Health & Fitness Archives | The Art of Manliness

The SEEDS Framework for Boosting Testosterone Naturally

Brett & Kate McKay — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:27:30 +0000

I’ve been writing about testosterone on this site for over a decade because testosterone is an important part of a man’s overall health and wellness. It helps with strength and muscle mass, strengthens your bones, improves your sexual health, and boosts your mood.

You’ll find a lot of information out there on the interwebs about how to increase your testosterone naturally. Cold showers, taking testosterone-boosting supplements, and even exposing your balls to red light.

But after talking to experts on the podcast about testosterone and reading a ton of research on the topic, the conclusion I’ve come to is this: hormone health comes down to consistently doing the boring stuff.

Several years ago, I spoke with fitness coach Vic Verdier on the podcast about how men can combat the fall-off in vitality that can come with aging, including the natural decline in testosterone. His answer was taking care of the fundamentals.

Vic uses an acronym he calls SEEDS to capture the basics of what you need to do to keep your T-levels healthy. It stands for Sleep, Exercise, Environment, Diet, and Stress.

Let’s talk about each of the testosterone-improving components of the SEEDS framework:

Sleep

A large portion of daily testosterone production happens during sleep. So if your sleep consistently sucks, your testosterone drops. When researchers at the University of Chicago restricted young men to five hours of sleep a night for one week, their testosterone levels fell 10-15%. Aim for 6.5 to 9 hours a night.

If you’re looking for ways you can improve your sleep, check out these AoM articles and podcast episodes:

Exercise

Exercise helps to boost testosterone by increasing muscle mass and decreasing body fat. Carrying around too much body fat isn’t good for T because body fat converts testosterone into estrogen; the less fat we store, the more T we have.

Two forms of exercise are particularly helpful for increasing testosterone. The first is lifting heavy weights with compound lifts that target large muscle groups, such as the squat, deadlift, and shoulder press, and taking adequate rest between sets. The second is HIIT or “High Intensity Interval Training,” which calls for short, intense bursts of effort, followed by periods of less-intense recovery.

But beyond regimented exercise, Vic recommends just staying active throughout the day. Your body wasn’t designed to do 45 minutes of structured exercise while being parked in a chair for the other 15 waking hours. Walk. Do yard work. Play catch with your kids. All those little “movement snacks” can keep your body running like a finely tuned machine, including the parts that manage hormones.

Environment

Vic’s specific point here is about sunshine and vitamin D, which is closely linked to testosterone production. If you’re spending most of your waking hours under fluorescent lights and only seeing the sun through your windshield on the commute, you’re probably falling short. So get outside more. Eat lunch in the sun. Take your phone calls on a walk. If you live somewhere that gets dark for months during the winter, use some tactics to get more sun during this cold and dreary season. It may be worth supplementing with vitamin D3. But actual sunlight on your skin is the goal.

Besides helping with vitamin D production, getting outside can also help manage stress, which, as we’ll see in a second, is another important factor in hormone health.

Another factor to think about when it comes to your environment and healthy testosterone levels is to make sure you’re not bathing in T-killing chemicals. Pesticides and industrial chemicals can dampen testosterone (and can cause cancer), so definitely limit your exposure to that stuff. Wash produce thoroughly, eat/drink from glass or stainless steel containers when possible, and limit use of products with heavy chemical fragrances or pesticides around the home.

You also want to reduce your exposure to xenoestrogens that are found in a lot of consumer products. Xenoestrogen is a chemical that imitates estrogen in the human body. When men are exposed to too much of this estrogen-imitating chemical, T levels can drop. The problem is xenoestrogen is freaking everywhere — plastics, shampoos, gasoline, cows, toothpaste. You name it, and there’s a good chance there’s xenoestrogen in it. I wouldn’t spend too much mental bandwidth trying to buy products that are completely xenoestrogen-free. Just don’t microwave your food in plastic containers and don’t lick your CVS receipts, and you’ll probably be fine.

Diet

You don’t need to do any special T-boosting diets like eating Ron Swanson amounts of eggs or consuming three Brazil nuts before you go to bed because the selenium will boost testosterone production while you sleep.

Just eat a balanced and varied diet. Get enough protein. Get enough carbs to fuel workouts. Get a moderate amount of fat for hormone health. Research suggests that about 20% to 40% of your calories should come from fat for healthy testosterone levels. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables to get the micronutrients your body needs for hormones. If your diet is solid, you’ll probably have no reason to supplement.

Diet can also help with fat loss, which will help reduce estrogen and increase T. For help with nutrition, check out these articles and podcast episodes:

Stress

Cortisol and testosterone compete for resources in your body. When cortisol is jacked up all the time from work, doomscrolling, or a schedule crammed too full, testosterone suffers. I think managing stress is particularly important for guys in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who are running hard and wondering why they feel depleted. Vic’s prescription is to build a life with some margin. Give yourself some time to chill the heck out. Take up a hobby. Become a cinephile. Download the Headspace app and meditate if you have to. Getting better sleep will also help with stress, so make that a priority.

None of these are exotic interventions for boosting T-levels. They don’t require a lot of time or money or exposing your balls to red light. Do them consistently, and your hormone health should be fine.

But…

If you’re doing all of this consistently and you still have symptoms of low T (low energy, brain fog, declining strength, low libido, low motivation), get your levels checked and talk to a doctor about whether testosterone replacement therapy makes sense. But make it the last option, not the first. Get the basics right and your body will usually handle the rest.

More testosterone-related AoM podcast episodes:

For more tips on maintaining your edge as you age, listen to our whole podcast with Vic Verdier:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

5BX: The Cold War Military Workout for Getting Fit in 11 Minutes a Day

Brett & Kate McKay — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 14:00:42 +0000

In our podcast episode with Dr. Martin Gibala about high-intensity interval training, he mentioned a high-intensity workout program that was developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force during the late 1950s, took only eleven minutes to perform, and became hugely popular with the civilian population. Duly intrigued, we decided to dig up the program to see what it involved.

The 5BX plan (Five Basic Exercises) was born out of a particular need: a third of the RCAF’s pilots were deemed unfit to fly and needed a workout program that 1) could be done without any specialized equipment, as the pilots were often stationed at remote bases without access to standard gyms, and 2) could fit into airmen’s busy schedules.

While high-intensity training hadn’t yet won mainstream acceptance, the pioneering research of Dr. Bill Orban had showed that by increasing the intensity of exercise, people could get the same fitness-improving benefits in much less time. Orban used this insight to develop 5BX, which involved doing five exercises — four of which targeted flexibility and strength and one that worked aerobic capacity — in just eleven minutes. The Canadian military encouraged not only its pilots to perform it, but their children as well. Orban also developed a plan for women called XBX, which involved doing ten exercises in 12 minutes.

In the 1960s, the programs were published together as the Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans and distributed outside the military. The booklet became popular with civilians not only in Canada but around the world; it was translated into thirteen languages, sold 23 million copies, and is credited with helping to launch our modern fitness culture.

If you’d like to try it out, we’ve reformatted and republished the 5BX plan below. It features six “charts,” each of which includes the program’s five main exercises:

Stretching
Sit-up
Back extension
Push-up
Running in place, interspersed with various jumps (can be substituted for an actual run or walk)

Each chart offers progressively more difficult variations of the five exercises, and you work your way from one level of performance on a particular chart to the next, and then from one chart to the next. Charts 5 and 6 get into some elite-level athletics — good luck with those toe-touching jack jumps, friends.

For a visual demonstration of some of the exercises, watch this 1959 Royal Canadian Air Force training video.

The Five Basic Exercises (5BX) Plan presented in this booklet is designed to show you how to develop and hold a high level of physical fitness, regardless of where you may be located. The scheme is not dependent on elaborate facilities or equipment. The exercises require only eleven minutes a day and can be done in your bedroom or beside your bed in your barracks.

The diversity of work assignments, combined with lack of adequate gymnasium facilities at many of your stations makes it difficult to schedule formal physical training periods for all our personnel. The 5BX Plan puts physical fitness training within reach of every member of the RCAF.

It is your duty and responsibility as a member of the RCAF to maintain a high level of physical fitness and be ready for any emergency which may require the extended use of your physical resources. Positive physical well-being is also closely allied with mental and emotional fitness, all of which are essential in the discharge of normal daily tasks.

Warming Up

The 5BX Plan was designed so that no additional warmup is necessary in order to receive its maximum benefits.

The older one is, the more necessary proper warming up becomes to avoid “strained” muscles. The 5BX Plan has a built-in method of warmup. This is achieved in two ways:

by the arrangement of the exercises; and
by the manner in which these exercises are performed.

For example, the first exercise is a stretching and loosening exercise which limbers up the large muscles of the body. In addition, this exercise should be started very slowly and easily, with a gradual increase in speed and vigor.

Let us see how this principle applies to exercise No. 1, which requires you to touch the floor. You should not force yourself to do it on the first attempt, but rather start by pushing down very gently and slowly as far as you can without undue strain — then on each succeeding try push down a little harder, and, at the same time, do the exercise a little faster so that by the end of two minutes you are touching the floor and moving at the necessary speed. All the exercises can be performed in this manner.

What Is It?

The 5BX Plan is composed of 6 charts arranged in progression. Each chart is composed of 5 exercises which are always performed in the same order and in the same maximum time limit, but, as you progress from chart to chart, there are slight changes in each basic exercise with a gradual demand for more effort.

A sample rating scale for Chart 3 is reproduced below and is to be used in the following way:

These are the Physical Capacity levels, each indicated by a letter of the alphabet.

Exercises 1, 2, 3, and 4 apply to the first four exercises described and illustrated. The column headed 1 represents exercise 1 (toe touch), etc. The figures in each column indicate the number of times that each exercise is to be repeated in the time allotted for that exercise. Exercise 5 is running on the spot. Two activities may be substituted for it, however, and if you prefer, you may run or walk the recommended distance in the required time in place of the stationary run of exercise 5.

The allotted time for each exercise is noted here. These times remain the same throughout all the charts. Total time for exercises 1 through 5 is 11 minutes.

NOTE:

It is important that the exercises at any level be completed in 11 minutes. However, it is likely that in the early stages, an individual will complete certain exercises in less than the allotted time while others may require longer. In these circumstances, the times allotted for individual exercises may be varied within the total 11 minute period.

How Far Should You Progress?

The level of Physical Capacity to which you should progress is determined by your “Age Group.” Levels for “Flying Crew” are listed separately. See “Your Physical Capacity Level” below.

How to Begin

Check your daily schedule and determine the time most convenient for you to do the exercises. It should be the same time each day.

Here are some suggested times:

Before breakfast
Late morning or afternoon, at your place of employment
After your regular recreational period
In the evening just before you retire

Regardless of the time you choose, START TODAY.

Maximum Rate of Progression Through Chart 1 According to Age

20 years or under, at least 1 day at each level
20-29 years, at least 2 days at each level
30-39 years, at least 4 days at each level
40-49 years, at least 7 days at each level
50-59 years, at least 8 days at each level
60 years and over, at least 10 days at each level

(If you feel stiff or sore, or if you are unduly breathless at any time, ease up and slow down your rate of progression. This is particularly applicable to older age groups.)

A Note of Caution

Even if you feel able to start at a high level and progress at a faster rate then indicated — DON’T DO IT — Start at the bottom of chart 1 and work your way up from level to level as recommended.

For best results from 5BX, the exercises must be done regularly. Remember, it may take you 6, 8, 10 months or more of daily exercises to attain the level recommended for you, but once you have attained it, only 3 periods of exercise per week will maintain this level of physical capacity.

If for any reason (illness, etc.) you stop doing 5BX regularly and you wish to begin again, do not recommence at the level you had attained previously.

Do drop back several levels — until you find one you can do without undue strain. After a period of inactivity of longer than two months, or one month caused by illness, it is recommended that you start again at Chart 1.

How to Progress

Start at the lowest Physical Capacity Level of Chart 1 (D-). Repeat each exercise in the allotted time or do the 5 exercises in 11 minutes. Move upward on the same chart to the next level (D) only after you can complete all the required movements at your present level within 11 minutes. Continue to progress upward in this manner until you can complete all the required movements at level A+ within 11 minutes. Now start at the bottom of Chart 2 (D-), and continue in this fashion upwards through the levels, and from chart to chart until you reach the level for your age group.

Chart 1

Feet astride, arms upward. Forward bend to floor touching then stretch upward and backward bend. Do not strain to keep knees straight.

Back lying, feet 6” apart, arms at sides. Sit up just far enough to see your heels. Keep legs straight, head and shoulders must clear the floor.

Front lying, palms placed under the thighs. Raise head and one leg, repeat using legs alternately. Keep leg straight at the knee, thighs must clear the palms. Count one each time second leg touches floor.

Front lying, hands under the shoulders, palms flat on the floor. Straighten arms lifting upper body, keeping the knees on the floor. Bend arms to lower body. Keep body straight from the knees, arms must be fully extended, chest must touch the floor to complete one movement.

Stationary run. Count a step each time the left foot touches the floor. Lift feet approximately 4 inches off floor. Every 75 steps do 10 “scissor jumps.” Repeat this sequence until the required number of steps is completed.

Scissor jumps. Stand with right leg and left arm extended forward and left leg and right arm extended backward. Jump up and change position of arms and legs before landing. Repeat (arms shoulder high).

Chart 2

Feet astride, arms upward. Touch floor and press (bounce) once then stretch upward and backward bend. Do not strain to keep knees straight.

Back lying, feet 6” apart, arms at sides. “Sit up” to vertical position, keep feet on floor even if it is necessary to hook them under a chair. Allow knees to bend slightly.

Front lying, palms placed under thighs. Raise head, shoulders, and both legs. Keep legs straight, both thighs must clear the palms.

Front lying, hands under the shoulder, palms flat on floor. Straighten arms to lift body with only palms and toes on the floor. Back straight. Chest must touch the floor for each completed movement after arms have been fully extended.

Stationary run. Count a step each time left foot touches the floor. Lift feet approximately 4 inches off floor. After every 75 steps, do 10 “astride jumps.” Repeat this sequence until required number of steps is completed.

Astride jumps. Feet together, arms at side. Jump and land with feet astride and arms raised sideways to slightly above shoulder height. Return with a jump to the starting position for count of one. Keep arms straight.

Chart 3

Feet astride, arms upward. Touch floor 6” outside left foot, again between feet and press once then 6” outside right foot, bend backward as far as possible, repeat, reverse direction after half the number of counts. Do not strain to keep knees straight, return to erect position.

Back lying, feet 6” apart, arms clasped behind head. Allow knees to bend slightly. Sit up to vertical position, keep feet on floor, hook feet under chair, etc., only if necessary.

Front lying, hands interlocked behind the back. Lift head, shoulders, chest and both legs as high as possible. Keep legs straight, and raise chest and both thighs completely off floor.

Front lying, hands under the shoulders, palms flat on floor. Touch chin to floor in front of hands — touch forehead to floor behind hands before returning to up position. There are three definite movements, chin, forehead, arms straightened. DO NOT do in one continuous motion.

Stationary run. Count a step each time left foot touches the floor. Lift feet approximately 4 inches off floor. After every 75 steps, do 10 “half knee bends.” Repeat this sequence until required number of steps is completed.

Half knee bends. Feet together, hands on hips, knees bent to form an angle of about 110 degrees. Do not bend knees past a right angle. Straighten to upright position, raising heel off floor, return to starting position each time. Keep feet in contact with floor — the back upright and straight at all times.

Chart 4

Feet astride, arms upward. Touch floor outside left foot, between feet, press once then outside right foot, circle bend backward as far as possible, reverse direction after half the number of counts. Do not strain to keep knees straight. Keep arms above head and make full circle, bending backward past vertical each time.

Back lying, legs straight, feet together, arms straight overhead. Sit up and touch the toes keeping the arms and legs straight. Use chair to hook feet under only if necessary. Keep arms in contact with the sides of the head throughout the movement. Allow knees to bend slightly.

Front lying, hands and arms stretched sideways. Lift head, shoulders, arms, chest and both legs as high as possible. Keep legs straight, raise chest and both thighs completely off floor.

Front lying, palms of hands flat on floor, approximately 1 foot from ears directly to side of head. Straighten arms to lift body. Chest must touch floor for each completed movement.

Stationary run. Count a step each time left foot touches the floor. Lift feet approximately 4 inches off floor. After every 75 steps, do 10 “semi-squat jumps.” Repeat this sequence until required number of steps is completed.

Semi-squat jumps. Drop to a half crouch position with hands on knees and arms straight, keep back as straight as possible, right foot slightly ahead of left. Jump to upright position with body straight and feet leaving floor. Reverse position of feet before landing. Return to half crouch position and repeat.

Chart 5

Feet astride, arms upward, hands collapsed, arms straight. Touch floor outside left foot, between feet, press once then outside right foot, circle bend backwards as far as possible. Reverse direction after half the number of counts. Do not strain to keep knees straight.

Back lying, legs straight, feet together, hands clasped behind head. Sit up and raise legs in bent position at same time twist to touch right elbow to left knee. This completes one movement. Alternate the direction of twist each time. Keep feet off floor when elbow touches knee.

Front lying, arms extended overhead. Raise arms, head, chest, and both legs as high as possible. Keep legs and arms straight, chest and both thighs completely off floor.

Front lying, hands under the shoulder, palms flat on floor. Push off floor and clap hands before returning to starting position. Keep body straight during the entire movement. Hand clap must be heard.

Stationary run. Count a step each time left foot touches floor. Lift feet approximately 4 inches off floor. After every 75 steps, do 10 “semi-spread eagle jumps.” Repeat this sequence until required number of steps is completed.

Semi-spread eagle jumps. Feet together, drop to a half crouch position hands on knees with arms straight. Jump up to feet astride swing arms overhead in mid-air, return directly to starting position on landing. Raise hands above head level, spread feet at least shoulder width apart in astride position before landing with feet together.

Chart 6

Feet astride, arms upward, hands reverse clasped, arms straight. Touch floor outside left foot, between feet, press once then outside right foot, circle bend backwards as far as possible. Reverse direction after half the number of counts. Keep hands tightly reverse clasped at all times.

Back lying, legs straight, feet together, arms straight over the head. Sit up and at the same time lifting both legs to touch the toes in a pike (V) position. Keep feet together, legs and arms straight, all of the upper back and legs clear floor, fingers touch toes each time.

Front lying, arms extended over head. Raise arms, head, chest, and both legs as high as possible then press back once. Keep legs and arms straight — chest and both thighs completely off floor.

Front lying, hands under shoulders, palms flat on floor. Push off floor and slap chest before returning to starting position. Keep body straight during the entire movement. Chest slap must be heard.

Stationary run. Count a step each time left foot touches the floor. Lift feet approximately 4 inches off floor. After every 75 steps, do 10 “jack jumps.” Repeat this sequence until required number of steps is completed.

Jack jumps. Feet together, knees bent, sit on heels, finger tips touch floor. Jump up, raise legs waist high, keep legs straight and touch toes in midair. Keep legs straight, raise feet level to “standing waist height.” Touch toes each time.

Your Physical Capacity Level

Each age group is given a Physical Capacity level to attain; that is, a goal which they should try to reach.

The Physical Capacity levels in this plan are based on the expectation of average individuals.

With every average, there are individuals who surpass it, and those who fall below it. In terms of the 5BX Plan and the goals, this means that there will be some men who are capable of progressing beyond the level indicated, and on the other hand, there will be persons who will never attain this average level.

If you feel able to move further through the charts than your Physical Capacity level, by all means do so. If, on the contrary, you experience great difficulty in approaching this level you should stop at a level which you feel to be within your capability. It is impossible to predict accurately, a level for each individual who uses this program. Use the goals as guides, and apply them with common sense.

Here are a few tips:

When you start, defeat the first desire to skip a day; then defeat all such desires as they occur. This exercise program has plenty of bite; the longer you do it the more you will enjoy it.

As you progress well into the program you may find certain levels impossible to complete in 11 minutes — work hard at that level — it may take some days or even weeks — then suddenly you will find yourself sailing ahead again.

Counting the steps in exercise 5 can be difficult. You can lose count very easily at times. If you have this problem, here is an easy way to overcome it. Divide the total number of steps required by 75 and note the answer—place a row of buttons, corresponding in number to this answer, on a handy table or chair. Now count off your first 75 steps—do your ten required movements—and move the first button. Repeat until all the buttons have been removed, finishing with any left over steps.

For diversity, occasionally an exercise from the previous chart may be substituted.

Wishing is not good enough.

With our archives 4,000 articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in March 2024.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Podcast #1,109: The Hidden Power of Heat — How a Good Sweat Heals Your Body and Mind

Brett & Kate McKay — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:29:01 +0000

Cold exposure has gotten a lot of attention the past few years, with people dunking themselves in ice baths for the sake of their health and well-being. But, good news here, exposing yourself to heat by sitting in the sauna or even a hot tub, might actually be even better for you, not to mention more pleasant.

In his new book, Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger, Bill Gifford unpacks the dichotomy of heat: how it can be both a danger and a healer. In the first part of our conversation, we dive into that former side, discussing what happens when your core temperature gets too high, why some people handle the stress of hot temperatures better than others, and how heat tolerance can actually be trained. We then talk about the advantages of heat exposure over cold exposure, and the benefits of heat for both body and mind, including how it can boost athletic performance and heart health, and may even be an effective treatment for depression. We also talk about how to get the most out of your sauna sessions and how Bill and I like to sauna.

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This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

6 Lifesaving Skills Every Man Should Know

Brett & Kate McKay — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:14:54 +0000

Life-threatening health emergencies can happen at any moment. While you should always call 911 and summon professional medical attention for a victim, oftentimes time is of the essence, and paramedics are minutes (or much longer) away. If the person is going to live, they can’t wait for a medic to get to them. They need help now.

That’s where you — a family member, friend, or random bystander-on-the-scene — come in. If someone close to you was stricken with a life-threatening emergency, would you be prepared to be the first first responder?

I talked to ICU nurse (and Strenuous Life member) Jared Shears about the basic lifesaving skills every man should know. While all of these can be performed by laypeople, Jared highly recommends taking an in-person first aid course so you can actually do some hands-on practice. Check with your local Red Cross for times and locations for these classes.

How to Perform CPR

If someone is unresponsive, doesn’t have a pulse, and isn’t breathing, they’ve likely gone into cardiac arrest. To prolong their life until an AED (see below) or advanced medical care is available, you’ll need to perform hands-only CPR (the American Heart Association recommends that untrained bystanders who see someone collapse do only the chest compression part of CPR, sans the mouth-to-mouth part).

In our in-depth article on how to recognize and treat a heart attack, paramedic Charles Patterson strongly recommends that everyone take in-person CPR training:

Having hands-on training to help you understand the mechanics of CPR and feeling the appropriate rate and depth of compressions is extremely beneficial and cannot be matched by simply watching a video or reading instructions online. Being able to go through the steps of CPR on a dummy will help you build confidence and remain calm in the event of an emergency.

How to Use an AED

In a cardiac arrest emergency, hands-only CPR is performed to prolong life until a shock from an AED is given or an EMT arrives. As soon as an AED is available, use it.

AED stands for Automated External Defibrillator, and it gives the heart a shock to get it going again.

AEDs are located in most public places like stores, offices, and gyms. While most AEDs provide automated voice instructions when you turn them on, as with CPR, Charles recommends getting in-person training from the Red Cross or the American Heart Association so you can go through the steps manually and know what it feels like to use this device.

How to Perform the Heimlich Maneuver

Choking is the fourth leading cause of death by unintentional injury. Thankfully, with a bit of know-how, choking deaths can be prevented. Enter the Heimlich maneuver.

Before you perform the Heimlich maneuver, the Red Cross recommends first leaning the person over your arm (put one of your arms under one of theirs and across their chest) and giving them five hard blows on the back with your other arm. Often the item becomes dislodged with just these back slaps. But if that doesn’t work, then initiate the abdominal thrusts dictated by the Heimlich maneuver.

Be sure to go through our in-depth guide on how to perform the Heimlich maneuver in different circumstances, including on pregnant women, obese people, babies, and even dogs.

How to Use a Tourniquet

A tourniquet is used to stop severe bleeding and prevent deaths caused by severe blood loss. For many decades, the tourniquet was seen as a measure of last resort because it was believed that completely stopping the blood flow to a limb would result in tissue or nerve damage. But studies out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved that the application of a tourniquet could save lives while having an extremely minimal chance of leading to nerve damage or limb amputation. As a result, many civilian EMTs and doctors recommend that tourniquets be applied more routinely in severe blood loss situations to prevent deaths. But it’s essential that you know how to use one properly.

For an in-depth guide on how to use a tourniquet, check out our article written by Iraq war veteran and Army medic Bruce A. West.

How to Save Someone From Drowning

The first step to saving someone from drowning is recognizing what drowning actually looks like. The signs can be much less dramatic and obvious than you think.

After you’ve established that a person is drowning, your initial response shouldn’t be to jump in the water and try to bring them ashore yourself. A person who’s drowning can be panicked, and clutch, kick, and grab at you as you try to rescue them, dragging you both underwater. So rather than jumping in yourself, extend a rope, oar, or stick to the victim from the shore or from a boat. If the victim is too far away for this course of action, and you can’t use a boat to get closer, then get in the water yourself, grab the drowning person from behind, and physically tow them to safety.

How to Treat Major Burns

While minor burns can be treated and managed at home, third-degree burns will require professional medical attention. However, the immediate care a burn victim receives before getting to the hospital can go a long way in mitigating the extent of the damage and reducing the chance of the burns being fatal.

Burn care varies according to the kind of burn it is (thermal, chemical, electrical, etc.), and, despite on-the-scene intervention being so crucial, most people are unaware of what it involves. Jared directed my attention to this comprehensive and detailed guide on how to treat severe burns while you await the arrival of paramedics. Print it off and study it.

For help in remembering things like how to save a drowning person, how to recognize that someone is having a heart attack (or stroke), along with other lifesaving information, check out these nine mnemonics that are easy and essential to commit to memory.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The Fitness Test of America’s Most Elite Civilian Search and Rescue Team

Brett & Kate McKay — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:36:52 +0000

Search and rescue (SAR) teams in U.S. national parks respond to lost hikers, injured climbers, stranded boaters, missing children, and backcountry medical emergencies. Their work ranges from relatively simple trail searches to high-angle rope rescues, swiftwater recoveries, helicopter evacuations, and multi-day backcountry operations.

The National Park Service (NPS) has its own search and rescue capability. Many parks employ commissioned law enforcement rangers and specialized rescue rangers who are trained in technical rescue, emergency medicine, and incident command. Some large or high-risk parks maintain dedicated SAR teams made up of full-time staff.

At the same time, the NPS frequently works with volunteer and partner organizations. Depending on the park and the incident, they may coordinate with local sheriff’s offices, county SAR teams (often volunteer-based), mountain rescue groups, state agencies, the Coast Guard, or even military aviation units. In some parks, volunteers are formally integrated into SAR operations under NPS supervision.

Among the parks that partner with outside organizations is the Great Smoky Mountains, America’s busiest national park. That’s where the Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue (BUSAR) team, which is headed by Andrew Herrington, operates.

When the members of BUSAR train, they do so through their own nonprofit organization. When a rescue mission kicks off and they respond, members are temporarily hired as emergency employees of the National Park Service. Some members don’t take the pay that’s given and just volunteer their time and talent. Nobody’s getting rich from this; that’s not why these guys do it. They find the work incredibly challenging and fulfilling.

If you break your leg while hiking in the Smokies, chances are Andrew and his crew are helping the PSAR Rangers haul you out. They’ll do it whether it’s raining, snowing, dark, steep, or completely off-trail. And carrying an injured person on a litter through rough terrain while wearing packs loaded with medical and survival gear is brutally strenuous work.

To pull that off, these guys have to be fit. Not Instagram-influencer fit. Useful fit.

To create a team of usefully fit guys, BUSAR has developed a fitness test that screens for members who will be able to do the hard, back-breaking work of rescuing people.

I recently talked to Andrew about why he formed BUSAR and the fitness test he uses to assess whether potential team members will be ready for action — and for anything.

Meet Andrew and BUSAR

Andrew is a professional hunter and trapper who has worked for the National Park Service in the Smokies for over two decades. He grew up outdoors, taught his first survival class as a kid (he still teaches them), and eventually landed in the law enforcement division of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That’s where he got his first taste of search-and-rescue work. Whenever there was a rescue mission, park rangers would call in personnel from various park divisions. Andrew’s experience as a hog hunter in the park gave him deep knowledge of its vast, complex trail system.

Though, in fact, his first real experience with search and rescue was getting rescued himself after a rock climbing accident as a teenager. That accident left him with a skull fracture, partial temporary paralysis, and a metal plate in his head.

Twelve years ago, while working on search-and-rescue teams in the Smokies, Andrew noticed that not everyone tasked with the job was physically prepared for it. He’d sat in meetings where leaders admitted they couldn’t send certain rangers on rescues because they weren’t fit enough.

So about a decade back, Andrew decided to start an elite, dedicated backcountry search-and-rescue team. He wanted the most knowledgeable and physically capable people available and set out to recruit guys who had extensive outdoor, military, tracking, survival, firefighting, law enforcement, and medical experience and possessed superior levels of fitness.

The BUSAR Fitness Test

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To assess the readiness of potential members of this crackerjack search-and-rescue team, Andrew developed a rigorous fitness test they would have to pass to join up. The test is designed to answer one question: Can this person do the work?

The Park Service requires that rangers assigned to “arduous” duty pass the USFS Work Capacity Test, but it’s not particularly strenuous or revealing: rangers have to walk three miles on level terrain while carrying a 45-pound pack, in under 45 minutes. The test is easy to pass and doesn’t tell you much about how someone will perform off-trail, under fatigue, while handling awkward loads.

Andrew’s test is different. It’s stripped-down, demanding, and designed to replicate the effort someone needs on an actual rescue mission.

Here’s the BUSAR Fitness Test:

Thirty-Minute Loaded Carry Test

Candidates must first do the USFS pack test described above. They then exchange their 45-pound pack for a 20-pound search-and-rescue pack. While wearing that pack and holding a 45-pound kettlebell, the candidate must step up and over a picnic table in a continuous circuit for 30 minutes.

The movement is awkward by design. It mimics lifting, lowering, and repositioning weight in uneven terrain. Grip fatigue shows up fast.

Trap Bar Deadlift

A candidate must lift a trap bar loaded with two hundred and twenty-five pounds for as many reps as possible in one minute. The minimum to pass is fifteen reps.

Back injuries are the most common injuries among rescue personnel. Carrying litters and repeatedly handling victims stress the posterior chain. If your back can’t tolerate that kind of work under fatigue, you’re a liability.

Burpee Pull-Ups With a Pack

This is the hardest part of the test.

Wearing the 20-pound SAR pack, candidates perform a burpee, jump up to grab a pull-up bar, and pull themselves up. They have 10 minutes to complete a minimum of 50 reps.

This isn’t about strict pull-up strength. It’s about mobility, coordination, and the ability to get up and down off the ground repeatedly. Crawling, climbing, scrambling, and recovering from awkward positions are constant features of real rescues.

It’s also a test of how candidates manage energy and fatigue. A lot of guys make the mistake of trying to go too hard too fast, and they gas out. Knowing how to pace yourself is a skill you need while carrying someone out on a litter.

Andrew has had people recommend that he change the test to make it “more scientific.” But he figures if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In the ten years he’s been giving the test, he hasn’t seen anyone who passed it fail to perform on an actual mission.

Training Together

All BUSAR members are expected to maintain fitness so they’re ready when the call goes out. A lot of them do CrossFit and rucking.

For a while, Andrew’s team met weekly for group training. They’d show up at a park with their packs, and someone would bring kettlebells and sandbags. They’d create a workout on the spot: sandbag tosses, buddy carries, burpees, crawling, kettlebell swings. The workouts weren’t fancy or optimized. They were practical.

But more importantly, according to Andrew, they built cohesion. Shared physical suffering creates trust. When you’ve watched someone grind through fatigue without complaining, you have a better sense of how they’ll behave when things go sideways in the wilderness.

Life eventually intervened, and the weekly workouts faded for a time. Andrew is now looking at bringing them back, especially for newer team members.

In addition to maintaining physical fitness, the team meets quarterly to keep their technical skills sharp: land navigation, tracking, first aid, shelter systems, and moving litters over terrain.

During high-visitation periods, the team sometimes stages in the park for pre-deployment. They train, stay ready, and can respond quickly if a call comes in. During busy seasons, they may get called out multiple times a week.

Be Strong to Be Useful

Most of us aren’t going to be hauling injured hikers out of the Smokies. But I reckon the average guy can learn from how BUSAR approaches fitness.

These guys are, as 19th-century physical culturist Georges Hébert put it, strong to be useful.

You don’t know when you’ll need to move furniture all afternoon, shovel snow for an hour, carry a kid who fell asleep, help a friend move, or deal with some minor emergency that turns physical. Training for general strength, basic conditioning, and handling awkward loads helps you be ready for those moments.

So yes, keep doing your hypertrophy work and chasing PRs on your deadlift. But make sure to incorporate some BUSAR-type training so you’ll be ready when you’re called to action.

And if you’re feeling intrigued about doing volunteer search and rescue work, here are some reasons you might join up.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The Case for Weightlifting Shoes

Brett & Kate McKay — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:42:39 +0000

If you’ve moved beyond machines in your strength training journey and are getting under a heavy barbell to do squats, cleans, or presses, you may have wondered if you should get yourself a pair of weightlifting shoes.

If you’ve started to work with significant weight, you really should.

Here’s why weightlifting shoes matter and what they do.

Weightlifting Shoes Do Three Jobs

A weightlifting shoe does three things, and all three can significantly improve your lifting experience:

It supports your foot. “Lifters” surround your feet in a tight casing so that nothing wiggles around while you’re moving heavy loads. Everything feels nice and secure, which is a good feeling to have when you’re lowering into a squat with 400 lbs on your back.

The sole does not compress. At all. There’s zero squish. This is important! If any part of the sole compresses as you drive upward out of the bottom of a squat, part of your force gets absorbed into the squish. It’s like trying to squat on a mattress. All that effort you’re generating from your legs, your hips, and your back disappears into the foam under your feet. You don’t want that. No energy leaks! This is why you don’t want to lift in running shoes or cross-trainers. They’ve got too much give.

The elevated heel changes your mechanics. Most weightlifting shoes have a heel that’s raised somewhere between 0.5 and 1 inch. That heel elevation lets your knees travel further forward over your toes at the bottom of the squat, which does a couple of things. First, it allows you to sit deeper into the squat more easily, especially if you have limited ankle mobility. Without the heel, a lot of guys compensate for tight ankles by leaning their torso way forward, which turns a squat into more of a good morning. I like good mornings, but you don’t want to good morning when you’re squatting. The heel-assisted knees-over-toes position also shifts more of the workload to your quads by keeping your torso more upright (helping you with those quad goals).

What to Look for in a Weightlifting Shoe

A good weightlifting shoe will have 1) a hard, non-compressible sole (often made from stacked leather, wood, or hard plastic), 2) a snug fit that locks your foot in place with straps or laces (or both), and 3) a slightly elevated heel.

Several companies make solid lifting shoes. I’ve tried several of these lifters over the years:

Adidas Adipower. This was my first lifting shoe. It checks all the marks for a good lifter: plastic non-compressible sole, snug fit, and elevated heel. The thing I didn’t like about it is the shoe is too narrow. My wide Fred Flintstone feet would start hurting about halfway into my workout.

Do-Win Classic. Do-Win was the second pair of lifting shoes I tried. I mainly bought them for the looks. They’ve got a handsome, vintage design. Looks like something Vince Anello would wear back in the day. Instead of a plastic sole, it uses stacked leather. The shoe has a nice elevated heel and plenty of support. It’s a bit more roomy than the Adidas Adipower.

TYR L-1 Lifter. This is my current shoe. I’ve been using it for a few years, and I love it. Here’s what I love about the TYR L-1 Lifter: The anatomical toe box is a game-changer for those of us with wider feet — no more feeling like your toes are in a vice grip while trying to maintain stability in a heavy squat. The 21mm heel-to-toe drop puts it right in that sweet spot for Olympic lifts and squats. This is the lifter I recommend that guys get.

Besides the above brands, Nike has their Romaleo series. I haven’t used them, but have heard good things about them.

Whatever you choose, you want support, no squish, and a raised heel. Those are your three non-negotiables.

Why Plunk Down $200 for Gym Shoes?

Fair question. A good pair of weightlifting shoes will run you up to $200, which feels like a lot for something you’re only wearing a few hours a week.

But here’s the case for them:

For starters, they’re going to improve your barbell training. Unlike most gear purchases, you’ll actually feel the difference the first time you lift in a pair of weightlifting shoes. Take that first squat with a solid, incompressible base under your feet and your knees tracking forward over your toes the way they’re supposed to, and you’ll wonder why you spent all those years squishing around in running shoes.

Second, your lifters are going to last a long time because you’re only wearing them for your workouts. You’re not running in them or walking the dog. You’re standing on a rubber gym floor, squatting and pressing and pulling for an hour, then taking them off. With that kind of limited use, a quality pair of lifting shoes can easily last a decade or more. That pair of Adidas Adipowers that I stopped using? I disinfected them, cleaned them up nice, and gave them to a guy who was just getting started on his iron journey. He’s still using them. They’re 13 years old. Spread $200 over 15 years of training, and you’re looking at about $13 a year. That’s a pretty solid return on investment for a piece of gear you use every single session that’ll improve your lifts.

Get yourself a pair. Your squat will thank you.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Podcast #1,106: Born to Carry — How to Build Strength, Stamina, and Sanity Through Rucking

Brett & Kate McKay — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:43:31 +0000

If you’re looking for a way to improve your fitness, boost your mental health, and reconnect with a deeply human activity — all without going to the gym or pounding your knees on a daily run — then rucking may be the practice you’ve been looking for.

Rucking is simple: throw some weight on your back and start walking. But a little context and a few key tips can make it a safer, more effective, and more satisfying experience. Here to unpack those principles and practicals is Michael Easter, author of Walk With Weight: The Definitive Guide to Rucking. Michael and I first explore the evolutionary and military history of carrying load. We then dive into why rucking is perhaps the most accessible form of training for strength and stamina, and such an effective tool for alleviating back pain, building bone health, and fostering fat loss. We get into using a backpack versus a weighted vest, how much weight you should carry, and how you can get started today with stuff you’ve probably already got lying around.

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Transcript

Brett McKay:

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AoM podcast. If you’re looking for a way to improve your fitness, boost your mental health, and reconnect with a deeply human activity, all without going to the gym or pounding your knees on a daily run, then rucking may be the practice you’ve been looking for. rucking is simple. Throw some weight on your back and start walking. But a little context and a few key tips can make it a safer, more effective and more satisfying experience.

Here to unpack those principles and practicals is Michael Easter, author of Walk With Weight: The Definitive Guide to Rucking. Michael and I first explored the evolutionary military history of carrying load. We then dive into why rucking is perhaps the most accessible form of training for strength and stamina and such an effective tool for alleviating back pain, building bone health, and fostering fat loss. We get into using a backpack versus a weighted vest, how much weight you should carry and how you get started today with stuff you probably already got lying around after the show’s over. Check out our show notes at aom.is/ruck.

All right, Michael Easter, welcome back to the show.

Michael Easter:

Thanks for having me back, man. I’m excited to be here.

Brett McKay:

See you got a new book out called Walk With Weight: The Definitive Guide to Rucking. For those who aren’t familiar with rucking, you’ve become kind of the evangelist, the Paul, the Apostle of rucking. For those who aren’t familiar with the activity, what is rucking?

Michael Easter:

That’s a fine distinction. The evangelist of rucking. I like that. The simplest way to put it is rucking is just throwing some weight in a backpack and going for a walk. Now I also think it gets interpreted and starts to capture things like putting on a weight vest and going for a walk, but basically carrying weight on your body, walking across the earth. That’s it. Pretty simple.

Brett McKay:

That’s pretty simple, but there’s more to it than that, as we’ll see in this conversation. But how did you discover rucking?

Michael Easter:

So my background was, I was an editor at Men’s Health magazine for about seven years, and so I’m always in that role looking for fitness trends coming out and rocking had sort of popped up as this kind of interesting thing that was tied to the military. But I think when I started to really understand why it is such a powerful physical activity for humans, it came when I was reporting my book, The Comfort Crisis, and for that book I spent about a month up in the Arctic and we were on this caribou hunt. So it took us about two weeks to finally hunt a caribou and then we had to pack it out. And as I was doing that pack out, I started to sort of realize, and we can get into the sort of evolutionary science of this, that humans are really unique in our ability to carry weight. So we’re the only mammal that can carry weight for distance. And I’ve always been really interested in the things that shaped us as humans in the past, how can they still help us today? So that sort of set off the idea that packing out 120 some odd pounds of caribou across this freezing tundra. That’s terrible to walk on.

Brett McKay:

How long ago was that?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, that was the fall of 2019.

Brett McKay:

So I love rucking. I do it about once a week. I discovered it back in 2012 because the founders of Huckberry, Andy and Richard, they introduced me to the founder of GORUCK — at about that time Huckberry started doing some partnerships with GORUCK and…what’s the name of the founder? We’ve had him on the podcast.

Michael Easter:

Jason McCarthy.

Brett McKay:

Jason McCarthy. He invited me to do a GORUCK Tough. Never heard of this. And I was like, okay, why not? So I got a ruck sack, started training for it, and I did the GORUCK Tough with my brother in Oklahoma City in November, I think 2012. It was cold, I remember it was like 30 degrees. And have you done a GORUCK Tough?

Michael Easter:

Is that the 12 hour one?

Brett McKay:

Yeah, the 12 hour one.

Michael Easter:

Yeah. So I’ve done a Tough and a Heavy . . . I did a Tough in Providence in probably about the same time you did. Maybe 2012. And that was for a Men’s Health story, and then I ended up doing a 24 hour one in maybe 2013 or 14 or something like that. So yeah, that was a good introduction.

Brett McKay:

Yeah that was my introduction to rucking. I mean, for those who aren’t familiar with the Tough events, it’s all night, it’s 12 hours. You got a rucksack on with I think 40 or 30 pounds of weight. And then you get there and you do these calisthenics, bear crawls, pushups, you’re carrying people around and then they get you wet. The first thing, they found a pond and it’s like get in the pond and it was 30 degrees and so the rest of the night you’re just cold and wet and you’re carrying logs. It was brutal. I’ve done a few other events since then. Been a while since I’ve done one, but I still ruck. I caught the bug and I just enjoy it. We’re going to talk about why I enjoy it and why I think it’s so great and why you think it’s so great, because I think you did a really good job capturing it in this book. So people have probably heard the idea that humans were born to run, but you argue that they were really born to carry. So you kind of alluded to it a little bit in your answer previously, but what’s the history of humans carrying stuff?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, so I mean for some context, there’s this 2004 paper that came out from a guy from Harvard whose name is Daniel Lieberman, and he basically argued that if you look at the way the human body is built the way it is, we stand on two feet, we sweat, we don’t have much hair. One of the reasons for that is that we evolve to run long distances in order to hunt prey. So most other animals can’t cool themselves in the heat, and so if you get ’em running in the heat, they’re eventually going to tire. We don’t overheat when it’s hot out and we’re running. So we would use that to our advantage. We’d run like 10 miles chasing an animal. Eventually it would get too hot, it would topple over, we would sprint or whatever, and then we would successfully complete this hunt. Now what got lost in that, though, and this is kind of the realization that I had when I was hunting up in the Arctic, is what happens after you have killed the animal and you’re 10 miles from camp, you got to carry that thing back.

And if you look at us compared to many other animals, pretty much every animal can run, but we’re the only animal that can pick up weight and carry it a long distance across the earth. And that was only in the context of hunting. If you look at what humans sort of evolved doing every single day, we were carrying all the time where hunters and gatherers and gathering is simply an act of walking around finding food. You pick it up, you carry it, you gather more. We also had to carry our children, and that really shaped us as a species. So once we started walking on two feet, this was about 6 million years ago, by the way, once we start walking on two feet, it all of a sudden frees our hands. And once our hands are free, we can use them to manipulate the world, we can use them to carry tools into the unknown. We can do all these really interesting things with them that allows us to eventually take over the world. And that makes us really unique and explains why we are doing this over the internet in these lovely built houses as my dog hasn’t evolved much more than just sitting around begging for treats.

Brett McKay:

Alright, so carrying stuff really opened things up for us as a species. And you also get into the history of rucking. So it seems like the first carrying devices that we would think of as backpacks started with mothers who used them to carry their kids and that freed up their hands for doing other things. And then a lot of the development in the practice of humans carrying cargo on their backs happened in the military. So rucking, this idea of rucking, it comes from the military. Rucking is a military phrase. Talk about the history of soldiers in war carrying load in order to do what they do

Michael Easter:

When it comes to warfare, especially for most of history, these soldiers were having to take equipment really long distances by marching it. So you might have to walk 300 miles to a battle site with all of your unit as it were, and you’re carrying your gear the entire time. And a lot of this gear was very heavy loads in the past a couple thousand years ago, they might range from 35 pounds all the way up to 85 pounds. But this act of rucking, of carrying your gear as a soldier, that has really been the foundation of military training for basically all of time. If you look at how military units throughout the world have trained, the foundation has always been marching with weight and it still is.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, I mean you talk about a manual written by a Roman guy where he talks about how to train a soldier and one of those training exercises was you had to just carry load for distance as much as possible.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, that was basically it. And a lot of the military units throughout time when they were trying to test their soldiers to see if they were ready for battle, the tests were basically tests of being able to march with weight. It could be, you have to be able to walk 12 miles with say 50 pounds in X amount of hours or whatever it might be. And these tests, they all sort of varied throughout different places, different military units and different periods of time, but they all are fundamentally based around can you carry X load for Y distance in Z time?

Brett McKay:

Yeah, you had some examples from history. So the Macedonian soldiers, Alexander the Great’s soldiers, they marched to battle carrying about 80 pounds, a Greek hoplight, 50 pounds of gear in armor, and even their armor was just heavy. I remember when I took a class in ancient Greek history and they described how much the shin covers weighed, their spear, their shield, like, man, that’s got to be exhausting.

Michael Easter:

Oh yeah. And I will also add what makes this even more amazing is that, I mean those loads are heavy for anyone today, but when you look at the average size of men back then, they were far smaller than we are today. The average American man right now weighs about 200 pounds, and back then they would weigh say about 140 pounds. So if you’re carrying 85 pounds and you weigh 140 pounds, that’s like an average guy today carrying say around 120 pounds. So these are not insignificant loads. I mean these guys were unbelievably fit.

Brett McKay:

And they were doing it for long distances and sometimes really fast. After the Battle of Marathon, the Athenian army marched 25 miles back to Athens to head off the Persians, and they got there pretty fast and they were carrying their gear.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, it’ll definitely make you feel a little bit soft when you start reading about these soldiers of the past. One thing that I would add that I found pretty interesting is that as technology advances, you would think that the loads that our soldiers carry would’ve gone down. We would’ve made lighter gear, things would’ve become lighter, easier to carry. That’s not actually what happened. So some of our gear did become lighter, but we started adding more and more gear. So by the time we were in World War II, Vietnam, even the Iraq War, the loads that the average American soldier was carrying were around a hundred pounds. So we’ve kind of just ramped up the weight over time. That said, those soldiers were bigger, but these weights have just kind of gone up over time.

Brett McKay:

If you saw Saving Private Ryan, that D-Day invasion seemed like the very beginning. You saw some of those guys, they just drowned because they had too much stuff on ’em when they got into the water.

Michael Easter:

Yeah.

Brett McKay:

So in the military, rucking has been a big part of their training. What has the military learned about walking with weight that has carried over into civilian life? What have we learned about the science of walking with weight from the military?

Michael Easter:

I think that there’s been some good and some bad. So I’m going to start with the good. Always give the hug first. Right? There’s some research especially conducted around the 1950s that found effectively the military was noticing, Hey, as we’ve loaded these guys up with more and more weight, we’re starting to see all these injuries. Not to mention to your point about the D-Day invasion, if you load a soldier down with too much weight and someone starts shooting at him, good luck getting out of the way. You can’t move as quick. So the military started looking at, okay, what is an amount of weight that will, one, reduce injury risk? And two, allow our soldiers to move swiftly and efficiently when they need to. And they basically found that one third of your body weight is about as much weight as you should carry to reduce injury risk and also be able to move well.

If you go over that, injury risk rises, you don’t move as well. So there was this push to try to lighten soldiers loads, but of course the industrial, military industrial complex of, Hey, you need more gear one out, we didn’t quite meet that. But that said, I think it gives the average person a good marker to know, Hey, you should probably never go above this weight. And in the book, I argue most people, the vast majority of the time, for your average, you should be going a lot lighter than that as well. Now lemme talk to you on the bad. I think one of the bad things is that because rucking, especially as it has become more popular, it has been framed through this sort of military lens.

But remember, humans evolve to carry, I mean, this is a fundamentally human act we’ve been doing very, very long before we had militaries. And so when rucking becomes popular, people look up rucking and they start to look at, okay, well how much weight are soldiers carrying? But you got to remember, soldiers are carrying these massive weights because their mission is to win a war. Whereas the average person, you’re not going into warfare, you’re just trying to improve your health and fitness. And so a lighter load is going to be a lot more appropriate, and I think it pushed some people into using maybe a little too heavy a weight at first.

Brett McKay:

Do you have any idea when rucking started becoming a civilian fitness activity, were you able to figure out the evolution of that?

Michael Easter:

That’s a good question. I mean, I think you had soldiers come back from the military. Some groups of veterans were doing it. Those that hadn’t been too scarred by the a hundred mile marches they had to do in training. I think you had some brands sort of pop up like GORUCK that started to put it on people’s radar. I think probably the rise of it being popular today, I think my book, The Comfort Crisis helped with that a little bit. Now I will say that took me going on shows like yours and talking about it to sort of give it a bump to the average person, but it’s kind of in this slow trajectory of more people doing it. People who have a sort of platform like I do writing about it, people inviting me on their platforms and it just sort of spreading.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, because I see it often. I see it more often when I’m in my neighborhood. I see women might not have a weighted backpack on, but just like a weighted vest on, and you didn’t see that five years ago.

Michael Easter:

Totally. Yeah. The weighted vest phenomenon has become really popular. It’s a great thing.

Brett McKay:

Well, let’s talk about why rucking is so great for health and longevity. You start off in the book in this section talking about why rucking is a great activity for weight loss. So why is rucking a great activity for weight loss?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, simplest way to think about it is that rucking combines strength and cardio. So you’re getting a strength stimulus because you’re carrying weight and your muscles have to work harder to carry that weight. Now because you are also walking, that’s an endurance activity, so you’re getting endurance. So by mixing those two things, you see that from a per mile perspective, rucking burns more calories than walking or running alone. And so you kind of get more bang for your buck. Now I will say, of course you can cover more miles in a quicker span of time if you’re running, but then you won’t get that strength stimulus. So when you look at calorie burn, it really depends on how much weight you’re carrying, what is the terrain like, et cetera, et cetera. But anywhere from 20% to about 200% more calories compared to walking or running. And again, it really kind of depends. Of course, the heavier you’re using, the crazier the terrain, the more calorie burn you’re going to get.

Brett McKay:

So it’s a lot of bang for your buck in terms of calorie burn.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, tons of bang for your buck. And one thing I would point out too is that it seems to be uniquely good for fat loss. So there’s some interesting studies. There’s this one on this group of backcountry hunters, and what scientists did is they took this group of hunters, measured their body fat percentage, took a bunch of other health measurements, whatever. Then these guys went out and they did, I believe it was a 12 day hunt. So when you’re doing a backcountry hunt, you have this heavy backpack full of all your gear. You’re also not packing in a ton of food because food is heavy. So you’re generally undereating, which sort of simulates the exact same thing that people do when they’re trying to lose weight. You want to move more, you want to eat less. Now when most people lose weight, you lose a mix of fat, yes, but also muscle.

So you want to lose the fat, but you ideally want to hang on to as much muscle as possible because muscle is going to be good for your ability to function, it’s going to be better for your metabolism, on and on and on. But when these guys came back from their hunt and they retested them, these researchers found that the hunters lost, I think it was about 12 pounds on average. And the entirety of that loss came from fat, which is really surprising. So they hadn’t lost any muscle, and in fact they had gained a slight amount. It was insignificant, but it was still a slight amount, which really shows us rucking can be great for fat loss. And I think the reason for that is rather simple, it’s that when you have this load on your body, your body needs to hang on to your muscle in order to move that load across the ground. So it almost triggers your body like, Hey, we actually need our muscles here. But you’re also pairing cardio, which is generally a much better calorie burner than lifting alone. So it’s almost like it preferentially shifts what you’re burning to fat.

Brett McKay:

That’s interesting. I’ve also heard that this sort of speculative research about how we maybe have this sense in our body like gravity of weight, and that determines how many calories you burn. So if you weigh 220 pounds, that requires a certain number of calories to maintain, but if you lose 20 pounds, now you’re 200 pounds, your body is going to burn less calories. And so I’ve heard of this. One trick you can do is as you’re losing weight and you want to keep losing weight, is to put on a weighted vest that weighs 20 pounds and your body’s still going to think it’s 220 and then you’ll burn calories as if it were 220. And it’s not just because you burn more calories because it takes more effort to move, but it’s because it senses your body weighs more. Have you heard about that research?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, I think it’s new. It’s definitely emerging, but it’s really interesting. They think effectively what happens is your bones sort of do some signaling. And so when you have that load on your body, your bones don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from. It leads you to not get as much of a metabolic drop as would happen had you not had the added vest on after you’ve lost weight.

Brett McKay:

Well, speaking of bones, rucking is also good for bones. How is rucking good for your bones?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, well, and first I’ll say when you start talking about bone health, I think most people sort of roll their eyes because who the hell cares about their bones? But the reason this is important is because as you age, your bones start to lose density. Now this is generally talked about from a female perspective because it happens more often in women, but that said, doctors are finding more and more men facing an issue with bone density. And the reason for that is because as a society we’ve generally become a lot more sedentary. And so your bones need impact and loading in order to maintain and even improve their density. So rucking gives you this ability to load your bones for quite a long time, much longer than lifting because the average set of lifting exercise is going to be, I don’t know, 20, 30 seconds. So you can load your bones for about an hour, get those impact on them, and that seems to help maintain, maybe even improve bone density, which becomes really important because as you age, if you fall and break a hip, that is the worst thing that can happen. I think the stat is about a third of people who are over 65 and break a hip die within the next six months because it just totally wrecks their function and then everything goes downhill.

Brett McKay:

Alright, so yeah, rucking is great for strengthening bones. You think carrying stuff on your back would be bad for back pain, but you point to research that carrying load on your back is probably one of the best things you can do for your back pain. Walk us through that.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, I think people definitely find that counterintuitive. I did. But what happens is there’s some military research about this. When you have the weight on your back, you would think your back starts to work much harder. That’s not actually the case if your back muscles actually end up working less when you have a weight on your back. And so then the question is, okay, well what’s keeping me upright? What happens is that your core actually picks up all of that slack. So your core ends up working a lot harder. And when you look at what one of the root causes is for back pain, and by the way, 80% of people will experience back pain at some point in their life, this is one of the most common pains. The reason is because people’s cores are so weak. So your core is really built to stabilize your spine if you have to pick anything up or move a certain way.

And so as we become more sedentary, our cores have become weaker and then you have to go pick up a bag of mulch or whatever in the backyard. Your core is not strong enough to protect your spine and then you get a problem. So by rucking your strengthening your core in a way that to me is a little more interesting than doing planks and bird dogs and whatever you might do. Now that said, you should do those too. I wouldn’t discourage you from any form of exercise, but rucking really allows you to strengthen your core. And there’s also a researcher up in Canada. He’s kind of considered the world’s foremost back health expert, and one thing that he does with a lot of his back patients is have them ruck because he says that it strengthens their core. It also sort of decompresses their spine, allows their spine to get some light motion in, and that tends to do some good things for your back.

Brett McKay:

Okay, so rucking is great for weight loss, especially fat loss because you’re burning more calories, you’re maintaining muscle as you do the ruck. It’s great for your bones, it’s great for back pain. Another thing you talk about, another health benefit of rucking is that it gets you outside and is social. What are the health benefits of being outside and doing this with other people?

Michael Easter:

Oh man. Well, the health benefits of being outside. Now, I had a chapter about this in The Comfort Crisis and when I first started hearing people say, oh, being outside is good for your health, it’s good for your mental health, I was kind of like, eh, that’s some kind of hippie nonsense. But then I looked into the research and it goes all the way back to the eighties. So we’re talking like four decades of research and it consistently finds that being outdoors tends to reduce stress levels, tends to increase happiness, tends to lead people to be more productive once they get back into the office, tends to improve focus. And it also actually boosts a lot of physical health markers. So time in the outdoors has been shown to lower blood sugar, all these different good things for your health. And then I think on the social component. So when you look at a lot of exercise that’s endurance focused, it can be hard to sort of pair it right with another person and make it social. So let’s say you and I go for a run, and let’s say that you’re a way better runner than me.

Brett McKay:

I’m not.

Michael Easter:

Okay. Let’s say I’m a way better runner than you.

Brett McKay:

Yes.

Michael Easter:

Then we’ll go with that. Then if you and I are going to go for a run and try and have a conversation, well, your lack of running fitness means that in order for us to talk, you’re going to be running rather slow. And that’s really not going to give me that much. I’m really going to be sort of held back right on the opposite coin. If I go, all right, I’m setting the tempo of this run, you’re going to be dragging behind. Like, this sucks. I hate this. We’re not going to be able to talk at all. So it’s hard to sort of get into a deep conversation. You can run together, but you’re not really going to talk. Whereas with rucking, I’ll, I’ll give you the benefit here. Let’s say you’re a way better rucker than me and you can carry more weight. Well, you can simply carry say 45 pounds and get a great workout and walk and I can just carry say 30 pounds and I can get an equally good workout.

And we can have that walk go rucking together and have a long conversation and really connect. And when you look at research about when do humans have the best conversations, how do we connect for men in particular? This is for everyone, but I’ll say for men in particular, it tends to happen when we are shoulder to shoulder out moving across the earth. And so wrecking really allows us to capture that. You get in a good workout, but you’re able to really talk about things with people, connect with people, and that just makes it really sort of universal. So another example is like, I’m not going to go for a run with my mother, right? She’s 75 years old, but I could say, Hey mom, do you want to go ruck together? I could take 35 pounds, she could take like five pounds and we’d be able to do that activity, get in a good workout, but have a conversation. So I think that makes it really social. And then you pair that with the fact that we’re outside that has all those benefits. It makes it really powerful and accessible for people.

Brett McKay:

So going back to what we talked about earlier, how rucking grew out of the military, and sometimes there’s good lessons and parallels we can draw from military rucking to civilian rucking, and sometimes there’s not. Whenever we’ve posted about rucking on the site, military guys will often chime in and say, oh, rucking, that destroyed my joints, it destroyed my body. Don’t ruck. So is rucking safe?

Michael Easter:

The short answer is yes. When I released The Comfort Crisis, I got a few emails from military guys like that saying that I didn’t know what I was talking about because rucking hurt their knees or their back. But you have to ask, what kind of loads is the military carrying? Like I said before, they’re carrying really heavy loads because the mission is the war for the average person. You don’t need to carry that much weight. You can just carry, say anywhere from 5-20% of your body weight and it is really, really safe. So the injury rate for rucking is pretty close to that of walking, and the injury rate for walking is only 1%. Now the rate goes up, the more weight you add, but you don’t have to add a lot of weight to get a really massive benefit. So what was interesting too is that after the comfort crisis has been out for a while, it touches on rucking.

I got follow-up emails from military guys who said I was skeptical about that rucking thing because the military just made me hate it and it injured me. But once I lightened the load, it totally improved my fitness. I didn’t have any injuries. I was able to lose weight to lose fat. I improved my endurance, I improved my body composition. And it also sort of, they said return them to the roots of the military in a way that kind of made them feel good. Like, okay, I’m back at it. So long story short is if you’re not using crazy military loads, you probably won’t get hurt rucking.

Brett McKay:

And I like rucking for cardio because people typically think when I got to do cardio, I got to run. But running can beat up your joints. The injury rate for long distance running is like 20% to 70%, just depending, and it’s usually joint pain. You have something wrong with your knee or something like that because the impact every time you hit the ground, it’s really hard. rucking, you don’t have that issue. So you get a good cardio workout without the stress on your joints again, if you’re keeping the weight reasonable.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, how many people do you know that say they’ve been hurt by running? Probably any runner you’ve ever talked to, running takes a toll on your body. I mean, it’s good for us. I think sometimes it’s like you learn from your injuries, you clean up your form, good things happen. But just from a general population health perspective, my opinion is that if you can choose activities that have a lower risk of injuring, you should probably do those. Because what happens when people get injured is that they tend to stop exercising at all. And then when they stop exercising, all their health markers go down, mental health goes down, a lot of bad things happen. So for me, it’s just thinking about what is the activity that I not only enjoy, but that I can also continue to do for decades without worrying that I’m eventually going to blow out a knee or whatever it is and then be sidelined for a really long time.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, I call rucking cardio for the man who hates cardio.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, that’s a good tagline. I should have put that in the book. Should have consulted you.

Brett McKay:

And it’s funny, whenever I’ve introduced rucking to guys, I never done cardio, but once I learned about rucking, it’s changed. I do it all the time and they just love it. So again, I’m a big booster of rucking. That’s why I have you on the podcast to talk about rucking. So let’s talk about how to get started with rucking. For those who haven’t done it before, there are lots of different options these days for carrying weight backpack, there’s special ruck sacks, now there’s weighted vests. What do you think is the best option for someone who’s starting out for the device they use to carry the weight?

Michael Easter:

I think for most people starting out, I just try and make it as simple as possible. Find a backpack you have in your house. Could be backpack you used in college, could be one you used for travel, could be a pack you bought for a hike, fill it with something that weighs something and go out and walk. It’s that simple to begin. You just have to begin because I think oftentimes people get paralysis by analysis when it comes to gear. It’s like, well, should I have this one or this one? And what equipment do I need to buy? It’s like, no, this is just so accessible. Make it that way. And people might often find like, okay, I really love this thing. Great. I want to invest in some proper rucking specific gear. And if that’s you, then I think that can be a good way to find a pack that maybe fits you better, that handles the load more appropriately. But it really can be as simple as just find a backpack and go out for a walk, throw some stuff in it that weighs something.

Brett McKay:

Are there any benefits to the weighted vest? Again, we’ve been seeing those more often.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. The book gets into sort of the nuances between packs and vests and it says, for what circumstances might one be more appropriate than the other? My message is generally that you walk with weight matters a lot more than how you walk with weight. So both are beneficial, both have their nuances, but when you’re just starting, I just tell people, don’t overthink it. Just start. If you want to get a weight vest, get it. It also means you’re going to have to invest a bit more money. It’s also a very sort of hyper-specific contraption, whereas like a backpack, you can use that for travel too. It doubles for all these different things.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, I’ve tried both the vest and the backpack, the weight vest does distribute the weight more and it keeps the weight high and tight, but I don’t think it’s as comfortable as a backpack because you’ve got the weight on the back and on the front. Just having that weight on your chest, it makes it hard to breathe. And you talk about this in the book, one of the benefits of the backpack when you have the weight just on your back, you can lean into it and it makes it a little bit more comfortable with the weighted vest. It’s just pulling you down to the center of the earth and that gets uncomfortable.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, so I think for most people, most of the time a backpack is the answer. I’ll get into a couple points. So the one you made when you have a weight vest, you’ve got when weight is on the front, especially if it’s these military style vests that almost look like bulletproof vests.

When you have weight sitting on your chest, that can make it hard to breathe, especially if it’s a heavy load. So now it becomes harder to breathe as you’re doing cardio. That sucks. Number two is that those get really hot if it’s the summer because your sweat can’t evaporate because you’re sort of enveloped by this thing. The second point that you made is, and this kind of applies more to longer distances and heavier loads, but I’ll give you an extreme circumstance so people can understand it. It’s like if you got 300 pounds and you put it in a backpack and put it on someone, say some random guy, chances are it would of course be uncomfortable. It would be too heavy, but it would still be able to stand because when the weight is at your back, you can kind of lean in and you have something to resist against that sort of balances you.

Now, if you take that same 300 pounds in the form of a weight vest and strap it on someone, they’re probably going to collapse. And that’s simply because there’s nothing to really lean into, resist against. It just sort of covers you like this super heavy blanket and you fall. Now of course, most people aren’t using insane loads, but that begins to matter at everyday loads when you’re going across a long distance. So if you get really tired and your sort of form starts to falter with a vest, you’ve got nowhere to go to sort of maintain proper form. Whereas with a pack just to kind of lean forward and you’ll be able to maintain proper form. And a good case study of this is through-hikers. So backpackers who do month long hikes where they’re hiking every day. Now, those people could figure out some way to have a contraption that keeps their gear on their front and their back, but no one actually does that. Every single person uses backpacks. And that’s simply because when you’re covering long distances and a lot of miles, the backpack just becomes way more comfortable, keeps your form better, leads to fewer issues. And so for me, that’s kind of the answer there. And then I’ll add one more thing is that the vests, especially the military style ones, you kind of look like you’re going to maybe throw a coup against your HOA as you’re walking through the neighborhood.

It’s just like, is this dude wearing a bulletproof vest? Should I be concerned what’s going on here? Just sort of a weird look. Whereas a backpack, it’s like people wear backpacks all the time in all different public places, pretty normal.

Brett McKay:

All right, so just go with backpack. Make it simple if you’re getting started. Let’s talk about weight. When you’re first starting out, how much weight should you start off with? So we learned from the military, you don’t want to go above a third of your body weight when you’re first starting out. What weight should you pick?

Michael Easter:

I mean, I tell people a go-to is 10% of your body weight. Some people might find that too light at first, but I would rather you start light than start super heavy and get out there and go, oh my God, this is the worst thing I’ve ever done. I don’t ever want to do this again. Because you can always add weight later on, and that allows you to get your body used to it to sort of build up some fitness and then you can just sort of add from there. I realize this is called the Art of Manliness, but I’ll point out two things, differences between men and women with the starting. So I think women will sometimes start too light. They might only use say, five pounds, and it’s a little too easy. So I would encourage women, you want it to be uncomfortable, shouldn’t feel soul crushing, but don’t be afraid to use 15 pounds instead of 10. With men, we tend to have the opposite problem where we go online and look at photos of navy seals and think, I’m just going to load this sucker up. I would discourage that at first. I think you want to kind of build a base where you’re used to it, you want some muscles that have been underused to sort of develop, and then you can start adding some weight from there.

Brett McKay:

And for weight, there’s all sorts of different options. It can be as easy as when I first started rucking, I just used a bunch of bricks taped together. That was it. It was pretty rudimentary, but you could use books, you could use a milk jug filled with water, or then you can get as fancy with the ruck plates that they have available.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, there’s a lot of options. I think your milk jug idea is really good. And the reason I like that is because if you get out on your initial rucks and you’re like, oh, I’m starting to fade and I still have three miles to get home, you can always just dump out the water and you’ll be fine. So that makes it rather accessible. Things like sandbags can also be good. You can kind of find the right weight. It also sort of molds to the bag nicely. Bags of rice, some people will use dumbbells. If you use a dumbbell, I would suggest you wrap it in a towel so you don’t have this steel weight digging into your back the whole time, which can be uncomfortable. But really just get creative. The thing just has to weigh something when you load it, you want it tight to your back and you’re good to go.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. So besides having it tight to your back, is there a placement that’s better for comfort up high in the middle low? What should people think about there as far as comfort and avoiding injuries?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, I think generally if you can have the weight higher, do that’s not always easy to do or practical if you’re just using random stuff you find around the house. I mean, one way to fix that is to put maybe a little cardboard box or something at the bottom of your pack or a towel, so it elevates the weight. And then do keep it close to your back. You also want it secure. You don’t want the weight sort of flopping around every step. That can just kind of alter your walking patterns so tight to your back, secure a little bit higher if you can get it higher and then just go out and walk.

Brett McKay:

And then when you first start out, how long should a ruck be? Start off with a mile, two miles, what are you looking at there?

Michael Easter:

I just tell people if you have a normal walking route in your neighborhood that you do, let’s say your walk with your spouse after dinner is two miles, just do that. It’s a good way to start. I would discourage that phenomenon where we choose a new exercise and we decide to just go all in with crazy distances because pretty much with any exercise, doing too much too soon is the main driver of injuries. So it’s like, yeah, just do your kind of normal walk and see how it goes

Brett McKay:

In terms of frequency, how often can you ruck without running into overuse injuries?

Michael Easter:

So I like to say that if humans couldn’t carry every day, we would’ve died off as a species a very long time ago. But that said, today because we carry so infrequently, it might make sense to have a rest day between days that you ruck, but another option is to simply use more weight some days and less weight. Others. For me, I’m rocking nearly every day, and that’s because I have to walk my dogs every day. So I just look at it as, look, I can get more from every step if I just throw this ruck on when I walk the dogs. And I’ve been totally fine. I mean, I’m not carrying crazy loads. I’ve just sort of found, okay, what’s a good go-to weight? And this is a recommendation for everyone. What’s a weight that feels uncomfortable? It’s there, but it’s also not soul crushing, and you feel like you could walk a really long distance with it without tapping out.

So for me, that’s about 35 pounds. That’s what I wear when I’m walking my dogs. If I’m going a really long distance, let’s say I’m doing a 12 mile walk, I might bump that down to say 25, 20 pounds. But sometimes if I’m training for a hunt or a big backpacking trip, I’ll go heavier than 35. I’ll use 45 or 50. And there’s even sometimes a workout that I love and it’ll make you feel like a pack mule is to throw. You can really load this thing, throw a lot of weight in a pack, get on a treadmill, set it to say an incline, 10 to 15 incline and just walk slowly for an hour that will get you ready for the mountains. And it’s one that I love. And because you’re on a treadmill, you don’t have to worry as much about injury because one of the reasons injury risk gets higher when you have heavier loads is that if you misstep and you roll an ankle with say 80 pounds on your back, well now that ankle, that would’ve been a sort of minor little spraining that can become a real problem. But with the treadmill, you don’t really have to worry about curbs. You didn’t see crap in the road, things like that. And there’s a little bit of give to the treadmill, so most people tend to not ever get injured doing that.

Brett McKay:

You mentioned how you ruck whenever you walk your dog. That’s something you talk about in the book is that you can just ruck whenever. You don’t have to make rucking as this thing of, “I’m setting aside time for a ruck.” You can just put on a ruck sack or a weighted vest when you’re doing chores around the house. I’ve done that. I’ll do that every now and then. It’s like, all right, we got a bunch of chores put on the weighted vest and make it a little bit harder. And yeah, it doesn’t destroy you. It’s a little bit harder, but after you’re done, you’re not like, oh boy, I’m beat. I need to spend a day recovering.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, exactly. For another book I’m working on, I had this really long through-hike through Southern Utah. It took like 45 days, and so to get ready to have a pack on my back 12 hours a day, I would just wear my ruck around the house as I was vacuuming, picking up, living life, whatever it might be. And that really sort of slowly got my body ready to be able to carry that weight, and I’m burning more calories just doing my everyday tasks that I already had to do.

Brett McKay:

Have you noticed for people who are doing rucking as a civilian activity for fitness, are there common injuries you see with this population? And if so, what are some of the things you can do to mitigate those injuries?

Michael Easter:

The most common thing, and I wouldn’t consider it an injury, is that people will say their shoulders are uncomfortable during a ruck or after a ruck. And I think that’s just because we rarely carry weight in backpacks anymore. So it’s like you throw some weight on your shoulders, they’re going, what the hell is this? We haven’t done this since you were in high school, but that discomfort isn’t necessarily injury, it’s just your body saying, what the hell are we doing here? A way to fix that is pretty simple. It’s to just do a dead hang from a pull-up bar. So just hang with your body, slack, your arms totally straight for say 30, 60 seconds because the weight is pulling down on your shoulders. That almost elongates them, and that seems to sort of fix that over time. And eventually most people’s shoulders adapt and it fixes the problem really quick. Another one is blisters. Anytime you start adding weight to your body, now there’s more pressure on your feet. And so blisters can definitely happen. My advice there is if you get a hotspot, don’t let it devolve into a crazy blister. Try and treat it. That’s pretty easy. I mean, a lot of it is just your feet need to get tougher over time, but just don’t push yourself so far into the red that now we’ve got a real blister problem

Brett McKay:

Going back to that dead hang. Even if you don’t ruck, I recommend that for anybody. It’s one of the best things I’ve do for my shoulders, especially if you’re a bench presser, shoulder presser, you get really tight in your shoulders, you might have a shoulder impingement, do the dead hang, make it a regular part of your fitness activity. It’ll help your shoulders out a ton.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. And if you want to level it up, you can just do single arm hangs as you progress. But I agree with you. That’s something I try and do every single day, even for just 30 seconds.

Brett McKay:

So your big proponent of this thing called the 2% mindset, in fact, your substack is called 2%. What is the 2% mindset and how do you apply it to rucking?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, so the 2% mindset, it comes from this study that found that only 2% of people take the stairs when there’s also an escalator available 2%. Now, to me, 100% of people know that taking the stairs is going to be better for their long-term health, maybe even their long-term mental health. But 98% of people choose to do the easy effortless thing, even though it might harm them in the long run, in the context of how little we move today. So the 2% mindset, it’s not really about the stares though in that study. To me, it’s like this overarching idea of being willing to embrace short-term discomfort to get a long-term benefit. So yes, it’s the stairs facing the discomfort of the stairs to get to that second floor instead of doing the easy thing. But you can apply that to so many different areas of your life.

And I think by applying that in as many different areas as you can find, those little benefits you get from each uncomfortable act, they really compound over time and lead to these massive changes. Now to apply it to rucking, I think it goes back to if you have something that you already have to do, but you could throw a rock on as you do it to make it a little bit harder to get more from every step, to me that feels like a massive win. It’s like if you got to walk down to your mailbox in our neighborhood, our mailbox is set away. It’s like a quarter mile away or whatever. If I could just throw a rock on, I’m getting more from every step. And if I do that every single day that I get the mail, that’s going to add up a lot over time.

If I’m vacuuming, throw on the ruck, if I’m doing a nightly walk with my kids or whatever, I’m going to throw on the ruck. And so I think it’s really just finding ways. How can I add this tool into things I already have to do in order to get a bigger long-term benefit from that thing? For example, my doctor, great dude, he started wearing a ruck as he was doing rounds, so he was literally walking around the hospital all day visiting patients, and he just rolls in and consults with people, and he is got this pack on, and it’s like, to me, that is awesome. He already has to do rounds. It’s not impeding his ability to do his job in any way, and he is also showing his patients a really valuable lesson that this exercise thing that I’ve been telling you to do for all these years, it doesn’t have to be that hard. I think that one problem with the way that society views exercise is we view it as this separate distinct thing from our normal lives. It’s like we got our 30 minutes in the gym where we run on a treadmill. It’s a special little time, and then the other 23 hours and 30 minutes of the day were totally sedentary. But to me it’s like, how can I just add more activity into my life? How can I make the things I already have to do a little bit harder so that I can live better?

Brett McKay:

I love the whole idea of the 2% mindset, and I know I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, but be a two percenter has become a motto in our family.

Michael Easter:

Awesome. I love it.

Brett McKay:

So whenever we’re at the airport especially, that’s when you see stairs because there’s almost always stairs next to the escalator, and we tell our kids, okay, McKay’s are two percenters. We’re taking the stairs.

Michael Easter:

I love it.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. So let’s say you’ve been rucking for a while and you want to challenge yourself. Any challenges you’d recommend for people to try out after they’ve been doing this for a while?

Michael Easter:

Yeah, I list a handful in the book, and a lot of them are based off of some of the military challenges that we talked about. I’ve of course adapted them for the average person. So there’s a big list there. But I think just it could be using a certain weight for a certain distance. I mean, my favorite thing personally is once a year I’m going to take a long backpacking trip somewhere, say three days out with my friends. That gives me incentive to keep rucking all year. So I’m able to handle those loads when I go into the mountains. And that in itself is a good challenge. It’s like, all right, we’re going to try and do 20 miles a day. We got our 35, 40 pounds of gear on our backs, and we’re going to do this big loop, this big circuit, wherever it is in the mountains. And so I think finding these big challenges, I think can incentivize you to get those little wins we talked about with the 2% mindset, and then give you something that sort of pushes you up against the boundaries of your limits and teaches you something about yourself.

Brett McKay:

I love it. Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Michael Easter:

Probably the best place to find me is on my Substack. It’s called 2% as we talked about, and the website is twopct.com. There’s a lot of rucking material on there. You can find links to the book on there. And the book is of course available at pretty much anywhere you buy books, which I think for the vast majority of people is amazon.com.

Brett McKay:

Fantastic. Well, Michael Easter, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Michael Easter:

Yeah, thanks a lot, man.

Brett McKay:

My guest today was Michael Easter. He’s the author of the book Walk With Weight. It’s available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can learn more information about his work at his website, 2%, and you can find that at twopct.com, twopct.com. It’s a great substack, one of my favorite newsletters. Check it out. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/ruck, where you can find resources to delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM podcast. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the podcast, but to put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

How to Sauna: All the FAQs

Brett & Kate McKay — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 17:08:53 +0000

Saunas are awesome, and we’ve previously covered the many mental and physical benefits of spending time in one.

If you’ve been thinking about getting more restorative, satisfying heat exposure in your life, today we cover all the questions you may have about making sauna-ing a regular ritual.

How to Choose a Sauna

Should I go Finnish or infrared?

Saunas fall into two types: Finnish or infrared. They both make you hot and sweaty, but do so in different ways.

Finnish saunas. This is a traditional sauna. A Finnish sauna uses a heater (wood-burning or electric) to heat the air in a wood-paneled room or barrel. The air temperature in traditional Finnish saunas ranges from 160 to 220 degrees Fahrenheit, with a typical temp of 190-200. The superheated air is what heats your body through the process of conduction.

Most of the studies that have been done on the benefits of saunas were done using Finnish saunas.

Infrared saunas. Instead of heating up the air in the room to heat up your body, infrared saunas use near and far thermal radiation waves to heat your body directly. Sort of like getting cooked in a microwave. That might sound questionable, but the waves are safe and won’t give you cancer or turn you into a mutant. Because infrared saunas can heat your body directly, they don’t have to get the room as hot as a Finnish sauna to get you all hot and sweaty. Infrared saunas don’t feel as hot as Finnish saunas, but you still get similar benefits.

The type of sauna you go with is a matter of personal preference and budget. Infrared saunas are more inexpensive, and require less energy and a smaller footprint (people put them in bedrooms/garages/basements) than Finnish saunas. If you also don’t like the feeling of super-hot air that you experience in a Finnish sauna, then infrared may be the right choice for you.

If you’ve got the room and budget, and want the traditional sauna experience, then I would recommend the Finnish style as the way to go. I don’t think the benefits of sauna sessions come completely from the heat alone; it’s not like popping a supplement. Rather, I’d venture to say that its healthifying effect derives from an amalgamation of the heat itself, and the ritual of it. There’s something about the feel and smell of the wood, being able to throw water on the rocks to create a cloud of steam, and the hot, hot air. Feels good, man.

The other nice thing about Finnish saunas is they can be pretty large, and you can put them outside. My sauna from Almost Heaven can comfortably sit six grown men and resides in the backyard; it’s nice having a “third space” apart from the house, getting some fresh air as you walk to and from it, and being able to see a little nature outside its glass door.

Where can I find/buy a sauna?

Saunas are available at gyms, health clubs, and tanning salons.

If you’re interested in buying your own, you can get saunas direct from sauna manufacturers as well as on Amazon and even from Costco.

If you’re looking for a reasonably-priced Finnish sauna, check out Almost Heaven. As just mentioned, that’s where I got mine. Make sure to check their site regularly; they often have sales.

How to Sauna

Precautions With Sauna

Before we get into the nitty gritty of sauna-ing, it’s worth emphasizing that the heat of a sauna acts as a physiological stressor, and you should take precautions before using one if you:

Have heart issues. As mentioned in our previous article, sauna sessions give your cardiovascular system a workout. If you have heart issues, talk to your doctor before using a sauna.

Take prescription medications. Certain medications don’t mix well with heat exposure. If you’re taking any prescription medications, talk to your doctor before using a sauna.

Have certain skin conditions. Sauna-ing can be good for skin, as it increases blood flow and circulation, bringing more nutrients to the skin. But it can be bad for skin if you have certain conditions.

The hot air in a sauna can exacerbate skin problems like eczema and rosacea. For eczema sufferers, adding steam can mitigate that, and some claim that using an infrared sauna can actually help the condition.

While you might have heard that sauna-ing is good for acne, because it opens up your pores, the heat, steam, and resulting sweat can actually inflame those pores, and exacerbate breakouts, especially if you have a type of acne which involves inflammation, like cystic acne. If you’re prone to acne and still want to sauna, be sure to wash your face soon afterwards to cleanse it of residue.

Are concerned about your fertility. As explained in our article about male fertility, the reason why testicles reside outside the body is to keep them cool. Sperm counts decrease as the temperature increases. Sitting in a sauna warms up your testicles, resulting in decreased sperm counts and motility.

These effects aren’t permanent and are quickly reversible. You just have to stop using a sauna for a while.

If you’re trying for kiddos, consider foregoing the sauna. Try a cold shower instead.

How hot should a sauna be?

Researchers haven’t determined a precise temperature and time for optimizing the benefits of sauna sessions, but you generally want them to be pretty hot and of a moderate length (more on that below).

Studies that have been done on the health-promoting effects of sauna sessions have often set the temperature for participants around 180-200 degrees Fahrenheit. My usual go-to sauna temperature is 210.

If I plan on having a long bull session with my dudes, I’ll start off with the temperature at 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s more like a sweat lodge experience than a sauna. Low and slow. When the night is done, we finish with 10-15 minutes with the sauna at 210 degrees.

For infrared saunas, shoot for the air to get heated to between 175 and 195 degrees.

How long should a sauna session last?

20-30 minutes is the traditional sauna length for Finnish saunas, and most of the studies cited in our previous article had participants sit in the sauna for at least 20 minutes.

But the length of your session will really depend on the temperature you set: if it’s high, a shorter, 15-20 minute session will do the trick; if the temp is low, you can go much longer. On my sauna nights with friends, we’ve slowly, yet comfortably, cooked in the sauna at 130 degrees for 90 minutes.

If you’re using an infrared sauna in that 175 to 195 degree range, 20 minutes is all you need to get hot and sweaty.

You can divide up sauna sessions with cooling breaks. When my pool is open during spring, summer, and early fall, I intersperse my sauna sessions with jumps into the water. During the winter, I just step outside the sauna and walk around in the cold for a few minutes before getting back in.

With the duration of your sessions, the bottom line is really to just listen to your body: first you’ll feel warm, and then hot, and then hot and kind of uncomfortable (but in a satisfying way) . . . and then eventually you move beyond just kind of uncomfortable to feeling like, “Okay, this is too much, I’m done.” That’s the time to either take a break, cooling off before getting another dose of heat, or to just call it a session. Listen to your body!

How frequently should I sauna?

You could sauna every day if you wanted.

But keep in mind that, again, sauna-ing is a stressor on your body. There’s a balance you have to walk with it. At the right dose, sauna sessions can help you recover from life and workouts. Too much though, and they can actually increase your fatigue. You can get the benefits of sauna-ing with just two 20-minute sessions a week. Experiment to see what works for you, and again, listen to your body; once you tune in, you can actually feel your body kind of “craving” a sauna session, or conversely, saying, “Now’s not the right time.”

When should I sauna?

You can sauna whenever you want, but if you have a fitness program you’re following, you’ll want to avoid doing the sauna right before a workout. Not to beat a dead horse here, but remember, heat is a stressor. Stressing your body with heat before you stress your body with exercise is a recipe for poor performance. If you exercise regularly, try to do your sauna sessions on your rest/recovery days or right after your workout.

What should I do in a sauna?

I’ve seen people bring their phone into the sauna to listen to music or a podcast, but the heat isn’t good for your phone, and sauna sessions are an optimal time to disconnect from your tech and from all the annoying distractions of your life. Let the sauna be your sanctum sanctorum.

You might think about bringing a paperback into the sauna with you, but your focus/higher level thinking skills will diminish as your body heats up and your heart rate rises. Plus, your hands are going to get way too sweaty for holding a book.

You can do light stretches and bodyweight exercises if space allows. Your muscles will feel nice and limber and supple. Keep in mind though that your body is already being taxed by the heat, so any kind of movement will require much more exertion than usual; take it easy and listen to your body.

In general, I recommend simply doing in the sauna what traditional sauna-ers have long done: nothing. Just sit there. Or lie down if you have the room (you’ll find it’s hotter when you sit up though, as hot air rises). Let your mind go. Do some reflecting while your thinking is still sharp; meditate when your mind starts going blank. Just be.

What are some rules of sauna etiquette I should be aware of?

We have a whole article on this topic!

What should I do after I sauna?

During your sauna session, you’ll lose a lot of water through your sweat — up to four cups during a twenty-minute session! Be sure to rehydrate with plenty of water afterward. Supplement with electrolytes as needed.

You’ll be incredibly sweaty afterwards, so you’ll likely want to shower; a cold one will feel great (and be far more tolerable than usual)!

Be sure to listen to our podcast with Bill Gifford all about the hidden power of heat:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The 1980s Walking Workout That Will Actually Get You in Shape

Brett & Kate McKay — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 17:11:34 +0000

When the physician and psychiatrist Leonard Schwartz surveyed his life at middle-age, he was not particularly happy with the state of himself as a physical specimen. Decades of smoking, overwork, and living a sedentary lifestyle had left him with high blood pressure, chronic back pain, and a generally subpar level of energy.

Dr. Schwartz began incorporating swimming and running into his routine, and found these exercises brought him to a decent level of fitness. But he still felt he wasn’t where he wanted to be health-wise.

It was at this point that the good doc developed a fitness system that ultimately lowered his heart rate, cut his running times in half (despite doing less mileage), upped his strength, dropped his weight, and exponentially boosted his vim and vigor.

The name of his system was “Heavyhands” and with the publication of Heavyhands: The Ultimate Exercise and Heavyhands Walking in the 1980s, Schwartz’s methodology became something of a national sensation. Though the workout has now largely been forgotten, it’s deserving of a resurrection.

The Origins of Heavyhands Walking

The idea for Heavyhands grew out of Schwartz’s discovery that the athletes with the highest VO2 max (generally considered the best indicator of cardiovascular fitness) were not cyclists, nor runners, but cross-country skiers.

From this insight, Schwartz drew a conclusion that was both intuitive and seemingly neglected: when it came to achieving cardiovascular fitness, “Four limbs are better than two.”

Most forms of cardio, the doctor observed, greatly emphasized the lower body over the upper. Activating the latter as much as the former, Schwartz hypothesized, could thus significantly increase the workload, and the subsequent health benefits, of exercise.

Schwartz began to test his theory both on himself and in a laboratory by taking small dumbbells in each hand and then performing all sorts of exercises: striding and swinging the dumbbells using the “double pole” maneuver cross-country skiers employ; running (for distance and in place); lunging, jumping, and dancing; and just generally moving his legs and swinging dumbbell-laden arms in all kinds of directions and combinations.

While all these varied calisthenics proved effective, Schwartz found that doing the “Heavyhands Walk” — essentially walking while pumping dumbbells with one’s arms — was the “best way to begin combined, four-limbed movements” and the most natural form of heavy-handed exercise.

The Benefits of Heavyhands Walking

Walking is an oft-recommended exercise, and while it’s certainly better than doing nothing, it’s a pretty light form of activity, with lightweight benefits to match. A Heavyhands Walk transforms a pedestrian saunter into what Dr. Schwartz believed is “an exercise that makes one more mechanically strong and aerobically powerful than any other combination of exercises could.” Schwartz called it “Walk Plus” — an activity that couples all the normal benefits of walking (gets you outside, doesn’t involve real skill, can be done anywhere) with these additional advantages as well:

Whole body exercise. Even in our day-to-day life, outside of a dedicated workout, our legs get “exercise” by default by having to carry us from one place to another. Our arms, in contrast, typically just kind of hang there. Even when we do engage in intentional cardio, our lower bodies often do a greatly disproportionate amount of the work; the arms and torso are fairly inert in cycling, for example, and even when running, one’s arms swing through the air without resistance. That leaves a lot of the body on the passive table; as Schwartz observed, “While arms are small compared to legs, the upper body contains fully 65 percent of our total muscle mass!” Heavyhands engages all the muscle groups of the body, bottom to top.

Strength + cardio. While Heavyhands is primarily a cardiovascular exercise, it does build a bit of strength too. While doing thousands of repetitions with light weights isn’t going to make you big and strong, it does engage the muscles more than some other types of cardio, and athletes who have tried it have found surprising carryover improvements in their performance in their primary sports.

The same kind of benefit from doing loaded carries can of course be found in something like rucking. But not only actively carrying but manipulating the weight engages different muscles, and makes one’s walk more inefficient and effortful; carrying weight with the hands may produce up to twice the workload of carrying it supported on the back.

Convenient. By engaging the whole body, Heavyhands gives you a better workout, in less time. Plus, you hardly need any equipment and can do it anywhere, even packing your little dumbbells on a trip.

Improves cardiovascular health. Schwartz’s testing found that by adding the pumping of weights, and engaging all four limbs simultaneously, the workload, and thus the cardiovascular benefits, were greatly improved compared to conventional walking. For example, vigorously pumping 3-lb weights while walking briskly generated 2.5-3X the workload of walking without the weights, and at certain levels, Heavyhands Walking approaches the cardiovascular workload of jogging.

Effective, but low impact. Even though the cardiovascular workload from a Heavyhands walk does approach that of jogging, it’s a form of exercise that is much gentler on the body. With most forms of cardio, if you want to up your workload, your only option is to move your legs faster and harder, and that can lead to injuries. With Heavyhands, you can increase the intensity in both arms and legs, distributing the effort. And unlike with running, both legs never leave the ground at the same time, minimizing the impact of the movement. For these reasons, it can be a great cardio workout for those who are recovering from certain injuries that prevent them from engaging in their usual modality, or for those who are older and simply feeling the wear and tear of time.

Go longer, more comfortably. Relying on the intensity of your legs to power your workout can be uncomfortable and lead to the premature cessation of one’s workout. Schwartz found that by incorporating all four limbs, exercise felt easier and more comfortable, allowing people to keep at it longer.

Fat loss and improved body composition. Having observed that people hated to be deprived and almost never stuck with modifications to their eating, Dr. Schwartz did not believe in dieting for weight loss. Instead, for the exact reasons we recently outlined here, he advocated for the “Overall legitimacy of exercise as the supreme weight-controlling device.” Confident that you could shed pounds simply by adding the exercise habit alone, he thought Heavyhands — and the way it engaged the whole body and allowed for longer periods of steady-state cardio — was the most effective workout for achieving this aim.

By doing Heavyhands, Schwartz himself lost 15 pounds while eating more, and more of his favorite foods. He also found that Heavyhanders not only lost weight in general, but saw their lean muscle mass go up and their fat go down, improving their overall body composition. Strength coach Dan John, who first introduced us to Heavyhands and does the Heavyhands Walk himself, has seen this very effect born out in both himself and the clients he trains. Indeed, John says that Heavyhands is “still the best fat-burning workout for the masses.”

All in all, Schwartz considered Heavyhands Walking the optimum workout for everyone — whether young or old, currently sedentary or long-active — and thought it could be used as a person’s primary form of exercise, or as a supplement to their other athletic pursuits.

How to Do Heavyhands Walking

Back in the 1980s, people heard about Heavyhands through the grapevine, maybe flipped through Schwartz’s books, and figured the concept was simple enough that they needn’t bother to actually read them.

As a result, many thought they knew how to do a Heavyhands Walk and went for it. Then, when they didn’t get the results they sought, they abandoned the idea, blaming the methodology.

Heavyhands is pretty simple, but there are things you have to understand and adopt if you want to see real results. Let’s talk about what those things are:

The Pump. This is key to the effectiveness of Heavyhands Walking, and the most common thing people neglect (and then wonder why the method isn’t working for them). You don’t simply carry dumbbells in your hands when you do a Heavyhands Walk; you pump them.

While carrying weights in any fashion will increase the workload of a conventional walk, pumping them versus letting them dangle by your side will recruit more muscle and increase the required effort, and the attendant benefits. For example, Schwartz’s lab found that you would burn 4X more calories high pumping 2-lb weights than carrying 15-lb weights at a dead hang.

The “pump ‘n’ walk.”

To do the proper “pump ‘n’ walk,” take a “diagonal stride,” swinging the arm opposite the striding leg, i.e., when your left leg is striding forward, your right arm is pumping, and vice versa. Keep your elbows close to your sides, and curl the weight up, palms facing inward.

The three levels at which to pump your dumbbell-holding arms.

There are three standard levels to the pump and each level represents one foot: “Measuring with the hands hanging straight down at your sides, if you’re about average height, Level 1 hits you about belly button high, Level 2 near the front of the shoulder joint, Level 3 about the top of your head.” You can also shoot for the moon and go for Level 4, pumping “about as high as most of us can pump without losing the limb!” The higher you pump, the harder the work. The different pump levels also emphasize different muscles, with levels 1 and 2 targeting the arms, and 3 and 4 recruiting your shoulders, upper back, and chest.

With every pump, don’t just emphasize the upwards arc, but also intentionally pull the weight down on the downstroke rather than just letting it fall; a deliberate pull on the eccentric side of the movement will engage your lats, triceps, and pectorals.

The Weights. To perform a Heavyhands Walk, you walk while holding a dumbbell in each hand. Schwartz describes the Heavyhands Walk as a form of “strength-endurance,” but the emphasis is definitely on the endurance part of things. You want to carry weights heavy enough to offer a little resistance, engage the muscles, and add to the workload, but light enough that you can pump your arms with them for an extended period of time.

If you’ve already been lifting weights, you’ll probably greatly overestimate how much you can heft. As you’ll quickly find, pumping a weight a thousand times is a whole different ball game from doing a set of ten.

So start with two-pounders (or even one-pounders), and go from there. If you really do this regularly, you may end up increasing the weight of each dumbbell to something like 10 lbs, but sub 5-pounders are going to be right for nearly everyone at the start, and for a long time after.

Any hand weights will do, but Schwartz recommends getting ones with a strap that goes around the back of the hand to support the weight and reduce the need to overgrip it; with or without the hand strap, you don’t want to grip your dumbbells too tightly, as this will lead to fatigue and spasm.

Having tested both the soft, sand-filled kind of hand weights, and the solid, firm variety, we prefer the latter.

The Regimen. Schwartz recommended doing three to four 30-minute Heavyhand sessions a week. But you can find a length and frequency that works for you.

A good, moderate place to start (you may need to scale back if you’re totally new to exercise) is walking with 2-lb weights, doing the Level 2 pump, for 30 minutes. You may need to intermittently revert to Level 1 at times to rest your arms before returning to Level 2.

To increase or decrease the intensity of your walks, you can play with three variables: pace, weights, and pump level. To up the intensity, walk faster, carry heavier weights, and/or pump higher; to lower the intensity, do the converse.

If you wish to throw in a greater emphasis on the strength side of things, Schwartz recommends using the heaviest weights you can pump for 10% of the time you Heavyhands Walk. You’ll have to slow your pace, and/or lower the pump height to make this doable. Keep in mind that upping the weights will make the workout more anaerobic and less aerobic.

While Dr. Schwartz believed the Heavyhands Walk alone was plenty sufficient to keep your fitness tuned up, he felt that, ideally, you’d also incorporate other moves into your walk as well in order to target different muscles. This included all manner of goofy-looking kicks, struts, skips, leg lifts, punches, lunges, and duckwalks, which, realistically, the average person is not going to feel comfortable performing. At least in public.

Schwartz himself admitted that there was a potential embarrassment factor to be overcome even with doing the standard Heavyhands Walk itself. Though, he thought it wouldn’t be a factor we’d have to contend with in the 21st century, as he was confident that Heavyhands wasn’t a fad but would instead become a permanent, commonplace fixture of the fitness landscape. “The nice thing about social embarrassment phenomena is that . . . they disappear as fast as they emerge,” Schwartz predicted back in 1987. “When people discover that the odd movements associated with pump ‘n’ walk produce exhibitable muscular rips and cuts, the embarrassment will vanish. You can count on it.”

Well, the good doc was wrong about that. But, he was right about the effectiveness of the workout he birthed. So just try to walk where people won’t see you. Or briefly stop pumping when a car drives by. Or, best of all, put on some sweatbands, embrace your inner, totally tubular 1980s walking dad, and stop caring what people think about you already.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Escape Gym Groundhog Day: Why Your Training Needs Seasons

Brett & Kate McKay — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:50:17 +0000

Do you feel like your physical training has gotten stagnant and boring?

Like you’ve woken up in a Planet Fitness Groundhog Day?

Same gym. Same exercises. Same rep ranges. Year after year after year.

I’m a big fan of consistency and repetition. I think there’s a virtue in being okay with and even taking joy in doing the same thing over and over again.

But when it comes to my physical training, I’ve learned over the past decade that adding some seasonality to my fitness programs yields big benefits, both physiologically and psychologically.

We’ve written before about the value of seasonality in daily life in helping you get over the “horror of the same old thing.” And we’ve offered the example of creating seasonal music playlists: you make playlists, whether for general listening or for your workouts, that consist of songs you only listen to during spring/summer/winter/fall. Putting your music into this kind of rotation builds anticipation for the return of certain albums/artists, keeps songs fresh, and adds more of a distinct atmosphere to each season of the year. The repetition is still there, but it has rhythm. It makes the year feel more textured, rather than a monotonous slog of sameness.

That same principle applies just as well to physical training, and arguably with even greater payoff.

Why You Need to Add Some Seasonality Into Your Training

Seasonal training provides focus. When you train the same way all year, your fitness goals sort of congeal into a vague, amorphous lump that provides zero focus for your effort. Without a clear focus, you try to train to be strong, lean, well-conditioned, mobile, and pain-free at the same time. None of those goals are bad; the problem is that your training never clearly emphasizes one over the others. Changing your training with the seasons gives it a focus for long enough to get things done, but not so long that you get bored with it.

Seasonal training gives your body a break. Heavy lifting is one of the best things you can do for long-term strength and health. It’s also stressful on joints and connective tissue when it’s pushed hard, week after week, month after month. Runners have the same issue. If all you do is long runs after long runs, week after week, you’re going to accumulate overuse injuries.

You can give your body a break by simply changing what you do. Change is a rest! For example, during the fall and winter, I focus on heavy barbell lifts. After a while, it beats up my tendons. In the spring and summer, I give my connective tissue a break from heavy lifts with lighter weights and more variety beyond barbells.

Seasonal training keeps motivation fresh. When there’s no shift in focus, training can start to feel like a job with no off-season. You begin to feel like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the mountain over and over again. Training becomes a chore and not something to express your vitality. Seasonal shifts create something to look forward to without requiring constant program changes. By the end of winter, heavy lifting starts to feel stale, and you’re ready for higher-rep work and lighter loads. By late summer, volume feels played out, and the thought of moving heavy weight again is appealing.

Also, just as saving certain music for certain seasons adds texture and rhythm to your life, saving certain activities for particular seasons can do the same. It gives you something to anticipate and re-relish. When summer arrives, you enjoy returning to the pool for cardio. When fall flows in, you find joy in once again running on crisp mornings.

Seasonal training aligns with how your energy actually fluctuates throughout the year. Your schedule, sleep, stress levels, daylight exposure, and social calendar don’t stay constant throughout the year. During the fall and winter, I’m busy taking kids to basketball games and other after-school activities, so I don’t have time for super long training sessions. I need something that lasts about 45 minutes. During the summer, my schedule opens up so I have time for longer workouts. Training as if your life is an unchanging constant will only create frustration and friction. What feels like a good workout in July can feel burdensome in January. Seasonal training works with those shifts instead of fighting them.

How to Add Some Seasonality Into Your Training

Seasonal training doesn’t require complicated periodization charts or constant program-hopping. It simply means changing your primary training focus, the length of your workouts, and/or the modalities you engage in as the seasons change.

You can put both your strength training and your cardio routine into a seasonal cycle. For example, you might focus on building strength with barbells one half of the year, and then shift to emphasizing size by using machines to develop hypertrophy in the other half. And/or you might do running and indoor rowing for cardio during the fall/winter, and then shift to rucking and swimming during the spring/summer.

Here’s how I incorporate seasonality into both my training, and my diet as well:

Fall and Winter: Strength Season

From September through March, my focus is on strength and mass.

This is when I prioritize low-rep, heavy barbell work on the main lifts — squats, presses, and deadlifts. The goal during this phase isn’t variety or conditioning; it’s performance — moving weight, reacquainting myself with heavy loads, and practicing the skill of max-effort strength.

I still do accessory work and some hypertrophy training, but it’s secondary. I do a little cardio, but it’s minimal and mostly there to support recovery and general health, not to push fitness boundaries. Because, as mentioned, my schedule is busy during this time, these sessions are pretty short — usually just 45 minutes.

This is also the season when I bulk. I eat up to 3,600 calories a day and can put on as much as 15 pounds of muscle and fat during this time.

I don’t dirty bulk. I take it nice and slow. I slowly titrate up my calories during these months. When the holidays hit, I loosen up the reins on my macro tracking a bit. The timing makes sense. Colder weather naturally increases appetite. I can lean into the holidays’ many eating opportunities without feeling socially out of sync. Trying to maintain a tight cut through Thanksgiving and Christmas is possible, but it takes extra effort and is mentally expensive.

Spring and Summer: Hypertrophy, Leanness, and Movement

As winter breaks and the days get longer, I intentionally shift away from heavy, low-rep work.

Spring and summer are when volume goes up, and loads come down. I focus more on hypertrophy-style training: higher volume and more exercise variety. My joints and tendons get a break from near-max efforts on the main barbell lifts.

Mobility also becomes a bigger part of training during this season. The goal is to improve my range of motion and undo some of the stiffness that heavy winter lifting can create.

I do more cardio during the spring/summer, and because the weather allows it, more movement happens outside. I’ll ruck more. I’ll do some heavy carries. We also try to get out as a family to hike and backpack more often during the spring and summer. Got to take advantage of those long days!

I start cutting during this season, and my calories come down. I gradually work toward leaning out, usually aiming to get back to around 11% body fat. Interestingly, eating less feels easier to do in warm weather. Appetite tends to be lower. And honestly, after a bulk, cutting down to 2,600–2,800 calories a day feels like a relief. It’s nice not having to think about getting enough food every day. I do more fasting during the warmer months, too.

How to Add Seasonality to Your Training Without Overcomplicating It

Here’s a simple way to apply seasonal training to your own routine. Don’t overthink it!

Pick one primary focus per season. Choose a focus for your season and let the others play a supporting role. Maybe during the fall/winter, your focus is strength, and in spring/summer, it’s cardio/endurance. Figure out what you like and do that.

Adjust your environment. More indoor, gym-based work in winter. More outdoor movement in the warmer seasons. (Although try to get outside during the cold months too!)

Decide when the season ends. Having an endpoint prevents a productive phase from turning into a stale grind. Your training “seasons” don’t have to follow the literal seasons of the year, but I like to break up mine into spring/summer and fall/winter chunks.

Experiences that unfold in set cycles offer both novelty and familiarity — a sustainable freshness. By adding seasonal rhythms to your training, the pursuit of good health becomes easier to maintain over the long haul, more productive, and a lot more satisfying.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.