'Rucking' Is The Latest Walking Trend You Need To Try. Here's Why.

Walking remains an accessible and popular exercise for many reasons — you don’t need any fancy equipment, it’s good for your heart health, helps you sleep better, feel better and is a simple way to get your daily dose of fresh air.

There are plenty of methods that can help keep your walks engaging and interesting. Lately, “rucking” ― a new walking trend ― has picked up steam on social media as a way to spice up your regular daily stroll.

“Rucking is simply just walking with weight on your body… weight on your back, technically,” said Nichele Cihlar, the director of training at GORUCK, a rucking gear company.

Like regular walking, rucking is an accessible exercise — and you probably even have all of the necessary gear in your house right now. All you have to do is put on a weighted backpack or rucksack and start moving.

“It’s a low-impact exercise that is pretty much based on military training — think about how the military trains a lot for endurance, they do a fair amount of running, but they also have to carry a lot of heavy equipment, so that’s kind of how rucking started,” said Mathew Welch, an exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

What’s more, this exercise offers some extra health rewards on top of a regular walking regimen. Here’s what experts say you should know about rucking and how to try it out:

Rucking adds resistance training to your walk, and has a host of other fitness benefits, too.

Rucking brings more of a challenge to your daily walk, which is a good thing for someone who is looking to work their body in a new way.

“Physically, walking is awesome, but sometimes we want to amplify that, and the easy way to do that is adding weight,” Cihlar said. “Resistance training is