From SOF selection to military operations, rucking is a must-have skill for any special forces operator. Moving faster and carrying more equipment than the enemy can change the tide of battle. Apart from being a cornerstone of SOF training, ruck marching is also one of the most exhausting and challenging things you can do. Its cruel simplicity requires strength, stability, and mental fortitude. 

In selection, your ruck marches have a time limit. If you don’t reach the required distance within the allotted interval, you fail. That’s why this OA guide is all about the exercises that you can use to improve your ruck speed and get ahead of the pack in selection.

Heavy Compound Lifts 

The thing that makes rucking so challenging isn’t usually the distance; it’s the weight. If you’re taking your special forces journey seriously, chances are you already hit the gym – but are you doing the right exercises?

Rucking is a full-body workout. So improving your ruck speed requires training your entire power chain simultaneously. Although isolation exercises are great for fine-tuning muscles, they won’t help you improve your ruck speed. Leave the gym machines for the bodybuilders and move over to the squat rack – this is where you build full-body power!

If you want to improve your body’s ability to support weight, you must lift heavy. This means big compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench press, and weighted pull-ups – exercises that use your entire body to stabilize and lift the weight. Pretty soon, your additional ruck weight will feel lighter, and you’ll march faster as a result.

Balance Drills

Rucking is a simple task – you strap on a bunch of weight and start hiking. But the duty your body must perform is far from elementary. The human body didn’t evolve to haul 50+lbs of gear over miles of rough terrain – that’s why our ancestors domesticated beasts of burden like horses, mules, and camels to carry their belongings.

Since humans are bipedal, our center of mass is balanced over a relatively narrow base. When you put a heavy weight on your back, your center of mass shifts backward and throws off your balance. Usually, this shift results in poor posture as you lean forward to reestablish your original center of mass. Then, as you continue rucking over rough terrain, your balance continues to shift unpredictably – causing your body to be in a constant state of readjustment. 

Luckily, balance drills can help you counteract some of these problems by improving your body’s ability to fine-tune and adapt in response to a shifting center of mass. Your body will still have to lean and shift to adjust its balance, but your movements will be much more controlled, stable, and ergonomic – thus increasing your rucking speed while.

We created an entire OA guide discussing the best balance
exercises for aspiring SOF operators!
Click here to read Balance Exercises for Performance

Weighted Runs

If you want to improve your speed on heavy ruck marches, you must first learn to be fast with moderate weight. As with developing any physical skill, rucking requires progressive overload. This means slowly building up your exercise intensity as you get stronger. 

In general, there are three ways you can create a progressive overload on your rucks: Increasing weight (improves strength), increasing distance (improves endurance), and increasing speed (improves ruck time). Since this guide is all about increasing your rucking speed, we’ll discuss the lattermost type of overload. 

The best way to train your rucking speed is with weighted runs. Get a plate carrier or weighted vest and start running. When you’re used to your current setup, increase resistance by adding more weight. You can also make your weighted runs more challenging by running on uneven terrain like forest paths or across fields – anywhere the terrain isn’t flat and predictable.

Rucking is an excellent way to get in shape for SOF selection and a must-have skill for any aspiring operator. There’s only one problem: it's no easy feat. If you’re unprepared for the physical stresses of a ruck march, it can do more harm than good. That’s why we created the Couch 2 Ruck workout program. This plan will take you from sitting on the couch with zero physical activity to marching 12 miles with 45lbs! If you want to master the ruck march, this training program is for you. Click here to get the Couch 2 Ruck workout plan or here to visit our workout programs page and browse our other plans!