Walk With Weight: Michael Easter On The Evolutionary Case For Rucking, Building Real Resilience & How To Stay Adventure-Ready For Life

Michael Easter is a New York Times bestselling author, UNLV professor, and the mind behind “Walk With Weight.” This conversation explores rucking, the evolutionary movement pattern humans are built for that modern fitness has largely overlooked. We discuss why it affects body composition differently, how GPS navigation impacts cognition, and why optimization culture can undermine resilience. Plus, he challenges my assumptions about comfort zones. Michael's insights are practical, contrarian, and rooted in science and experience. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today's Sponsors: Momentous: High-caliber human performance products for sleep, focus, longevity, and more. For listeners of the show, Momentous is offering up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll Caraway Home: Save up to $190 on cookware sets + an additional 10% off with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www. Carawayhome.com/RICHROLL Birch: For 27% off ALL mattresses👉🏼https://www. BirchLiving.com/richroll Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at👉🏼https://www.airbnb.com/host Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF👉🏼https://www.gobrewing.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  What exercise can you do in 20 years? Is probably the one you should be doing now.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Michael Easter is a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a world-renowned writer.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Michael's distilled down one of the most impressive arguments for incorporating our ancient biological needs into our modern lifestyle. What is rucking?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Rucking mixes endurance and strength in one. The greatest human rucker is the greatest animal rucker in the entire world. And that's because humans are unique in that we evolved to carry weight for distance. This is the thing that I can finally do that gets me outdoors, that makes me feel good, that has helped me lose weight, that has improved my fitness, and that's awesome. Rucking will burn more calories per mile than running. We've kind of missed the boat on this thing that we're really good at, and it has a ton of benefits. Maybe try putting it back in and see what happens.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  Good to have you here, Michael. Thanks for coming back.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Likewise, man. It's always good to be back.

• 2:05Rich Roll?

  Our last episode was very popular. I have every expectation that the audience will be equally enthusiastic about this one. Lots to cover today. We're going to talk about your new book, Walk with Weight. We're going to be very rucking focused, but I want to start this conversation in a very particular place. I want to show you a clip from a podcast I did with your fellow Las Vegasan, Las Vegasanite.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28Rich Roll?

  Uh, his name's Alex Haudle. You might have heard of him. I asked him a question and he gave a very interesting response. Have you seen this, this enthusiasm around rucking that sort of has suddenly appeared? You must think like, well, I'm built for that. I could do, I could go like all day with that.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I can, but I'm also like, that's so, I just thought it was stupid. Like, if you don't have to carry weight, don't carry weight, you know? I don't know. I love, I mean, because as somebody who does enough stuff where you have to carry a heavy backpack, I'm kind of like, if I don't have to carry that heavy backpack, I'm just not carrying extra weight. Like, it's crazy to me. I saw this guy on the trail. Actually, I was hiking with June a couple of days ago, and this guy went by with this full-on weight vest. It had to be like 25-pound weight vest, walking his dog. And I was just like, you're literally just carrying little balls of lead up the mountain and back. That's psycho.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  Do you know this guy, Michael Easter?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  So I actually-

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  He lives in Vegas. He's the big ruck guy.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  I just got his contact info. Um, I met a mutual friend of his who was like, you guys should connect because you're both in Vegas. And I was on his, um, his, uh, his mailing list for a bit. I was like, reading his, his, whatever, you know, his content. I think I read his book, maybe. And yeah, I think I'm totally into most of what he writes, but I'm like, rucking? I don't really get it. But if something, if somebody doesn't exercise in other ways, it's probably better to do that than nothing. But I'm kind of like, why not take off the pack?

• 3:47Rich Roll?

  It's more of an older guy longevity thing, right? When-

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Why not run or like, run gently or, I don't know. Or if nothing else, like, just hike with a day bag with a lot of water, drink your water, and then trot down with no weight. You know, it's like, that's a, or dump your water. And, but I'm like, why, why go downhill with weight on if you don't have to?

• 4:07Rich Roll?

  All right, next question.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Okay, sorry.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 4:11Rich Roll?

  What say you, my friend?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  So Alex Honnold is the greatest rock climber of all time. In the human world, but if you expand that out to all different animals. He's not good. There's plenty of other primates who would just kick that guy's ass going up.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  Spicy cake.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, just kick his ass. But with rucking. The greatest human rucker is the greatest. Animal rucker in the entire world. And that's because humans are unique in that we evolved to carry weight for distance. So there's no other mammal that can pick up a load and carry it a significantly far distance. So that act, this act of carrying weight, it really does. Make us unique among all other species. And so I would turn that back to him and say, well, if you look at the grand scheme of time and space. Humans have been carrying weight to survive and do it better than they ever have climbing up rocks.

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  Before we close the chapter on Alex, uh, did you guys ever connect?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  We did not connect. We texted, um, we've texted a little bit, but we've never managed to connect. Well, both of us probably travel. And so now I'll have to text him and say, this came up.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  This has to happen. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure that you guys, that you guys connect.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  I'll make him a deal.

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  He's a. I'll climb a rock if he carries a weight for the sake of carrying a weight.

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's get you two guys together and you can, you can, uh, sort of cross pollinate your passions.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I love it. Yeah, he seems awesome.

• 5:35Rich Roll?

  On the topic of rucking, before we get really specific about that, essentially your thesis is that walking with weight is the most fundamental and underutilized human exercise, providing a missing link to lasting physical and mental wellness. And if there's a corollary to that, it's that this is one behavior or activity that can help the human animal attune their lives to the ancient rhythms that, uh, you know, over, over time have kind of shaped humanity.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:07Rich Roll?

  Is that a fair?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. Like I said, uh, moments ago. Humans evolved to. Pick up weight and move it for distance. So, once we evolved from primates, came out of the trees, there was actually what led to the fact that humans can walk on two feet in the first place, is there was all this climate change happening in the jungle, like six million years ago. And the primates that could go longer distances were able to find more food and survive because it was like pushing out fruit. So, fruit became harder to find. And so, slowly but surely, natural selection basically favored these primates that could walk on two feet because it was a lot more efficient. And then, once we got up

• 6:50Speaker 01

  onto two feet, all of a sudden, we have these free hands, and all of a sudden, we can start carrying stuff. And humanity really exploded after that because we could take tools into the unknown. We could use our hands to manipulate things, create tools, all these different things. So, it's really kind of the foundation when you look at like, again, what are humans physically good at and unique at? It's covering long distances on two feet, often while carrying weight. And I think one of the big points of this book is that when you look at fitness today, plenty of people run, plenty of people go to the gym and lift weights, we have cycling, we have all these things. But not many people carry weight as a form of fitness and physical

• 7:34Speaker 01

  activity. And so, my case is, all those other things are great. I'm not saying, trying to say that rucking is the only thing that a person should do, but I am saying, hey, we've kind of missed the boat on this thing that we're really good at, and it has a ton of benefits, which we can get into. And so, I think, maybe try putting it back in and see what happens.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  The evolutionary aspect of this is super interesting. For many years, probably, you know, with the publication of Born to Run, it entered the mainstream consciousness, this idea that we were born to run. And that tracks back to persistent hunting and, you know, all of these things that you're referencing. You're not completely rewriting that, but you are kind of revisiting it to supplement it with the, this thing that got missed, which is, yes, we're born to run, but we're even better at covering great Distances with load bearing weight and and that is really essentially, you know,

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  what advanced humanity from the caves into building civilizations. And this gets missed in the whole conversation around kind of holistic well being.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:42Rich Roll?

  As a practice that is fundamental to, you know, kind of our DNA.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  So my aha moment for this is I'm familiar with the Born to Run paper, which was in Nature, I think in 2004. It's by this anthropologist, Dan Lieberman. Then the Born to Run book comes out and it sort of makes this argument that humans evolved for long distance running. And the reason that we did is we would use long distance running to hunt. So in the heat in Africa, we would run down animals until they basically fell over from heat exhaustion. And then we would spear them, right? And this would happen over like seven, 15, 20 miles. So what makes humans unique is that we can cover

• 9:32Speaker 01

  those long distances, but really effectively in the heat. Because we have this sort of built in air conditioning system with our sweat, we can basically just tolerate heat more than other animals. So we chase these things down until they gas up because of heat, spear them. Great. That's how we would hunt an animal. But then what happens once you actually hunt the animal? You got to carry it back to camp.

• 9:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's sort of like the next day, you know, dot, dot, dot.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  You got it down.

• 9:58Rich Roll?

  That got missed in that in that synopsis.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I was out hunting in the Arctic. This was for my book, The Comfort Crisis. We were up there for like a month. So we end up hunting this caribou. And we have to pack it back to camp. And it's like, you know, these things are huge. So my pack has 100 and probably 20 pounds of caribou.

• 10:24Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  In this thing. And we have to hike it back to our camp across the tundra. It's about five miles. The tundra is, by the way, like the worst thing you could ever walk on. It's like beach sand, basically. It's uphill. One of the hardest things physically I've ever done. But as I'm doing that, I'm thinking about that idea in the Born to Run papers, like, yeah, humans evolved to run so we could hunt. And then, yeah, but then we also have to do this carrying thing.

• 10:51Rich Roll?

  You gotta bring it back to the village.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta bring it back to the village. And so I start kind of thinking, oh, that's kind of interesting. I wonder what other animals can carry. Well, there's ants, but they don't go that far. They're also not mammals. Well, there's kangaroos, but it's only when they're with their young in their pouches. Well, there's horses, mules, but wait a minute, they can't actually carry anything for distance unless we put the weight on them.

• 11:13Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And I just kind of ran out of runway effectively. And I was like, wow, that's actually, maybe we're unique because we can carry weight for distance. So then I got home and background is I'm a journalist. So I start reading papers, talking to researchers and just sort of became this rabbit hole of walking with weight that I went down.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  And you ended up going to visit Daniel Lieberman to discuss this very thing.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, visited him at Harvard. And he is the guy who really found the whole Born to Run thesis. And when I brought up the carrying thing, he was like, yeah, that's we're we're unique for that as well. And he's, you know, he pointed out, for all of time, humans were carrying often. This could be our kids, because we had to carry them around, right? Humans take a long time to develop compared to other animals. Anytime you wanted water, like today, you just flick on the faucet and water comes out. It's like, great. But in the past, you would have had to walk to the water source and then you have to carry that all the way back to your village. So we are

• 12:19Speaker 01

  constantly carrying and that really shaped us. And when you look at what it does to the human body, I think there's a lot of benefits that are unique to carrying that you don't necessarily get from running or lifting weights alone.

• 12:34Rich Roll?

  Before we go further, let's define our terms a little bit, like what is rucking?

• 12:41Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  So rucking, I would say, is walking with weight in a backpack or a weight vest. Now, I have started to use more the term walking with weight. And I'll tell you why that is, is because the term rucking came out of the military. So back about 400 years ago, German hunters were calling the packs that they would hunt with rucksacks. So that term sort of held for backpacks that would be used for, let's say, rougher pastimes. You're hunting warfare, whatever it is. And the military adopted the term to be the rucksack was what you kept your gear in if you're a military member.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  And marching with your weighted rucksack was the key form of training. It always has been for militaries throughout time. It's just marching with your gear on. So they started to call it rucking. The term sort of took off for the act. But when I started to use the term around, say, my mom or my wife.

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  Moms, yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  They Google rucking and what do they get? They get these soldiers with these like 150 pound backpacks.

• 13:52Rich Roll?

  You look like a special operator in these vests.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I was like, okay, well, that's a little bit of a turn off because the term rucking has taken on a really military bent, I would say. And so I've started to shift into walking with weight to make it a little more approachable and not as scary.

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  The added irony being that walking with weight is something that was pioneered by the mothers. It's the mothers that are carrying the children and carrying the water on their heads back from the well and all of this. I think there are a lot of walking with weight. There's a lot of gratitude and thanks that have to be given to the women and the mothers for this practice or the fact that it has become part of our humanity, I think.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, backpacks or carrying packs, they were invented by women for carrying babies.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  So before that invention, moms are carrying babies around all the time in their arms. And so you only have one free hand the whole time. So once, and this happened a very long time ago, once women created carrying slings and packs for babies, all of a sudden you have the baby close to you, so it's safe, but now you have two free hands. And so that really expanded the productivity of the tribe because now you have someone who can gather food as they're also tending to a child and humanity kind of exploded from there. And then, of course, the next logical step is, well, if we can carry a kid in these things, what else could we carry in these things? And then you start putting food in them. Then the hunters of the tribe go, well, we could carry some meat in these.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  We could carry other tools and just sort of took off from there.

• 15:31Rich Roll?

  From a health perspective, give me the reasons why rucking is something you're so bullish on compared to hiking, jogging, or running? To answer Alex's question, like, why not just run?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  So when it comes to why not just run, I'll make two key points. The first would be injuries. So the data on running injuries is all over the place. There's one famous study that found that 22, I believe it's 79% of runners get injured in a year. That's really high. And I think anyone who's listening to this that has ever run, I'm sure you've been injured by running. Plenty of people have bad news for running. But when you look at walking with a weighted pack or a weight vest, injury rate is way lower.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  It's basically a little bit higher than walking and walking's injury rate is like 1%. That said, of course, if you use way too much weight, then the injury rate goes up. So in the book, I advocate for using weights that are never more than about 30% of your body weight. Like, I use 20% of my body weight, not significant weights. And then the second point, as it relates to running, that I would make is that rucking mixes endurance and strength in one. So you're getting endurance because you're covering ground. But you're also getting a strength effect because you have weight on your body and you have to carry that weight. So you get a more muscular effect as you're getting your cardio.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  You're sort of combining those two things into one. So if you're pressed for time, to me, it's like, all right, this is a pretty good option. And I'll also add, I'm not saying people shouldn't run, people shouldn't lift, people shouldn't do whatever. My greater argument is that walking with weight is incredibly effective and useful for people. And so how can we weave it into all the other things you're doing?

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  I think I heard you say that when you're running, you're exerting 12 times your body weight in force with every, with every time you land, right? And it's 3X when you're walking. When you're rucking, obviously, it's going to depend upon how much weight you put in your rucksack, your backpack, or what's on your vest. Like, in the in-between, you have running on one end of the spectrum, you have walking on the other, you know, rucking is somewhere in the middle. From kind of a strength and calorie burn perspective, what are the differences there?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so generally, per, if you think about it per mile, that's a good way to sort of measure this. Rucking will burn more calories per mile than running. So the rate is anywhere from 20 to, you can go all the way up to like 200% more, just depending on what the load and terrain is. But generally, you will burn more calories per mile compared to running. And then lifting, people generally overestimate how many calories lifting actually burns because you're going, you know, if you do three sets of 10 reps and you do eight different exercises, how much time are you actually exercising? You're like, 20 second set, I'm going to rest for two minutes, another 20 second, like, you're not really burning that many calories.

• 18:54Rich Roll?

  Right. But you're assuming you're going to, you know, kind of like, at least 85% of your capacity, you are, you know, kind of stimulating muscle growth as a result of that. It's just a different sort of thing.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the point of lifting is more for strength than muscle rather than calorie burn. But I'd just like to point that out because some people will like, oh, I got a killer calorie burning weightlifting workout in today. And it's like, eh, maybe burn like 150, 200 calories. Like, don't eat that back.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  A big piece of this, and maybe the most underappreciated aspect of it, is the fact that it's putting you out in nature in a dynamic environment. And there's not only health benefits to this, you know, physical benefits to this, but also cognitive, like, brain health benefits to being out on a dynamic landscape where you're being stimulated in a way that you're just not when you're lifting weights in a gym or you're running on a treadmill.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I'll give props to a researcher. He's at USC now. His name's David Reichlin. Awesome dude. He's basically looked at how your mind, I'm simplifying this, but how your mind works when you're out in the, an environment that you have to navigate effectively. Right? So if you're outside and you're having to figure out where you're going, you're taxing your spatial navigation, you're having to take in all these things happening around you. And if you're on a trail, it just ups the ante even more because now you're going, all right, how's my foot placement with every step, right? Is there a rock here or whatever it might be?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And so that sort of mental work that happens when you're out in an open environment, having to run, especially if it's somewhere new. I'll put a point in there saying, new environments are better. That navigation is really important for brain health. So humans, in addition to walking with weight, we also evolved to navigate. We're navigating all the time. That doesn't happen as much today for a few reasons. One, we kind of do the same thing every day, so we're just familiar with everything. Two, when we do go to a new place, like I got to this lovely new studio, we just pop it in Google Maps, don't have to figure it out, just follow the blue dot. And we lose something because that's like a very specific part of our brain

• 21:17Speaker 01

  that needs to be worked. And there's evidence from, there was this study, I think it was conducted in the UK, I'm gonna forget the specifics because I write down all the specifics in the book and then they just go out. But it looked at about 400 different jobs and it looked at their risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And the jobs with the lowest rates of Alzheimer's and dementia were cab drivers and ambulance drivers. And I think the reason for that is that these people are constantly having to navigate all these new environments. So they're working this very specific part of their brain that evolved for navigation that most jobs are not working.

• 21:51Rich Roll?

  That's fascinating.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think there is a case, like to me, the takeaway for me practically is

• 21:58Speaker 01

  if you're gonna go exercise outside, whether it be on your bike, whether you're rucking, whether you're running, sometimes you should go into new environments where you have to figure things out. Like, I'm just gonna run out on this trail. I've never been there before. I'm gonna try and find my way. I'm gonna do this loop and guess what? I'm probably gonna get lost for a second, but that's the entire point, because I'm gonna have to figure out, okay, well, how do I get back to where I started? But you can also, if you want to be even lazier about it, even just driving, don't use Google Maps all the time. Like, you go, okay, I need to go to this restaurant in Las Vegas. I live in Las Vegas. I know it's in Chinatown. Okay, I can kinda get, I know how to get to Chinatown

• 22:40Speaker 01

  pretty much, and then I'm gonna have to pick up all these cues along the way, rather than just offloading this part of my brain to Google Maps. And I had to do this, I'll say.

• 22:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this is like, it's like, how dare you? You know, these beautiful navigations in our cars now.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I know. I know. And I had to, I'll tell you, man, for another book I'm working on, I did this really long through hike through southern Utah, and it's not a trail, it's a route. So you have some general directions of where to go, but you gotta figure stuff out. You're just out in the open desert, going through canyons, across mountains. And the navigation element, that mental component of that, and we're hiking 25 miles average a day with weight on our backs, that was almost as hard as the physical stuff. It just adds this extra layer of complexity, of challenge. I would end the days just physically fried, mentally fried. But it was very satisfying, because it's just not a part of our brains we work anymore.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And there's something really, there's something really satisfying about it, because you have like a clear mission. I need to get here, and I'm gonna use my brain to figure that out.

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  There's a sport called orienteering that's all about this, right? It's not a rucking sport, but you never hear about people who do this sport. Maybe it's poised for a comeback now.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Maybe they all got lost.

• 24:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they did. I mean, ultra running, you know, there's certain ultra, like the Barclays Marathon has, you know, an aspect of that in it where, you know, orienteering becomes a big piece. But I guess the ultra running world has sort of enveloped that that sport on some level. But there was a pure sport called orienteering where it's like you have a little compass and a map and you got to figure out how to get from where you are to the other place.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people still do it. There's still like orienteering competitions and organizations. I should, I should look into that.

• 24:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this could be your next thing.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  You and me, we're gonna go in the woods with a map and a compass and figure it out.

• 24:38Rich Roll?

  The other stat that jumped out at me on this nature aspect of rucking or just the process of navigating the outdoors is that when you're on trails as opposed to roads, you're burning 28% more calories.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  That was from, so that it depends, right? So that was like an average. I think that was from a University of Michigan study. It of course depends on the trail. So if you're on like a really flat, you know, perfect, like it's just nice and sandy, not like that bad, might be lower than 28% per mile. But if you get on something that is, has a lot of rocks, a lot of challenges, then it might be higher than that. And that's simply because you're having to put in more effort per step, right? The ground is a little shakier, more ups, more downs, more times where you have to sort of sidestep around things, all that.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  I'd be curious to know how that breaks down between the, the, the physical exertion aspect of it and just the, the brain power required to do that navigation. I, my instinct would be that it's much more about the brain power piece than it is about the physical aspect of that navigation.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I don't think that study delineated between the two, but I will say that tracks with me. Just having to think about what you're doing just makes it so much

• 26:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  harder.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  I mean, this overlaps and dovetails into, you know, what you've written about in the past and the comfort crisis and scarcity brain. We're so acclimated in our, in our modern world that we compartmentalize exercise as this other thing that we do, you know, either before or after, you know, we're living our life and we do it in these contained environments with fluorescent lights, with machines, you know, and in front of televisions and the like. Not only does that kind of rob us of the joy of those human experiences, but it's also interfering with maybe some of the most powerful benefits that we get from these activities when we're doing them in, you know, unbridled nature.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I think so. Because the gym environments and the treadmill, you're controlling for all these variables, right, that get reinserted when you're outside. So we talked about, one, the navigation, but two, you're exposing yourself to nature and that comes with a lot of psychological benefits. There's a variety of reasons for that, but the research consistently shows that going out into nature improves your happiness, decreases stress levels, does some good things to your immune system, like all these good things happen when you're out in nature. Two, you're also having to deal with the elements.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Like now we live at 72 degrees and I think there is a case for getting out and exposing yourself to different temperature swings. Sometimes you want to be a little too hot, sometimes you want to be a little too cold because it's like a stimulus that your body has to, to figure out. And for me, a lot of it is mindset too, especially if you're out on a trail or something. The wilderness and nature to me has always been the greatest teacher because it forces you into positions where things are never going to be perfect and you really have to do sort of figure things out along the way and just make it work. And that to me kind of becomes a lesson that I can take back into my normal life and go,

• 28:16Speaker 01

  all right, well, I was on that cliff in southern Utah that I had to go down the canyon and it was a huge pain in the ass and it was 100 degrees out and I did that. I can probably handle this next Zoom meeting that I'm dreading. I'll be fine. We'll survive.

• 28:32Rich Roll?

  Well, the goal is resilience, right? Ultimately, you're building resilience with every one of these experiences that you have. And what's interesting about that is how the resilience that we're really after is sort of orthogonal to all of these life hack optimization things that we see these days that people are very into. Like, how do you think about the distinction or the contrast between like life optimization, health optimization, fitness optimization, and the true resilience that can't be rushed and has to be earned in the elements?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Big picture to me, resilience is about can I accomplish this task or figure things out when I have fewer resources and more is stacked against me? Where it feels like when you look at fitness optimization, I can't go on a run unless I have my Garmin because then I won't know exactly what my pace and my heart rate and my XYZ is. I can't start my day unless I do my 19-step morning routine. I can't. We're inserting a lot of these practices that people sometimes go off the rails if they can't have things perfect. And it gives you this illusion of control in a way that you're improving things. But I don't think

• 30:01Speaker 01

  it always measurably does. And I think if you can strip away all that and just be a person that can attempt to accomplish things when you have fewer resources, when the odds are stacked against you, you're going to go into that abyss and you're going to trust yourself. I'm going to figure that out. Well, you're probably going to learn something down there. And I think a lot of it, a lot of the optimization stuff, I mean, I think it can be good because there's different types of people. Sometimes like you get someone who's new to exercise, they want to improve their health. Like, yeah, give them an Oura ring so they know how many steps they're taking. That's great because that

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Having that measurement shows you kind of where you're at, but I think some of these things can tip into like this illusion of progress and control that maybe isn't really founded in reality.

• 30:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not a strict binary. You know, I think they have their place, but the point of them is to develop a more intuitive, you know, integrated kind of connection with yourself. And if you're outsourcing everything to these other things, you're missing that opportunity. Like, I just remember in my early swimming days, before heart rate monitors and garments and, you know, before there was an internet and all of that, like after a set, you know, take a heart rate or whatever, and you start to get to know, like, oh, this is when I feel this way, my heart rate's probably this. You know, you're making that

• 31:28Rich Roll?

  kind of mental, you know, that mind-body connection until you've done it for a zillion hours. And then, you know, on repeats of hundreds, I could tell you without looking at a pace clock, like what my split was or what my time was, because you just, you know yourself that well. And I think these tools are, you know, they're just fancy versions of stopwatches and putting your finger on your neck to figure out your heart rate. But you should use them so that you are, you know, developing that connection with yourself. But if you're missing that part, then you become reliant upon them, you're outsourcing everything, and that's not the point, right? Like, that's moving you away from the greater goal. But the person who doesn't need them, or maybe use them and

• 32:13Rich Roll?

  kind of knows all that stuff and doesn't need, you know, then they can go out in the world and they know, like, oh, I feel this way, so I know that this is where, you know, my exertion level, you know, at this phase means this, and I know that that will mean I'll need to eat this and have this much sleep, et cetera. So you become a self-contained, you know, organism.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think you made a great point that there's kind of like this balance where they can be a good on-ramp to developing that awareness, but once you've developed it, it's like, you don't really necessarily need it. And the danger becomes... Getting fixated on how the numbers rise and fall each day.

• 32:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  You know, I think a lot of the-

• 32:52Rich Roll?

  Then they become self predictive.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a lot of the, I mean, a lot of the metrics and fitness track, I mean, they're wrong. They're some degree of wrong. Depends on what the number you're looking at on your fitness tracker is.

• 33:05Rich Roll?

  But I mean, a lot of them- I play around with a lot of them. I think that, you know, they can create a baseline. So if they're wrong, they'll be consistently wrong and you'll just know the point is to look for variations. But, you know, I have one device that I use that tells me my biological age is like 32 and I have one that tells me I'm 60. You know, so you know what I mean? So yeah, don't, don't, you know, don't over invest too much in, in, in those things, but I do, I do think they're helpful. But, and they can be good accountability partners and, you know, you, there is value in understanding that, you know, you can't improve something that you're not measuring, but it's your relationship to the measurement, I suppose.

• 33:45Rich Roll?

  Which brings up a broader conversation around like goal setting and, you know, we're in the new year. New Year's resolutions, like these are analog versions of the same thing, right? Like, how do you think about setting goals and intentions and visioning? Like, we're in the new year. Do you have a practice around that or what does that look like for you?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I saw a lot of stuff online about how people shouldn't set New Year's goals this year. That was like a wave and I'm like, no, that's the American tradition. Everyone just set a New Year's goal. Yeah, most people aren't going to meet it, but like, who cares? At least it gives you hope. There's a sense of hope and you start a practice and some subset of the population will continue that on and they will change. So I think that New Year's resolutions, having these big goals at the beginning of the year, I think it's great. Did you probably learn something, even if you only do it for a week?

• 34:35Rich Roll?

  Do you do this yourself?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Well, I will say that my New Year's resolution is to finish this other book I'm working on right now, which is a-

• 34:44Rich Roll?

  You and me both, brother. Like, I got, I got one on, that's my focus as well.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, the good thing is that we are contractually obligated to our New Year's resolution. We have to-

• 34:54Rich Roll?

  It's been made for us.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if we decide to bail, we gotta write a check and hand it back to the publisher. So that, that would be mine. I think for me, like having some- In the sort of health wellness space, having some big thing I do each year can be kind of guiding.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  The mesogi.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a big outdoor task. So I've got to kind of stay ready for that.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  What is it? What is that for you this year? Or do you keep that quiet?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  I don't know what it'll be this year. It'll probably be in the fall. I mean, last spring I did that hike I mentioned. That was, that was a long one. It was like 45 days. Granted, it was for a book. So we'll see what it is, but it also kind of focuses my training to be thinking more about what's gonna, what's gonna actually work outdoors. And so for example, in the walk with weight book, I talk about like, if you're just thinking purely in terms of health, longevity, performance, like, how should you be thinking about training? And to me, being prepared for outdoor stuff is like the ultimate path to that. Because most times in the outdoors, especially if you're out there for a long amount of time,

• 36:04Speaker 01

  you're having to carry weight, right? You probably got a backpack full of gear or something. So you have to have enough muscle to be able to carry that. The same time, you're also covering a lot of ground. So you can't be overly muscular because then you're just carrying dead weight. So you kind of find this like sweet spot in body size. You're training your endurance, you're training your strength, you're also having to think about, okay, how do I resist injuries so that I'm going to have to bake in what are exercises that are going to actually translate to getting my body across a super long trail, down a canyon, back up it, and not roll my ankle, and not blow out my knee, and not hurt my, and all these other possible horrors that could happen along the trail. And so

• 36:47Speaker 01

  that really, I think, sort of guides my training and has been useful. And I think when you look at the data around, you know, body size, strength, endurance, it kind of hits the sweet spot for all the things in the sense that it gives you enough for everything. All right. So a good example would be like strength and muscle right now. There's kind of a message, you need to have as much muscle as possible because that'll help you live longer. It's like, no, not really. You need to be strong enough and have enough muscle because at a certain point, just packing on muscle for the sake of it, your body's not having to carry around all this stuff it doesn't really need and it's still taxing your system. So to me, it's about like finding the sweet spot. And the sweet spot, I think, can be found by.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Mimicking what humans have always done, which is move across outdoor landscapes and do hard things.

• 37:36Rich Roll?

  There's a lot packed into what you just shared. Essentially, you want to be perpetually adventure-ready. And in order to do that, you need strength, cardiovascular fitness, and the aspirant body type is what you call super medium.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  And that is a way of distinguishing between kind of aesthetic fitness versus truly functional fitness. So explain in a little bit more depth this idea of super medium.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I call this super medium on my Substack. We've got a nice crew who all chases super medium fitness. But it's basically the idea of, like I just said, you want enough endurance, but you also don't want to tip so far into endurance that you're shedding all this muscle. And when you have to actually throw on a pack.

• 38:26Rich Roll?

  You don't want to look like a 205 marathoner.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Because when you hand the 205 marathoner the 50-pound pack, well, now he's in trouble. Right. At the same time, you don't want to be adding on so much muscle that now all of a sudden you're a two days in a five-minute marathoner.

• 38:43Rich Roll?

  The bodybuilder who can't walk up the stairs.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Who can't walk up the stairs. Yeah, it's trying to find that sweet spot between those two.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  And the best way to achieve that balance in addition to rucking would be what?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  I think rucking is a great on-ramp to that because again, you're having to work your muscle. So your body's going to go, okay, well, I should probably keep this stuff around because I'm having to carry heavy things. Running is good, any form of cardio. I mean, I'm kind of ambiguous with cardio. I'm just like, you know, do what you like. I count rucking as a form of cardio. And then weightlifting, I think enough that you're maintaining strength and building it. Usually like two, three days a week is usually fine for most people, I would say.

• 39:28Rich Roll?

  When you're rucking, what is your average heart rate?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  I don't track.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  Like, are you, you don't track any of this stuff?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  No, for me, it would, it obviously is landscape dependent, right? If you're going up a hill, it's going to be higher. But I would say if I'm carrying, say, 35 pounds around my neighborhood with my dogs, I'm probably low end of zone two because I take a lot of phone calls and I can have a phone call fly. Now, if I hit a hill at the same time, I'm going to be like, I might get a little bit breathy.

• 39:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you're, if you're, if the terrain is dynamic and you have enough weight, then you're going to have like a lot of fluctuation in there.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  This sort of leads us into a discussion around the, the health span and, and longevity aspects of rucking that, that you talk about in your book. And just on the heels of what you just shared about being super medium, you don't want to, you don't want too much muscle, you need a certain amount of muscle. Are these ideas in, in conflict or is there a, a parallel here that I'm not seeing?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  I would say you want, so it's kind of like, what are we measuring, right? I mean, if we're just measuring the muscle in itself, it's like, okay, but what's the overall end goal here to me? It's like, it's well, it's be able to live how you want to live and go out and do interesting things. So I think a lot of the data would suggest like, strength is actually what we care about, right? I mean, like at a certain point, you could argue, all right, well, if you have more muscle that way, if you start to waste away, there's more of you to start wasting. So you're going to be in a better spot. It gets down these rabbit holes. But I think when you look at like the longest lived people, they're not big people, right? They tend to be small. So I think if you're just using your body, using your strength, not having so much muscle

• 41:13Speaker 01

  that all of a sudden you're not going to go out for a run because well, that really sucks because it pounds my knees because I have all this extra bulk on me. Everything has a cost, right? So to me, I think the answer is.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Again, I'm going to repeat myself. But being at a size where you can do endurance work and not suffer, you're not going to be the best, you're not going to be the 205 marathoner. Doing enough strength work that you can do the tasks of everyday life and more, but not having so much of either that now you're sacrificing one for the other.

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  The ultimate hybrid athlete, like a true hybrid athlete.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, people get really interested in like all these different like VO2 tests and what was this and that and that. And to me, it's like the ultimate longevity test is can you just go hike up that mountain? Like if I told you right now, can you go hike your ass up at that mountain if I gave you a pack? That's way better because one, okay, well, that tells me your endurance is pretty good. Well, you had this pack tells me you're probably pretty strong, your lower body's strong. Also, you had to navigate and figure things out. That tells me something's working up here and between your skull. And you've exposed yourself to all these great sights, great views, great sounds, like a lot of good things are happening. And I think that sometimes we can get so down the rabbit hole of like this marker, that marker, this test, this whatever.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  It's like, no, just go out and do something real. And if you can do it, well, that tells me you're probably in a pretty good spot.

• 42:43Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of wackiness in the health span extension world at the moment. I'm sure you've seen plenty of it.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  There's so much people can measure. There's just so much, and I think it becomes overwhelming at a certain point. And really, it's all just like kind of a marker for like, what, okay, what are we measuring for? Usually it's like, well, it tells me your endurance is good. It's like, okay, well, couldn't like a run up a hill do that too? Well, that seems a little bit easier to me, you know, it's just, we get a little bit. It just gets really complicated to me. So I think one of my big messages is like taking, which I do in my Substack is like, how do you take all this stuff and make it? Translatable and more actionable and approachable.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Because if you did everything that, you know, the sort of rabbit hole Instagram says, you'd be taking 50 tests and you'd have a, you know, $20,000 bill for something that a hike up a mountain could have told you for free.

• 43:42Rich Roll?

  Sure. I mean, this is, this is sort of a test case for the scarcity loop, is it not? Like, we'd much rather focus on the latest supplement or some new study that came out about a margin case. Like, we love these, these 1% sort of things that are out there. When, in truth, what's really moving the needle is like, hey, maybe like, carry around something heavy for a while, you know? It is like, yeah, maybe, no, no, I want, like, look at this over here, the shiny new thing that's gonna like, make all my dreams come true.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that having an, I wrote about this in scarcity brain too, is I think that having a number gives people certainty. And that's relaxing. If I see that VO2 number go from whatever, 40 to 50, I've made it. I'm definitely improving.

• 44:32Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  But the VO2 is just a proxy for all these other things that, there are many different ways you can measure them, right? It's like, why do we care about VO2 in the first place? It's like, well, I want to live, uh, long. Why do you want to live long? Well, because I want to do, I want to have these different experiences and blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, why don't you just go out and do the experiences? Because it sounds like, to me, you're saying you need a certain VO2 to have these experiences. So if you just go do them now, well, tells me you've got your VO2. You're good to go.

• 44:59Rich Roll?

  From a health span perspective, it's this two in one, uh, activity. You're getting strength and you're getting cardio. I guess there's sort of an optimization argument to be made for that. You're getting double your bang for the buck. Um, but you're also working on your bone density without, you know, kind of the jarring aspects of, of running, you know, cycling that kind of overlooks the bone density thing because you do need some kind of like, impact to stimulate that. What else, uh, do we know or not yet know about the kind of lifespan, possibly lifespan extending aspects of this activity?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I think one thing I didn't touch on is that it seems to be Good for fat loss, maybe uniquely good. And that probably goes back to the fact that as you're carrying weight, you're having to burn energy, right? Like endurance exercise is gonna burn a lot of calories. But because you have that weight on your back, it's almost like your body has to hang on to the muscle in order to carry it. So there are some small studies, I will say these are small studies. But there was one that took these Alaskan backcountry hunters. And it tested their body fat and a bunch of different health markers. Before they went out for a hunt, they're out in the mountains, I think for 10 days.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And when you're on a backcountry hunt, you're doing a lot of, you're carrying weight, your gear in your backpack, you're doing up and down mountains all day, across different terrain. And they all lost weight. They lost, I can't remember the exact number, like 10 pounds, let's say. You would think that when people lose weight, some of that's gonna come from fat, some of that's gonna come from muscle. Like in most cases, when a person loses weight, some will come from fat, some will come from muscle. But when these guys got back, all the weight they lost was from fat. They were able to hang on to muscle, muscle slightly increased. Not significantly, but just enough. So I think there is something almost, not to give you sort of magic, but I do think there's something.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  And that's, that's pretty unique to this form of activity.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, very unique, yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And I'll say I've experienced that myself, like when I've done long backcountry trips where I'm having to have a heavy pack the whole time. I'll come back and I'll be anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds lighter. This is like, you know, over the course of a month. But I don't think I've lost much muscle. And I come back and I look like I could go, you know, way in for a UFC fight. So I'm just like ripped. And so I do think that there's a strong case that it could be uniquely good for fat loss, and that's a good thing.

• 47:46Rich Roll?

  People love to hear that.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, lose the fat. When I, when I, back when I was an editor at Men's Health, it was like, can we get a fat loss headline on, on that magazine? I don't love this. Can we just sprinkle some fat loss?

• 47:59Rich Roll?

  That will always get engagement, no matter what.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Sprinkle some fat loss on there.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  Especially in January, but, uh, uh, any time of the year, I suppose. The other thing I didn't expect was the impact on infant development. When an infant is being carried by an adult. Explain that.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when you are carrying a infant, a lot of really good things happen. Um, one is brain development because the infant's, say, on your shoulder, whatever it is. So they're looking out and seeing the world almost as you are. So if I'm carrying a baby and we're talking, baby is picking up. What is he doing? How's his face working? So there's a big like social component where they're seeing how you're interacting with other people as you carry them. Um, there's also physical components where these, um, different reflexes get trained, like this sort of neck correct reflex gets trained. You know, babies, when their head's tipped, they'll pop it back up. Uh, that gets trained.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Grip also tends to get trained. There's this, um, gripping reflex where they're clinging on to you. That's getting trained. Yeah, just all these different good things are happening. And I think the, the point I make in the book is that, you know, for most of human history, we started by carrying our kids all the time, but then we put them in these slings or packs or whatever it was. And they were there with us getting all these good things that being carried trains. And today we've shifted that away in a lot of cases, right? If you're moving across, uh, if you're walking through your neighborhood with kids, probably going to be in the stroller. If you're at the grocery store, it's in the basket and you put the basket in the shopping cart or whatever. I don't have children, so I don't know how, what people are doing.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  But I think there is a case for asking yourself, how can I carry my infant more often? Cause it does seem to lead to some good developmental things.

• 50:03Rich Roll?

  I want to get into the how of it all and to do that Tyler can you bring I've got a little show and tell here. I want to give people some actionable advice on how to get started here. Walking with weight can mean many things. It can mean a rucksack which is essentially a backpack that you can fill with books or rocks or plates or what have you. I don't have one of those here but I do have this which is one of those like weight vests. This thing is incredibly heavy. I bought this like a couple of years ago. I don't know. It's got these plates in it. You know that are like, you know, makes it like a kind of like a bulletproof vest. You know these like-

• 50:44Speaker 01

  We can get into the differences about of between backpacks and weight vests at some point.

• 50:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah with like a bunch of these things in there, right? And obviously it distributes the weight between your chest and your back. So there's that. And then we have these which you're seeing more and more of. This is a like a lighter weight vest made by a company called Amorpho. I'm sure there's a bunch of different kinds of these. Like that first one is like first responder or you know special operator gear, right? And this is like, I feel like you wear this one if you're training for the combine or something. You know like-

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks like a wetsuit.

• 51:25Rich Roll?

  Like an NFL player would would train in something like this and it's more like form fitting but also a vest and the weight is evenly distributed even though it's much less. A rucksack or a backpack, all the weight is on the back.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  It's on your back, yeah.

• 51:41Rich Roll?

  And my intuition was always that it would be healthier or better or easier on your body if the weight was evenly distributed. But what I learned in reading your book is that that's actually not the case.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think for most people, most of the time, if you had to choose one, I would steer people into a backpack. And there's a handful of reasons for that. Not saying weight vests are bad at all. They're great. Like big message is-

• 52:12Speaker 01

  That you carry weight is far more important than how, but if you had to pick just one, I would suggest backpack. Now with a weight vest, with it loaded in your front and your back, in the research, having it loaded that way leads to a more normal walking gait. So your walking mimics how you would walk unloaded. So that might lead you to think, oh, well, that and then that's better. Cause when you have the weight on your back, what happens is you tend to tip slightly forward, your torso to sort of like balance the weight, if you will. But in the real world, what happens is once you've walked for a longer time with the weight vest, especially if it's one the size of that

• 52:55Speaker 01

  and is heavy, people tend to get tired. And when you get tired with that weight around you, you almost have nothing to resist against. So you got nowhere to go. So I'll give you an example to understand this. If we were to take a like 400 pound weight vest and I were to put that on you, you would just collapse, right? You'd probably just fall. Now, if we took that same 100, 400 pounds and put it in a backpack, you could probably still stand. And why is that? It's because you've got something to actually resist against. You could lean forward, you could balance it. So you can still keep moving. So once you get tired with a weight vest, especially if it's heavy, your posture starts to just go to absolute shit.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  You've still got this weight pulling down on you and you start to see problems. So you've had Kelly and Julia Stewart on the podcast. Yeah. So they see a lot of issues with the military members they work with because they're wearing these really heavy body armor things. They're wearing them, they're moving, they get tired and they start to slump in this thing and they got this weight just dragging them them down. Whereas in the backpack, You can still move and have something to resist against and keep your posture in a solid position. A good example of this would be through hikers, right? Through hikers could choose to carry their gear any way they want. A gear company could surely come up with some

• 54:21Speaker 01

  vest thing that carries your sleeping bag in your back, your food in your front, whatever it might be. But all of them are putting their stuff in a backpack. And why is that? It's because it's way more efficient the farther you go and the tireder you get.

• 54:33Rich Roll?

  Interesting. So if you're going long distances and you have a heavy pack and it's all on your back, you're going to start to lean forward, right? To balance that out. Isn't that when you talk about maintaining a healthy, good posture, isn't that, does that become problematic? Or are we built to handle that?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  I would say for most weights, we're built to handle that. So of course, if you had hundreds of pounds in the pack, or say 100 or more than a third of your body weight, whatever it is, I think you might start to see some issues. But what happens is when you put the weight on your back, and this is really interesting. This is something I learned, reported in this book, and I was like, wow, that's interesting. When you put weight on your back, it actually removes tension from the muscles on your back. You actually work your back muscles less with a reasonably weighted pack on your back than you do just standing. So you're like, how the hell does that work? That's because your abs start to engage much harder. So they pick up the slack of those back muscles that

• 55:36Speaker 01

  have essentially been sort of shut off in a way. And so that's one reason I like the backpack is because it works your core harder. When you start to tip, your core has to really engage those back muscles sort of shut off. Your core picks up all that slack and you engage your core pretty well. And I think a lot of back issues are tied to a weak core. Having a weak core can set you up for other injuries down the road. So I think it's just a nice little. Way to improve your core strength without having to do boring planks and bird dogs and all those exercises that we do.

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  That leads me into my next question, which is, has to do with the safety of this for people who do have a history with back issues. And I say this as somebody who's still recovering from, I had spinal fusion surgery this past May. So I'm eight, I'm eight months post-surgery and everything is going well, but you know, those bones, those bones take 12 to 18 months to fully fuse. And so I'm, I'm still, you know, not able to do anything that's going to compress my spine. So this is probably something I still have to defer for a little bit.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:45Rich Roll?

  But assuming you haven't had spinal fusion surgery and you just, maybe you have like a mild or relatively mild kind of chronic back situation, can this be helpful? Is this going to exacerbate that problem?

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Well, I would tell everyone, if you're going to try it, definitely ease in. And I would say that whether or not you have a back issue, I think one problem is that, this is more for men, I will say, but they see rucking, they see military, they go, all right, I'm throwing 70 pounds in this pack and I'm going to go for a walk. It's like, maybe let's lighten that up a little bit. I tell people to start with, say 10% of their body weight at first. For some people, that might actually be a little too heavy and you'll know, and you can just back off. For some people, they might find it way too light and they'll need to add another 10 pounds. So starting light, I think, is really important when you start. The reason is you just kind of want to ease into fitness things. And

• 57:45Speaker 01

  it's like, you don't want to do too much too soon because that's when problems can happen. Not to mention, if your first time you ever go out with a weighted backpack, it feels like a death march, you're probably not going to do it again. You won't enjoy it. So by starting light, you can be like, okay, I've kind of worked my way into this. I know how it feels. It's not entirely comfortable, but I can do it. And then you can add more weight from there. To answer your question about back pain and injuries, I think it's case specific, and I would of course defer to the doctor working with an individual, but I will say, Stu McGill, who's a back health expert up in Canada. One tool that he uses to rehab the spines of some of his injuries

• 58:25Speaker 01

  cases that he sees is he does have them ruck with a weight and a backpack. And that seems to help some of those patients because it kind of gives your spine this light, sort of like decompresses things, gives it some like light motion, and that seems to lead good things to happen. But again, ask your doctor.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  The other argument in favor of the backpack versus the vest has to do with breath, right? Like this is something that Kelly and Juliette Starrett talk a lot about. Like if you, first of all, these vests, especially if there's a lot of weight on them, not great for women, right? Like this is not really gonna work for them. But beyond that, it's constricting the chest cavity in a way that is impeding the body's ability to breathe freely.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm a founding member of a brand called Walkpally that makes weight vests. They're coming out in end of February.

• 59:25Rich Roll?

  I went to the website. I didn't see any gear. It was like a program.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the gear will be out in end of February. So then we'll start populating it then. But we have a weight vest that avoids that issue. We've cut it so it's not going to be the weight isn't going to be on your chest, hanging off there. So it's, that makes it good for women. It also makes it better for anyone because weight isn't on your chest, constricting your breathing. Because when you do put in some of the more military style ones that you see with weight vests, where you have a plate on the front. Plate on the back. Yeah, having a bunch of weight right over your rib cage can make it harder to breathe. Not to mention, it makes it so sweat can't do its job if you start to get hot because sweat needs works by evaporative cooling, right? So if you're

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  not getting, if you're like putting a bunch of steel over your sweat, it's not going to evaporate, you're going to overheat. So to that point, I think that's where a backpack is helpful because it keeps the weight off your chest or a weight vest where the weight isn't compressing your chest, more or less.

• 1:00:29Rich Roll?

  It also removes all barriers to entry. I mean, pretty much everyone has a backpack, right? Like you can go buy your fancy, you know, rucksack or whatever, but you can just, you know, put a little bit of weight in your backpack and you're good to go.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's one of the things that I love about this is you don't need a membership. You don't need to go buy a bunch of stuff. If you have shoes that you can walk in and a backpack around the house and something that weighs something, you can start. It's like that Wordsworth quote, "To begin, begin." You could literally pause this episode right now and probably find everything you need to do it. And I just love that about it. Makes it just really universal for everyone. Kids can do it. My mom, who's in her 70s.

• 1:01:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, kids are already doing it. They're, you know, they're wearing backpacks all day with lots of books. And well, I don't know, they used to have books in them. Now it's all digital.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  It's an iPad.

• 1:01:28Rich Roll?

  Which brings me to this question around the different, like, walking with weight can mean many things, right? Like, is there something specific about, like, we talked about, you know, the, what happens when you have it on your back, but you could be, you know, carrying bags in each arm, right? Is there, is there?

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  Value in that, is that different? Is that similar? Like, is there an argument to do that instead? Like, and I'm also thinking about like, you know, Cam Haynes, he like, when he has people on his podcast, he makes them like, go up this mountain and carry like, big rocks and stuff like that. You know, they're, they're carrying them in front of them. They're not putting them on their back.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Right. Each will impact you differently. I think you should, so I think throwing weight in a backpack and going for a walk, or throwing on a weight vest, if you have one, is like, kind of the foundation. But I do think that there is a case to be made that if you're working out at a gym, or you're outside, or whatever, to find different ways to carry items. Like, when you shift the weight all the way to the front, it's going to change the musculature that's worked. If you're carrying things at your side, you're taxing your grip, you're taxing your core strength. There's a lot of different carrying exercises you do. I did a Substack article about this that was like, 11 different ways to carry weight, or something like that, and I kind of break down the benefits of each of them.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  But to me, like, kind of practical takeaway for people listening is, you know, go out and do your long walks with your pack, or your weight vest, or whatever you're doing. But if you're strength training in the gym, something like farmer's carries, or suitcase carries, or if there's a sandbag in the gym, and you just walk with it in front of you for a few sets, you can go a little bit heavier. I think that's really beneficial, too. It does a lot of really good things for the core. And it's also really practical. Like, you actually have to pick up stuff and carry it in real life.

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  You know, whereas like a bar, like a dumbbell curl.

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  It's a life skill.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like dumbbell curls, like, how many, how often do you actually do that? You know, you, you don't. I'm not saying don't do it, but I'm just saying, like, this is actually things that will train you to deal with the stuff that life throws at you.

• 1:03:38Rich Roll?

  And they're, they're compound movements.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  For the beginner, I'm assuming that most people who listen or watch this podcast are at least interested in fitness, probably have some modest level of fitness at a, at a base level. But like any new thing, less is more in the beginning. So start with 10% of your body weight. Do your walk, right? There's no set distance here.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:03Rich Roll?

  Right? Do what feels manageable for you. Is there anything that people should be conscious of regarding their posture and how to hold themselves? I know that some of these rucksacks will have, they'll have like chest straps and also maybe around the waist as well, like that are intended to kind of stabilize this weight. Is that important? How do you think about that?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think about it two ways. I mean, I think one,

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  if you can just start with the backpack you have at home, that's probably the right answer in the beginning. And then if you enjoy it and you feel like you're benefiting from it, and I think you probably will, then upgrading to gear that has the hip belt and the little chest sternum strap can be useful. The point of those is that it just distributes the load around your body more than just entirely on your shoulders. So the hip, the hip belt puts the load on your hips, which are going to be more powerful. So if people have done long backpacking trips, they know that like the hip belt is priceless. Now, if you're using a weight that isn't that significant, like yeah, it'll help a little bit, but like your shoulders are going to be fine.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  I think when it comes to posture, it's just like, just try and walk as you normally would. You don't want to be leaning way too far forward. That suggests you have too much weight. But it's also okay to be tipping forward slightly because that's what your body naturally does when you put a load on the back.

• 1:05:32Rich Roll?

  What about footwear? It seems to me, or at least in my limited experience of, of, of doing this, that the more weight that you, that you put on, the more important the footwear becomes because if you're wearing like a high stack like running shoe, you're setting yourself up, especially if you're on a dynamic trail for like rolling your ankle or, you know, falling, right? You want a more kind of like stable, sold type of shoe for this. Like, is there something specific that, that, that you prefer or how do you think about this?

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  First I'll say it's probably a good idea to avoid really minimalist shoes when you are walking with weight. There was a study, it was a military study. One thing that's interesting about all this research I did for this book is a lot of the research comes from the military because rucking is like the fundamental form of training for soldiers. And so they've been studying it for years and just now the sort of more mainstream research institutions are catching up. But there's a study that basically took a group of cadets, half of them had effectively normal running shoes that are just sort of stable with a little bit with some drop, with

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  some arch, and the other half got minimalist running shoes. And they had them ruck for a while. I can't remember the exact timeline. It was either like, you know, four, eight, 12 weeks, something like that. And then they tracked their injury rates. And the cadets that had the minimalist shoes had a significantly higher risk of injury. That's because when you're putting weight on your back, your feet are having to do a lot more work. There's just more that needs to happen. So if you have a shoe that has some drop, some support, that takes some of that stress off of your feet and can lower your injury risk. So I tell people, like with shoes, it's kind of, what do you think is comfortable? You know, find something with some stability, find something that feels comfortable. To your

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  point, maybe not something that's on like a super high platform if you're on a trail. But a lot of it honestly does just come down to comfort. But I would, I would say like, don't try this shit barefoot at first.

• 1:07:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but like, I want to go in all extreme from the get go. It's my wiring. That's why I'm injured. That's why I got spinal fusion surgery.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Here's what we'll do. I'll create a plan to set you back another two years after this.

• 1:08:05Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  We'll go barefoot.

• 1:08:09Rich Roll?

  Right when I'm about to be able to like, you know, return to normalcy, like just cut me off at the knees.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Things were going so well and then I did a podcast.

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  I know, you know? It's crazy how the rise in popularity in this, like it's all down to you. I mean, you're the, you're the mouthpiece on this whole thing. Like you've set in motion like this domino effect. And I think participation in rucking is up something like 40% in recent years. And there's been a 150% surge in social media engagement around this, which is nuts. Right? And you're patient zero for this whole thing.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  I would say it's weird.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Because I think where it started and I'm not, I'm kind of one of those people. I'm just like, I don't wanna, I definitely don't want to take credit because there's a lot, you know? I think what happened is that there was already people who had rucking companies and things like that. It's kind of niche. I wrote the Comfort Crisis. I had a chapter that was at the back of the book that was about rucking and had information about rucking. For whatever reason, it resonated with people. The right people read it who had platforms like you. And they had me on and that spread the word and they started doing it. And it just sort of had this like amplification effect.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  The craziest thing is when I will be in my neighborhood in Las Vegas. And I see someone walking around with like a weighted pack or a weight vest. And I see them all the time now. The other day I saw more people doing that than I did running. And you're like, that's awesome.

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like real world impact.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  That's awesome because those people are doing it because I don't, maybe, maybe they weren't doing anything. I think one of the things that I have loved is that.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  I've got a lot of people who say, I don't like to run or I got injured running. So I was doing this sort of like gym cardio. I hated that too. I was on the elliptical, but this is the thing that I can finally do that gets me outdoors. That makes me feel good, that has helped me lose weight, that has improved my fitness, that has X, Y, Z. And that's awesome. That's like the coolest thing ever. You know, I get messages from people. From women who have walking groups who are in their 70s and they're like, yeah, we started putting on these packs when we were at the comfort crisis and we love it. You know, we're called the mother ruckers or whatever. And you're just like, hell yeah.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  The mother ruckers.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. But like, like I said, though, it doesn't, it doesn't happen unless there's people like you as well, who are willing to talk to me. And then that gets amplified and it goes, you know, it's like a big network effect, really.

• 1:10:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. I mean, the older I get, my fitness goals are really around, you know, kind of just longevity and being like adventure ready. Like, I don't need to go do any kind of crazy thing anymore. I did that and I learned what I needed to learn. I don't need to continue to tap that well. And in the wake of this surgery, it's just like, I want to be sound in mind, body, spirit as best as I can. And, you know, I'm going to turn 60 in the fall and, you know, I need to think about these things differently than than I ever have. I can't expect to recover the way that I used to. And, you know, I just want to be able to, you know, enjoy my life for as long as possible and, you

• 1:11:36Rich Roll?

  know, experience the breadth of experiences that are available to me. And things like swimming and rucking that are, you know, gentler on the body, but also producing the same, you know, these, these fitness effects are, you know, becoming increasingly more important to me.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's like, what exercise can you do in 20 years? Is probably the one you should be doing now.

• 1:12:03Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Your intensity.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  Might be different, but I'm kind of wired the same way where I've, you know, gone out and done things that definitely took a toll. And now I'm kind of, I don't know if I'm totally done with that, unfortunately. But I am starting to think of like,

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  I noticed myself making different decisions about how much weight am I going to take when I do this rock? Do I really want to do that lifting exercise? Like, what is, is there a safer alternative that I could do? Do I need to end this weight workout with some finisher that brings me to the cusp of death? Like, no, I'll probably be okay. I'm thinking a little more long-term. I do think one of the things I love about walking with weight is there's, I think it's, it has a lot of social components. In the sense that I could go for a walk with my mom who's 70 and I could take, say, 35 pounds, 40 pounds.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  She could take 10. We would both get a workout that's going to be challenging for us, but not soul-crushing. And along the way, we can have a conversation. You know, I couldn't run with my mom. I couldn't cycle with my mom. I could go just walk along with my mom. That'd be fine. But by adding the pack, now we're both getting a little more out of it. I'm friends with, have you ever had John Deloney on the podcast? Okay. He's got a great podcast. He's with the Ramsey Network, a relationship guy, a doctor. I should call him Dr. John Deloney. I'll give him his credit for all those years he spent in school. He's talked about on his podcast how he always felt like, I need to work out.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  I need to work out. You know, he's got kind of that wiring that you and I do. But then he would feel like he was giving up family time because he needed to work out. And so when he would get that family time, he'd be sitting in his head going, man, I have to skip that workout. Damn me. And he realized, you know what, I can just throw on a pack and my wife and I can go out and go for a two-hour walk. Now, all of a sudden, I'm getting this time to connect with my wife, but I'm also getting in a workout because I've got this pack on. We can still have a conversation. And it's allowed him to get in those workouts while still accomplishing these other social aspects. And I think that's awesome.

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  I've been thinking a lot about. My relationship to my own creature comforts and also to my relationship with being outside of my comfort zone. And one of the things that I've recognized and acknowledged about myself is that many of these things that are considered outside of my comfort zone have become my comfort zone. Like, I would much rather go out and like, train all day, or do a crazy race than do what is truly uncomfortable for me. Like, stare into my wife's eyes and tell her all my fears, or, you know, like, like, go to, go to a

• 1:15:10Rich Roll?

  very intense, you know, kind of, therapy retreat, or, or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, your comfort zone morphs. And I think the problem with someone like myself, like, an endurance, like, oh, an ultra endurance athlete, is that, like, you go and you do these things, and there's a lot of external validation that comes with that. And everybody's like, oh, he's so far outside of his comfort zone. And it's like, yeah, but, am I? You know what I mean? And then you, you end up staying there. And then it becomes a, a very comfortable zone for you. And I don't know that there's enough conversation around that. You know, it's, you can get stuck, and then it becomes an

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  impediment to your growth potential as a human, you know, in, in all aspects of, like, mind, body, spirit, well-being. Do you think about this? Like, what is your perspective on that? As somebody who, like me, is, is prone to these extremes, and likes to explore them?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  I will say, I think I've had the same experience that you do. Can hear a little bit of myself in there, where it's like, you wanna go on a 45-day hike? Yeah. You know, it's, yeah, it's gonna be really hard, but like, I assume I can probably manage it. And I kind of love that zone, where it's like, hey, do you wanna go on a meditation retreat for a day? And I'm like, that's gonna, I don't know about that. You know, we're talking 24 hours.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  Like, go to this dark cave retreat place?

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Right. Or, do you wanna go have dinner with the neighbors? And I'm like, what the hell am I gonna say? You know, it's like, that's... I think you're totally on to something. I wrote about, I had someone, one of my Substack people, because I write about Masogi a lot on that. And they were like, well, I ran a marathon. And that was my Masogi. I finished it. And then I did a 50 miler. Then I did a 100 miler. Like, do I just keep going 200? I'm like, well, it sounds like you're good on the running. Sounds like you've kind of accomplished that. I think the question is, you know, what, what is that thing that you fear that's really out of your comfort zone? Because it sounds like

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  that the running thing has become the comfort zone for that person, even though it is going to be uncomfortable, to your point. And so, how can you start to sort of dabble in that? And I struggle with that, for sure. But I'm, I'm trying to be better. I've always been kind of like a social hermit, and I realize I need to get out a little more. And so I've started to connect with people in Vegas and do things like that. And I will say, at first, I was like, why am I doing this? What am I going to talk about? But then it's like, you give that enough time, and you sit there, and then all of a sudden, the magic starts to happen, you know?

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  But marinating in that, and, and really trying to get honest with yourself, is to realize how, you know, astute we can be at, like, lying to ourselves. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I'm doing this. You know what I mean? When you get down to brass tacks, and you're, and you really do like, a fearless inventory on your motivations, like, are you running towards something? Or are you running away from something? And I think, you know, the litmus test question is really like, what are you avoiding? You know, because every choice you make is, on some level, an attempt to avoid something else, right? And so, getting clear on the things that you're most prone to avoid, is a pretty

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  good bellwether for, you know, where your comforts are, and where your discomforts are.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had a friend who's worked with a lot of people getting sober, and he told me,

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  All these people I've helped, all of them, it all just comes down to, people don't want to be alone and they want to be loved. That's what it all comes down to. And I feel like if you start to look at what you're avoiding there, for me at least, there's a lot of times an underlying fear about rejection, that I'm going to be alone, that I'm not going to be loved. Testing that, when I can, when I'm brave enough, uh, has been, I think has been useful for me. Doesn't always go perfectly, but I, but I think it's, um, you know, and, and like, look, sometimes you have to, that is like an act of getting out of your comfort zone and forcing your hand.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  Like sometimes you've just got to get into a position where things might be scary to learn this sort of greater truth.

• 1:19:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Getting out of my physical comfort zone is so much easier than getting out of my emotional comfort zone. And, you know, I will go do all of those things because on some level, the kind of approval that is baked into that serves that need to feel loved. You know what I mean? Whereas if you allow yourself to be emotionally vulnerable in a, in a risky situation, you're risking that, that love, right? Like you, you, you're not sure how that's going to play out. And that's for me at least, and I think probably for a lot of people, like more uncomfortable than like setting the alarm a half an hour earlier, or like making sure you go to the gym, you know, these, these sorts of things that we tend to associate as,

• 1:20:35Rich Roll?

  you know, being outside your comfort zone type of behaviors and activities.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. And I think sometimes like when people begin to, for lack of a better term, clean up their life, when things like exercise or whatever it might be, get adopted. It definitely helps, but. At a certain point, if it sort of keeps getting pushed, it can be its own sort of escape.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  Sure. I feel like we, you know, you and I are blessed with tools that allow us to recognize that in ourselves because of, because of recovery. Because I'll use anything compulsively as a, as a means to not feel or check out. You know, it can be anything, literally. This, this entire podcast, I've, I've made this joke many times before. It's like, it's a ruse to avoid writing or having to do other things. You know what I mean?

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  So I guess the point I'm making is that comfort zones and discomfort come in, in a complexity of, of colors and shades, right? And, and developing an astuteness and awareness of that, I think can be a powerful tool to think about the decisions and the behaviors that you're engaging with in your life.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're spot on with that.

• 1:21:51Rich Roll?

  How's the recovery going?

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Got a good group of guys in Vegas. Wonderful group. I'm definitely the least tattooed among the group.

• 1:22:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  But I feel, I still feel home. Um, yeah, it's good, man. It's, you know, it's a everyday, just peeling the onion, if you will. You have ups and downs. Um, I like to kind of compare it, since I got sober to life kind of being like the stock market. Some days it spikes, some days it goes down. But if you pull back in the long arc of time, since I got sober, that line has just gone crazy up over time.

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  You don't have the, the spikes that you had when you were, when you were out there, though. You know, it's like, like it's much, it's a much, you know, the, the spectrum of ups and downs is much more compressed.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lows aren't as low.

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  That's for sure.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  For me, I've had to kind of like relearn how to have fun and how to just like let off. Because for me, drinking was like, that's what made me feel comfortable and like I could connect with another person totally, you know? It's like, if you just put me in a smoky bar that plays George Jones and there's a bartender who's gonna keep that place open all night, that was like heaven to me. All was right with the world.

• 1:23:15Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  And so when that goes away, then it's like, well, where the hell do I find that? Turns out it's a lot harder to find that by doing all the internal work, but I do think it gets deeper and it's more interesting. That's for me. What's been your experience?

• 1:23:31Rich Roll?

  Um, yeah, over the long stretch of time, it's just been, you know, an upward trajectory. But it's not a linear thing, you know, at all. And I've gone through phases of, of, of kind of being detached from it and phases of being really plugged in. Uh, and I've had, you know, I've had, I've had every variety of experience in it and I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know? Um, it is like the most, you know, I, I consider, you know, my sobriety, the most important thing because without that I don't have anything and, and, and I'll vacillate in how plugged in I am to the program and to the people.

• 1:24:14Rich Roll?

  But always in my mind, I never doubt that I need it or that I'm like over it or healed or cured. Uh, and as simple and as annoying as so many of those slogans and the steps and the tools can be, there's a vastness to it. They have the capacity to kind of handle everything and they're still, you know, like there's, it's still the primary blueprint for, for how I live.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  Every day and.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Same here.

• 1:24:44Rich Roll?

  And yeah, you know, I can be misanthropic, you know, like not as social as I, as I was back then, but I'm okay with that too. If my priorities in life are different.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's about where I am.

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  What are like your daily non-negotiables?

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Pretty simple. I write every day.

• 1:25:04Rich Roll?

  No matter what?

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, no matter what. Luckily I'm a, I have a weird sleep schedule where I'll fall asleep at eight and wake up at like 3:30 and so I have.

• 1:25:13Rich Roll?

  I do that too. I did that today.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Did you? Awesome.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  Your publisher will love hearing that. And so I have four hours of writing before things start to happen. And I love that time. Just like me, the dog sleeping, coffee, and I can just kind of like zone in and figure things out.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Like I wrote on Christmas morning, you know, I was up 3:30 AM on Christmas morning and wife and family woke up at, you know, 7:30. I've gotten in four hours of writing. Like, there's no better way to spend a Christmas to me. Like people think so. It's like work. It's like, no, that's not like, yes, that's how I make a living. But it's also how I live. You know, that's the kind of one of the things that really makes me feel alive is like getting despite the hell of it. It's like you get the right sentence, you get the right thing to flow, you connect the thing. And it's just like, bam, this is awesome. So that's, I would say my non-negotiable. And then I rest of that. I mean, I try and exercise every day. It doesn't always happen. I'm pretty soft on myself. Now, I used to be like hard on myself if I missed a workout, or I would

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  like, inserted at a time that was selfish. You know, there's shit going on. And I'm like, I gotta go work out. My wife has to deal with the dog, or who's going crazy, or whatever it might be, or some other thing. And I think I'm better at realizing, you know what, you're going to survive if you don't do this bike workout for 45 minutes. You'll be fine. What about you?

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's similar. I think the, the, maybe the difference for me is, um, I mean, recovering from this surgery has reframed my kind of obsessive relationship with fitness because I've been forced to not do anything other than walk, walk without weight, I should say. Now I'm slowly emerging from that. And I have this opportunity to redefine my relationship to fitness, which is sort of exciting. I'm actually going to have Kelly Starrett come down and teach me all sorts of stuff that I need to learn.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  And, and I have this unique opportunity to kind of rebuild my body from the ground up, which is exciting. Uh, cause it's like wiping the slate clean. Like I'm completely starting over. Like, forget about everything I've done. Like, how do I stand properly? How do I walk? You know, like? Beginner's mind with all of that, which is exciting. But one of the things that challenges me is that I am, I'm a morning person also. And that's when I am my most creative, but it's also the time that I really want to work out. You know, like once, you know, once I start writing or the workday starts, it's, it's, it's much more difficult to make sure that I, you know, get that physical exercise in. So these two things often are at loggerheads with each other.

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  Like, should I work out? Should I write? You know? And so I'm, I'm, I have, I get decision fatigue around that. And now I'm just solving it by saying, okay, I'm going to work out first, but I'm going to, I'm restricting the amount of time. Cause left to my own devices, I'll just, I'll go too long or whatever. And that way I'm not exhausting myself before I have to sit down and write. And I'm also not using up a ton of time. And if I wake up at 3:30 in the morning, it's totally fine.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have a book due in mid-March. And so I'm in that phase where it's like, everything has to be writing. I'll always write in the morning, but I'm thinking about starting to do some workouts in the morning. Once I get the book done.

• 1:28:42Rich Roll?

  Can you, can you say anything about the book or is that under wraps?

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  I listened to a podcast from a wise author the other day. And he said he was working on a book and he didn't want to talk about it too much because the creativity goes somewhere, the muse.

• 1:29:00Rich Roll?

  I think it's best to lock it down.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was you.

• 1:29:02Rich Roll?

  Talk about it when it was done. Oh, did I say that?

• 1:29:06Rich Roll?

  I will say I've, I've shared what I'm working on with a few people, but not publicly. And when I'm just asked by, you know, a random person, it's like, no, I don't. Cause you, then it feels like you've done something and you haven't done it. Like I'll talk about it when it's done.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Well, I do feel like sometimes you don't know what the book is until the book is like done. And you've gone through it. And you go, here's, oh, here's what this, for me anyways, here's what this book is really about, and here's how we need to get it more aligned with that. So if I start talking, I mean, it's, it's definitely focused on mindset in a way. And I did this long hike to sort of tell that story. So I got the narrative down and all those pieces, but like, kind of landing the plane on the core insights of the book is still in the process. We're still in the air.

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You're prolific on Substack. You've built a tremendous community there. Like, I think you have a hundred thousand people, more than a hundred thousand people there. And you're publishing three times a week there?

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  Three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

• 1:30:07Rich Roll?

  And it's an incredible resource for, for anyone who is not familiar, the page or the account, I don't know what you call it on Substack, it's called 2%. And everything you publish there is just, you know, it's just value driven, you know, it's not chaff at all. Like, it's really well thought out.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  It's a ton of work, but I love it. I think the reason I started it is because in the book world, you put out a book, people like it, or they don't, whatever. And then three years later, you have another book. And you don't get like this real time ability to write about things that are happening in the moment, or things that are coming into your mind. Or even when you're writing a book, you have all these ideas that you're like, oh, this is actually really useful, but for whatever reason, it just doesn't work in the book. So what do you, what do you do with it? So I started the Substack a few years ago, right after I'd finished Scarcity Brain. And I love it. It's great.

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  It just gives me an outlet to cover things that I think are interesting and useful to people in the realm of fitness, mindset, general health. And the community is awesome. That's what's really cool about it. So we've got like a robust comment section, where like I know the people in it now.

• 1:31:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  You're like, oh, that's, that sounds like, oh, yeah. And it's great. And I do put, I mean, I put a lot of work into it because Substack, for people who aren't familiar, it does allow you to put a paywall up. And so I send out every Monday, that one's always free, it always will be. Wednesday and Friday, you'll eventually hit a paywall. And so for me, the question is always, would I pay for this article? And if the answer is no, and I'm cheap, so there's a high bar. The answer is no, I gotta go back to the drawing board and make sure that this is valuable. So yeah, I do, I mean, I'm still doing in journalist mode, reading tons of studies, talking to different sources across the board, but I love it. It's, it's awesome.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  I wasn't sure if it was gonna work out, but it's worked out.

• 1:32:14Rich Roll?

  I think it's working out pretty well.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:32:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, there can't be very many sub stackers that are like doing better than you. I mean, you've really, you're hitting a home run over there and you're just delivering incredible value.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm glad you like it.

• 1:32:27Rich Roll?

  As we kind of like wrap this up, I want to make sure that people understand that Walk with Weight, you also, you have like a lot of practical advice in there in terms of like gear and also like training programs, like it's, it's part kind of manifesto, but also kind of practical guide. So if people are curious or interested, you're literally giving them everything they need to understand the value proposition as well as like the how to aspect of it.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the book really did come out of the fact that I wrote that chapter in the comfort crisis on rucking. Rucking sort of took off. I became sort of a go to resource and I started getting all sorts of questions from people all over the world about it. And I've just sort of taken the questions I get most frequently and answered those all. What weight should I start with? What if the weight's too heavy? What sort of shoes should I? I mean, just all this tactical stuff, but then to your point, I sort of opened with, I like how you use the word manifesto. I hadn't heard that one on that book and that's good. A case for walking with weight and why it, why it is unique to humans, what its benefits are. And so, yeah, hopefully people find it useful.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  There are, uh, they're not races, but like organized rucks now, like long distance, you can go to these places and you know, do it as a, I would imagine that's gonna continue to grow.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never done one.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  But I imagine they'll probably increase in popularity. I mean, for me, though, the magic is like seeing the, you know, the lady in my neighborhood in the weight vest, walking around. It's like, that's awesome.

• 1:34:00Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, any final thoughts for people to take home with them as they start to think about incorporating this into their life?

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  I do not, but I will say if you need me or have a question, I am on Substack. People can DM me. You can write questions in the comments and I will do my absolute best to answer them. If it's a rucking specific question, it's probably going to be answered in the book. If it's a question about anything else, happy to, happy to fill it.

• 1:34:26Rich Roll?

  Awesome, man. Well, thank you.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:34:29Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it, man. Super fun to see you. And, you know, once I have a sign off from the doc, I'm gonna root you out and force you to go out on some kind of situation with me somewhere.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  I like a good situation, especially with you. That'll be good.

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  Anyway, thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. Cheers.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  All right, everybody. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I really do hope that you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit today's episode page at ritual.com where you will find the entire podcast archive, as well as my books, Finding Ultra, The Voicing Change Series, and The Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is free, actually. All you gotta do is subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review or drop a comment. Sharing your show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome as well and extremely helpful. So thank you

• 1:35:36Rich Roll?

  in advance for that. In addition, I'd like to thank all of our amazing sponsors, without whom this show just would not be possible, or at least, you know, not free. To check out all their amazing product offerings and listener discounts, head to ritual.com/sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at ritual.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo along with associate producer Desmond Lowe. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shayna Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor.

• 1:36:17Rich Roll?

  And of course, our theme music, as always, was created all the way back in 2012 by my stepsons Tyler and Trapper Pyatt, along with our cousin, Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support, and I'll see you back here soon. Peace. Plants.