You are advised to avoid rucking every day since it’s not recommended. People looking to achieve their goals within a certain period of time always opt for everyday rucking and even though it has its disadvantages, it’s not impossible.
In case you’ve decided to go on with the challenge, consider rucking with heavy weights on short distances. Keep in mind that it may not be the best choice for you to attain your goals.
1. Is Rucking every day bad?
Everyone has a different verge of achieving a better level of fitness by gaining muscle strength.
This explains why people’s levels of training programs are different but anyone can overtrain and achieve a certain goal if they are well motivated.
The disadvantage of overtraining so much is that it starts to work against and not to help you and as a result limits your chances of achieving your goals.
Every day rucking with heavier weights for long distances will eventually lead to an overtraining syndrome.
Based on a study published by SHJ, symptoms that may come as a result of overtraining aerobic exercises include depression, body fatigue, and lack of motivation.
While you ruck every day, especially for long distances with an additional weight on your back, you tend to overwork your muscles and since you’re doing it on a daily basis, they lack enough time to completely heal and recover.
Even though tearing and stressing your muscles is important for growth, you may also want to make time for the muscles to recover.
Example
Craig has just joined rucking and he’s interested in growth since he’s an active person.
With the urge of increasing weight to 30% more than usual, he chooses to go rucking every day of the month while covering a distance of almost 7 miles.
Below is a view of what he’ll be experiencing at the start and last day of the month;
- Day 1-10
During the first 2 – 4 days he will be able to do all workouts correctly and even though he has a massive sweat drip, he still has the drive to keep going.
Coming towards the end of the week, he starts feeling a few backaches while the muscles on the legs become sore.
- Day 11-20
Craig still pushes through training but as days pass, his back keeps hurting. His legs, back, and abs are very sore from the hard training.
By this time, thoughts of skipping a rucking day start popping in as he feels very exhausted.
- Day 21-30
Due to the motivation left in him, he keeps on going but sadly, he is struggling to go past 5 or even 4 miles.
At this point, his body is really aching while fatigue is at its full bar. His muscles tend to ache while doing simple activities as he keeps on losing his motivation.
The example above, clearly shows that Craig did not have enough time for their body to recover because as his body parts tried to recover, he still continued to apply pressure to his muscles.
This exposed him to injuries associated with rucking. You can see his graph is slowly dropping as days passed by due to the muscles being sore for the whole month which led to DOMS, (delayed onset muscle soreness.
To avoid this kind of situation, you should try to have enough rest after a heavy workout, and also a diet rich in proteins is highly required.
2. The benefits of everyday rucking
Daily rucking for a particular period of time, if correctly done, can greatly boost your endurance and weight load.
However, it requires failing and keeping on trying which might take time. Everyone rucks for a specific reason and it is understandable to try and hit your goals quickly.
People who ruck for small distances but with a heavyweight have high chances of having all the benefits because it helps your body withstand the heavyweight.
I advise you to properly keep track of your training to help you identify which weight is suitable and for what miles can you go with it. With these tracks, you can always adapt to a new training session easily.
Rucking also burns a lot of calories and strengthens your muscles. It also improves your cardiovascular health.
Final thoughts
According to the details listed above, rucking every day might be a bad option for you, however, if you find yourself in a situation where you really need to push yourself and over-train, consider rucking for short distances but with a heavyweight.
Whether you are training to improve on your weight load or trying to meet the standards of the military ruck, try to make time and allow your body to heal especially the muscles.
