10,000 steps

stegeem wrote: »

I don't have an answer to your question, as I haven't done much rucking myself yet (just once a week for my job), but I would recommend starting with a lighter weight like 5kg and starting with ten minutes. If you can go for longer the next day, great. Maybe add another 2kg each week until you get to 20% of your body weight, then hold off adding more weight for a while.

I'm sure someone else has better advice?

It's been said that women are better at carrying weight on their upper bodies, possibly because we are built for pregnancy and carrying small children?

This is good advice. Best to start slowly and build up. Since the importance of good shoes has already been addressed, I'd only add that paying close attention to your posture is important if using any kind of weighted vest or whatever. Make sure the weight is even and be careful to avoid back and/or neck strain.

Just like a bicycle, a well-fit backpack makes a huge difference. It sounds like you found a good REI staff member to help. They for sure have some good ones!

I replaced my backpack years ago, and I am sad that I have to admit that I haven't taken it backpacking yet. I was using my vacation to do multi-day river trips. We pack stuff up in drybags and put them on a raft (or for self-support in a kayak or canoe). We do day hikes from camp, but we don't carry all our stuff. Oh the luxury we have. I remember my first multi-day river trip. At the pre-trip meeting we talked about bringing chairs. CHAIRS!!!! We talked about bringing GUITARS. GUITARS!!!! We even had Dutch Ovens. I do miss backpacking though. I have more time now, so maybe I'll get out.

I always used external frame packs. They carry gear well. My new pack is internal. It does have lots of adjustments. I expect I'll get it dialed in. One thing I remember from my old days of routine backpack trips - I could adjust the shoulder straps, the hip belt, and the angles that everything was cinched up. I could adjust where the weight was carried on my body. One thing I found was that no matter how I adjusted it, I always ended up carrying ALL the weight on the bottom of my feet.....

@kbholdings

While you await delivery, you can go into your iPhone and look at the "health" app. You can use your phone as a pedometer to count your steps. It's not as good as a dedicated tracker (I use a Garmin and it's awesome), but it will give you SOME data. For a while I was running both (only syncing Garmin to MFP), and they weren't THAT far apart. They weren't the same. I have some ideas why. Sometimes Garmin gives me steps when I'm not walking. I know why that is too. Not really a big deal - it's a small component of the overall total.

It's definitely wrist/arm movement. It has to be a specific kind, and it has to be repetitive. Like many good digital pedometers, it will ignore what it thinks is a step unless there's at least 20 of them in a relatively short period. Then it cycles up by 20 and keeps counting. I have had my "MOVE" alert cancel itself while cutting vegetables, washing dishes, or doing other tasks. I've even had it happen when driving!

Another metric that my Garmin can get fooled about is stairs. My device has a goal for number of floors climbed a day. I don't have stairs in my life or I'd use them. I think it uses barometric pressure. It wont register climbing stairs if you're driving even though air pressure changes. But if I'm out for a walk and the wind blows a certain way, the device can think I've gone up. Very odd. I think it's one reason why it will sometimes give a different number of feet of ascent and descent if I'm on a loop hike. No. That's different. If I'm on a hike, it uses GPS. The Z axis is the least accurate on GPS, so that's probably it.

Just keep moving!