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

Bonus: You probably have the necessary gear in your closet right now.

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

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

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

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

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