will carry my body to the grave. Take a load off Fanning indeed.
Body armor has more even weight distribution…with a bonus for your early morning run.
"..books for the whole family..." The 'nanny' is strong in this one.
"Mom! I don't want to read 'Tess of the D'urbervilles'!"
"You'll be smarter, healthier and happier for it!"
"I asked you to check out 'The Hunt for Red October' for me!"
"No! It's full of toxic masculinity. Now read what I brought you."
We would backpack our kids when they were young. The pack has a folding stand so it can balance on the ground. The trick is to grab the opposing shoulder strap, get your legs into it, and swing it up and around onto your back. Once your arms are in, cinch the padded waist belt as tight as possible. If the kid moves about, you need sea legs to keep the pack balanced, but it's more convenient than a stroller.
Enigma said..
On top of this, the student fashion of putting backpack over one shoulder rotates the back and is a recipe for pain
Yes, but it makes you look cool!
If we're going to start looking for painful fashion.. we Won't have to look hard.
Eagerly awaiting the NYTs article about "The Benefits of Running in 5 inch Stilettos"
Next? Hobble skirts for Yoga?
RNB said..."Mom! I don't want to read 'Tess of the D'urbervilles'!"
"You'll be smarter, healthier and happier for it!
And you have to be done in two days when Mommy will need to go rucking again.
"Walkin’ with a toothache in my heel"
Ron Winkleheimer said...
Here is a video of some guys trying to qualify to go to ranger school.
12 miles, in under 3 hours.. With Full Packs, AND gear
Notice how it was a video of some "guys" trying to qualify for ranger school?
I wonder what the 'requirements' are for "gals" ? 12miles in 4 hrs? carrying a purse?
"Walkin’ with a toothache in my heel"
I used to do that all the time and everyone here thinks I'm an idiot.
"I walk with heavy hands"
Running or "rucking" with a weighted pack is stupid unless that is something you need to specifically train for (if you are in the military). Otherwise you should run light and lift heavy.
What amazed me about libraries when I was a kid was that I could check out any book I wanted, and my parents never checked what they were, and the library never told them what I had borrowed. The Catholic Church might have known about this anonymous lending of anything and everything to impressionable kids, but if it had realized the potential for this book loaning system to sow discord and heresy among its members, it would have been much more antagonistic to the public library. I guess it tried that fight, and lost in the US.
Amusingly, when I went to a small, Baptist affiliated college, their well endowed and huge library had a policy where some classifications of books were kept off the publicly accessible stacks, and you had to ask for Carlos Casteneda, for example, at the desk and sign it out on a list. Keeping such mind-broadening lit away from Baptists was an oddity to me, but hey, I also used to tell them they were all heretics going to Hell because they'd fallen away from the One True Church. Kept the proselytizers away, at least.
RNB said...
"I asked you to check out 'The Hunt for Red October' for me!"
"No! It's full of toxic masculinity. Now read what I brought you."
The publishers of The Big Book of Boy Stuff should release a new edition with a dust jacket that says “Respecting One’s Pronouns” by Titania McGrath.
I was stopped on the street a few years ago by a back surgeon who pulled over the side of the road to lecture me about my running CamelBak and how it was going to ruin my back. Evidently she thought I was rucking. I kept saying, it's just water and she kept getting more angry about how it didn't matter what it was the weight was going to ruin my back. I finally said, "I'm training for a marathon, I don't know how you think I'm supposed to run ten miles without some water to drink." And she said, "oh it's just for drinking? Sorry I misunderstood."
So apparently, people have strong feelings about this subject.
I had looked into weight vests, more out of curiosity than any intent to purchase. They looked a lot like body armor, which I suppose I wasn't the first to think of--the seller had a notice in their site that these vests, with a variety of different weights of steel plates, are not bulletproof.
Scooby Doo thinks the idea of exercising with a heavy backpack is rucking razy.
Students and teachers no longer carry textbooks. Everything is preloaded into chromebooks.
always called it a rucksack, in the UK, until it became a thing that was used outside of the military or camping. Then it became backpack.
The two are different; a backpack can be anything, but usually it implies something that has some design & engineering involved, built for comfort and heavy loads and with long range hiking/camping in mind. A rucksack is much more rudimentary, a frameless sack with straps, much simpler and also often just a single large compartment with maybe one or two accessory pockets, a covering flap, and often made of canvas duck. Where a backpack is designed to place the load to optimize center of gravity, a rucksack's main compartment has no such organization - often one is left with a big lump collecting at the bottom and sticking too far out behind.
Weight vests get really hot.
Birches said...
...
So apparently, people have strong feelings about this subject.
10/13/23, 7:55 AM
A lot of experts have strong feelings about things in their field due to observational bias.
...
Anyway, I started rucking a couple of months ago, though nowhere near the intensity of what those potential rangers are doing, as part of my physical fitness routine and it is an excellent way to combine cardio with strength training.
10/13/23, 6:09 AM
The key here is that people develop back problems carrying an overweight backback/rucksack without any core body strength.
The spine cannot carry weight, it's the muscles around the body that do the lifting.
If everyone would walk to the public library with an empty pack and come home with books for the whole family we’d be smarter, healthier and happier.
"Or maybe that turns you on, Seinfeld?"
a row; (later also) a fight, a brawl, esp. between groups of people.
Maybe that's how the term rucksack came into use in the military.
"The spine cannot carry weight, it's the muscles around the body that do the lifting."
Then its a good thing that I'm using my muscles and not my spine to do the lifting.
Its simple:
1) Use a pack with a frame
2) Make sure that the frame has a hip belt so that your hips carry most of the weight
3) Don't overload yourself - depending on your fitness level no more than 10 to 20 percent
of your total body weight
4) Make sure the weight in the back pack is distributed correctly, you want it high in the
pack, so that it is distributed across your shoulders
You can hurt yourself doing weight lifting too, if you don't use the correct form.
"A rucksack is much more rudimentary, a frameless sack with straps,"
Not true, a rucksack can come with a frame, but sometimes there not used.
This thread reminded me that, when I was in college, I got a summer job for three years picking up garbage for the city I worked in. Great money back then you started at $5.01 an hour. Men raised families on that, but you had to kick in your small monthly union dues.
Those guys ran like hell doing their route because when the route was done and the final load dropped off at the dump, they could go home. You slung two cans at a time and toted and lifted heavy bags all day. Anyway, as a summer fill-in, I was put on what ever route needed a man.
Anyway, the point is that, along with another guy who I first saw doing this, I used to wear ankle weights doing this work, including jumping on and off the back of the truck, just to get an extra workout.
The things this young buck Wilbur could do, well, it makes me wistful now.
It turns Out, gals just need to carry more books!
Wisconsin State Rep Dave Considine (D) during a debate on a bill to ban boys from playing in girl’s sports, says if a boy is beating a girl, it means he’s better than her and she just needs to work harder
Because, As We ALL KNOW.. all you have to do, is work harder.
Serious Question.. how does this "just needs to work harder" idea fit into the whole "equity" thing?
Do we tell a low IQ person; he "just needs to work harder" ??
Do we tell a crippled person; he "just needs to work harder" ??
How, Exactly, do this "just needs to work harder" fit into the fence theory ??
mikee:
Carlos Casteneda and mind-broadening
One of these things is not like the other.
stlcdr said...
A lot of experts have strong feelings about things in their field due to observational bias.
A lot of experts have strong feelings about things in their field because they were told to have those feelings.
Both true statements.
"Political Junkie said...
"Ruck up" - from my Army days."
In 2005 the Army did a study on loads carried by Ruck, by mission, and duty position. From memory they were something like:
Combat load: What you carried under fire (includes Weapons and vest): 65 pounds
Approach march load: What you carry to the battlefield: 100 pounds
Emergency Approach march load: What you carry to the battlefield when resupply is not assured: 125 pounds
these are averages, not maxes. I think top numbers were around 145
Army saying: There is no such thing as too much ammo, only too much ammo to carry
Reasonable former soldiers base their skepticism of effective women in the infantry based on reality, not feel good videos of super heroines
PS: in my day, it was called "humping a ruck" or just humping, because of the posture needed to balance the load. I remember the look I got once from the wife of a fellow worker 0also a vet) when I described "humping a piece of particularly heavy gear" though an airport :)
Thank you Althouse for looking into the various meanings of "ruck."
So, a loud or disorderly or contentious group raises a "ruckus", and now we know the reason why belching is also "eructation." Cool!
There is also knapsack. As in that famous essay on White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. NYT readers are big believers in the invisible privilege knapsacks they are supposed to check at the door.
The use of 'Ruck' seems somehow British to me, don't know why.
When trying to drop 20 pounds I did my walks with 20 pounds of bricks in my backpack.
You really get a sense of that extra weight (in your body) when you take the pack off.
Growing up we had library night every Tuesday. We had to check out at least one book.
I checked out thousands and was reading at college level in fourth or fifth grade.
What did I do in my life with such brilliance? Not a fucking thing.
By the way, there is another word for rucking besides back packing, hiking.
GORUCK sells rucksacks and other rucking gear. It was started by a former Special Forces guy in 2008. Great quality, but pricey. I have a couple of their bags for "everyday carry". EDC is another sub-culture you'll find out there.
I am thinking about starting to ruck, adding some weights to a backpack on my evening walks through the neighborhood.
to nag... to fight, to brawl... Could be assumed one fights and brawl with rancor.?
Does having a hundred or more books in my Kindle on my phone count?
Some of them can be pretty heavy going.
John Henry
Exercise for upper body strength:
Take two 20 pound potato sacks.
Start with five curls with a sack in each hand.
Slowly work up to three sets of 10 curls.
Add a potato to each sack.
Any opinions as to whether or not walking with a weighted backpack would help to eliminate the hunch-backed, forward-jutting head posture that we are all now prone to due to looking down at screens and phones all day?
When I went to college way back in the early seventies and possibly because of where I went to school - there were no backpacks. You carried your textbooks under your arm and if there were more than two it was not easy to do. Especially freshman year when there was a ridiculously long walk mostly uphill (no joke) from the dorm.
I considered a briefcase but never pulled the trigger. Too geeky even for me. Didn't have money to buy one anyway. Or a way to get somewhere to buy one. Any expressions of sympathy here are appreciated.
It was, fortunately, downhill going back.
@RigelDog
I've seen youtube videos with fitness influencers who claim it does, but I'm no doctor. I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
JAORE said...
Exercise for upper body strength:
The way it was told in Aggie land (CA, not TX) was you needed to put a new born calf in a fireman's carry and walk or run x distance and do that every day for 6 months
So when you hike alone, are you rucking yourself?
Ruck is an combat-arms Army-ism that's spread. A ruck is basically the issued backpack, and the usages are specific to that. A "ruck march" includes the pack; a road march can mean you're just carrying the basic web gear/body armor/weapon combination, which can weigh up to forty-fifty pounds, depending.
I don't know where those guys got the weights for things, but I've literally stood up under rucks that weighed north of 135 pounds, by themselves. Demo materials weigh a lot, and so do a lot of other things. The really hilarious thing about "Light Infantry" operations is that you're anything but "light". All the stuff you normally have hanging off your vehicle, you're now carrying around on your back... Which means that an awful lot of "comfort" gear like sleeping bags and cold weather clothing goes by the wayside. Light Infantry motto used to be "travel light, freeze by night...", and they lived it. I have memories of having poor bastards from 7th ID (Light) coming up to Yakima Firing Center from Fort Ord, back in the old days, and they'd been told they were going to Honduras... Which they believed right up until they were landing on the dirt airstrips in late October/early November a thousand miles north. Without any of their cold-weather clothing or other gear; they mostly had like one poncho liner for every two guys, and were supposed to spend close to a month out on the high desert in North Central Washington.
It was amusing, so long as it wasn't you. They were our OPFOR for that exercise, so sympathies were minimal on our part. The fun thing was how torpid they all were in the mornings, until the sun was well up and warming them. Between about dawn and 09:00, they were all fairly easy kills, and in fact, looked forward to their early demise in the exercise, because then they could curl up and try to stay warm in these little huddles of ripstop-clad humanity. They really liked being made POWs, because we had warming tents for them...
What was really amusing? Their pallets loaded with all their inclement weather gear that were left sitting on the side of the airfield for the duration, because the brigade commander didn't want to risk issuing them and then having to repack everything again because they were due to go on rotation as the rapid deployment force right after they went home... So, they didn't issue any Gore-Tex or other gear, and most of them just had what they stood up in, having planned to go to the jungles of Central America.
Good times, good times.
Few people really realize what miseries are endured on their behalf by the poor bastards in the military. Imagine sleeping for close to a month out in the sagebrush-covered high deserts of the northwest, and all you've got to wear for the duration is a set of hot-weather ripstop BDUs, no sleeping bags, and it's all just you and a small group of your friends who've got to cuddle up in sheep piles just to survive the experience...
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