Strength Training with a Ruck Featuring Drew Snarey from Frontline Athletic (Training with a Ruck Series 2 of 3)

0:00 What if you could build strength without a gym membership, without a rack of dumbbells, and without turning your garage into a home gym? That's exactly what we're talking about today in part two of our Training with a Ruck series. Last week in part one of this series, we covered how to use rucking itself as a conditioning tool. And if you haven't listened to that one, I suggest you go back and check it out. That was episode 43. But today we're taking it a step further. We're taking your rucksack and turning it into a strength training tool. You'll learn exercises that target your legs, upper body, and core, and how to build workouts around your regular rucks. Joining me today is Drew Snary, founder of Frontline Athletic. He builds rucksacks, he trains with them, and he has thought about this more than almost anyone. Drew shares practical ways to turn a simple ruck into a versatile piece of fitness equipment. This is the Rucker's Edge podcast, a show all about rucking that is designed to help you improve your rucking routine, lose weight, and ultimately gain your strength and energy back. Each episode dives into the science, stories, and strategies behind rucking. You'll learn from top ruckers, coaches, health experts, and performance specialists who break down what it takes to train smarter, recover faster, and stay ready for the next challenge. So whether you're new to rucking or an experienced rucker that's already logged hundreds of miles, this is the show for you. I'm your host, Spencer.

1:10 Thanks for tuning in. By the way, if you're new to this podcast, go ahead and click follow or subscribe on whatever app you're catching this on. That way you won't miss out on any future episodes. But for now, let's transition to our guest today, Drew Snary from Frontline Athletic. Drew, thanks so much for joining me today on the Rutgers Edge podcast. I'm excited to hear. what you have to offer the audience in terms of how we can use our rucksack as a strength training device. On the first part of this series, I'm doing this three -part series on how to train with a ruck and kind of expanding the rucking toolkit. And so the first one is on conditioning. This one here is going to be on how to use it as a strength training aid. So I'm super happy that you're here. Thanks for joining us. And I'm looking forward to what you have to provide to the audience today. Hey, thanks for having me. First off, I'm really excited about being here. Thanks for the invite, Spencer. Absolutely.

2:00 And before we get into the different workouts that we can do with the Ruck, I wanted to ask you if you can give the listener a quick snapshot of your training background and what your fitness life looked like and sort of like where the Rucksack came into play and how that started for you. Of course, man. Yeah, I'd love to. So I've been in law enforcement for 25 years. I was a police officer and gang detective in the Detroit area for 15 years. I did that. And in 2016, I hired on with the federal government and left local police work and hired on with the United States Secret Service. Did about four and a half years in the Secret Service after they had moved me to Chicago. And then from there. with having two young children and wanting to spend more time with my kids than at work. I did a lateral transfer over to the U .S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, and I work in their narcotics section. So that's what I do for a career. And the business, Frontline Athletic, was born in April of 2023. It had a slightly different name at the time. We started out with functional fitness clothing, and I learned real quick that there was a huge gap in the space when it came to rucks and sandbags in regards to accessibility and community -wise. And I also learned, well, I knew that in my job, the daily trauma that you

3:32 deal with, if you don't have a positive outlet, uh both mentally and physically the the job can swallow you up for lack of better phrasing so what i what i found was that i needed a positive outlet and being outdoors not only assisted me from a physical aspect with working out with rocks and sandbags but also helped me to clear my head because i was putting screens aside my phone was turned off i'm just out there with my thoughts and thinking through things um because so in law enforcement uh There is, you encounter quite a bit of different levels of trauma throughout your career. And on average, the average citizen will have anywhere from two to four significant traumatic events in their life. A police officer will experience anywhere from four to 600 in a career. Wow. And then they're expected to finish that. call or run or report or incident, whatever, however it's phrased, and move on to the next one. And then come back to work the next day and deal with it again. And then come back the next day and just keep moving. You're a machine.

4:47 And having emotion is not really something that is encouraged, I guess you could say. So what happens a lot is law enforcement has a very high suicide rate. and mental health rate post -career. And it also has a high alcoholism and divorce rate because of the trauma that you take in that you don't want to put back out in discussing with your spouse or significant other. And so what I have found that works for me is exercise, both mentally and physically. And that's kind of where rucking came in. And sandbag workouts, I love being outdoors. I love vitamin D. I love fresh air. And so to incorporate those two, I got involved with rucking. And then I saw that there was a void in the market, like I had said earlier, in regards to affordability for everybody, not just for somebody that wants to spend $250 on a ruck, but so you can actually afford it.

5:53 And then also accessibility, which goes hand in hand with affordability. If you can't afford it, you can't get it. And if you're out there and just using a Jansport with some weights in it, that's a great, two couple of dumbbells or something. That's a great way to start. You know, you see if this being outdoors and this activity is for you, but it's not sustainable because it's not comfortable. The bag is not built for your back and built for holding that weight. So in law enforcement, what sort of exercise routine or fitness plan do you typically do? So for me. What I like to do is I like to be a jack of all trades type of person. So I lift weights regularly, four to five days a week, even if it's just like 20 minutes because you're busy. But I also, for me, I rock it daily. So in 2026, I've rocked every single day of 2026, a minimum of 30 minutes. I shoot for 45. It has to be 30 or it doesn't count. And, and then, so that has, um, strengthened my legs. My whole posterior chain is tied in there. Uh, that's part of where the fitness stuff with rocking comes in is it's not just a walk. It's a zone two workout. Right. Because you're going for a walk, you're walking your dog or you're with your significant other, or you're just taking a brisk walk. You go from just walking to carrying weight. And that's why everybody says like, you know, get underneath weight is the phrase that people use a lot of times with rucking is because you'll see if you're wearing a watch, an Apple

7:24 or a garment or something like that, you'll see that your heart rate will increase from 80 something beats a minute up to between one 10 and one. you know, 100 to 115, 110 range. And so now you're hitting a zone two workout. So now you're getting cardiovascular work and you're burning fat and building muscle because the way a ruck sits compared to like, let's say a weighted vest where a lot of people start also, you'll see them buying like weighted vests off of Amazon is a weighted vest. The weight is distributed evenly on your, on your shoulders. A ruck is, Typically high and tight on your back, which without you even trying or even really feeling it, it's engaging your core. Yeah. And you don't really feel it in an hour walk, but I'll tell you, I've done like an overnight event that was like 18 miles and like 15 hours with like Freedom Ops organization, which is like mental toughness. The next day I couldn't get out of bed. I was struggling to get out of bed because my core was so sore. I went home and went to bed after, you know, like 9 o 'clock in the morning. I woke up and I'm like, ah, I'm going out of bed, right? And then also another thing that rucking does without you really trying because the weight is high on your back is it ties in your whole back and posterior chain. So glutes, quads, hips, you know, hamstrings. all the way down to your calves,

8:57 strengthening your Achilles area because it comes right down your back into your feet and it's holding the weight back there. And I've seen just this year doing it every day, I've seen significant increases in my weight training and my strength in my legs. And the nice thing about rucking when you're doing that is that like i do like to run i run also but if i go out for a hard run like six seven eight miles and i'm really pushing my pace well the next day i can't run right because i'm sore my legs are recovering i can go out every day and rock And go out the next day and not feel like my muscles and my system has been overtaxed and I can't, I'm like, oh, I can't do this today. No, I absolutely can do it. And that's evidenced by this Saturday will be 150 days straight starting January 1st.

9:51 Wow. Yeah, that's, I've been following that journey. You post online about it. So that's a really cool goal that you have there. Congrats to the 150 straight. That's phenomenal. Yeah. I think it was like. January 3rd or 4th or something. I forgot what the temperature was, but it was like the ground was frozen. There was snow everywhere and you were still getting out there. Yeah. It was, uh, it was like minus eight with the wind chill of minus 24 or something like that. It was, it was, you could like just see my eyes in the light because I had a balaclava on, I had a gator on a hat, you know, uh, a heavy jacket. I was, I was so bundled up that I ended up having to unzip my jacket halfway because I was so hot and it's in negative. But, you know, you talk about that. Actually, tonight, there's a local community about a half hour west of me where a gentleman by the name of Nate Voland has a community ruck group called the Hinkley Community Ruck. It's once a month. And he's organized that group. And it started out with, you know, typically how it does, like five, six people. And now it's up to every month. It's over 100 people. Whoa.

11:03 And the reason why I thought of that is because you mentioned, you know, congrats on 150 days. Well, tonight is his 1000th day. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I can't I can't imagine getting it out, getting out there that frequently. Right? I mean, he's getting sick, no doubt, through that time span. He's just pushing through. He's like, I'm going to get it done. Wow. Yeah, you're just powering through it, powering through it. And you think about like, and the logistics planning, because he's got three kids, you know, like, all right, well, you know, my daughter's got this going today, my son's got this going today. If I want to get this in, I need to do it at 5 a .m. or I need to do it at 9 o 'clock at night.

11:45 It's got to happen or I have to plan it or else it won't happen. It's clearly a priority. Let's shift into training with a rucksack. So is there a difference between, you know, strength training in a gym with barbell or kettlebells, something like that, versus a rucksack? Absolutely. Absolutely. So with the ruck, whether it's a frontline athletic ruck or any company that. Their bags are geared towards rucking. There will be various handles around it. Ours has four handles, two on each side that are reinforced and one on the top and the bottom that are reinforced. They're reinforced box stitched, so you can do all kinds of stuff with it. Like, for instance, a guy that I know that owns a gym in Troy, Illinois, southern part of Illinois, he's about 210 pounds. He'll take his weight out of his ruck, put it over a pull -up bar, and do pull -ups with it. Wow. picking up his 210 -pound frame on the ruck. So it has a lot of versatility. Also, compared to dumbbells, is the weight in there, no matter how well you have it in there, it slides. It's not stable, completely stable, right? So instead of having this solid piece of steel or whatever that you're lifting with a dumbbell or a barbell, you have this weight that moves and destabilizes your lift, helps to do is tie in your stabilizer muscles,

13:16 your secondary muscles, which in essence actually makes you stronger. You know, because you could bench press with a bar all day and what is going to increase your bench press weight is when you start using dumbbells because it ties in your stabilizer muscles. Same sort of principles with the Ruck is it's tying in your stabilizer muscles and it actually makes you stronger faster because those small muscles that people don't really focus on because you don't see them in a mirror are what's getting activated and it's reinforcing the large muscles that are the glamour muscles. Yeah, it's kind of like, so around the same time I started rucking, I was getting into some more functional fitness type of workouts and I started doing farmer carries. And I remember walking with, you know, two weights in both hands, but, you know, doing some more research and, you know, reading into a little bit more. The suggestion was no, like do one side at a time for that exact reason to increase the stabilizer muscles. So it's sort of like the same concept there. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. since i already mentioned a workout let's let's go ahead and jump into the different movements or different workouts you can do to strength train with with a rucksack let's start with uh the lower body if that's good with you um what are some like uh foundational lower body movements you can do with the rucksack well there's you know there's the holy grail of lower body movements which is the squat and so you can put the the nice thing is is Whether you're in a gym or you're at home or you're in a parking lot walking, you can stop in your walk

14:48 and you have your ruck on your back. So now you have 30 or whatever weight you have in there, 30, 20, you know, maybe more, maybe less. And you can start doing different variation squats. You can do short squats, which is, you know, like you're just getting your butt down a little bit. You can get to 90 degrees or you can do deep squats, which is you're coming down towards your ankles. And you're getting down towards your ankles. And that movement alone is strengthening. Doing a squat ties in your whole body's chain from back to core to hips to glutes to hamstrings to quads, calves, everything. It ties in everything.

15:30 And so it's one of the most complete exercises that you can do. And you have a ruck on your back that you can literally do with it. Another thing that you could do with that is step -ups. Now, if you're in a gym, you'd have a box probably, yes, or a bench. But you could be walking in a park and you have 30 pounds on your back or whatever your weight is again, and you see a bench. you know, a park bench and you can literally step up onto that park bench and do two sets of 10, 10 on each side, step ups, and then keep moving. And now you've just worked with the step ups. Now you're working your calves, right? Another option would be deadlifts. So bent leg deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts where you're hinging more at the hip instead of bending your knees. and taking taking the ruck off putting in front of you holding it by the handles and bringing it down into a deadlift and standing up putting your ruck back on and your back moving again yeah i like uh step ups are definitely my favorite when i was when i realized that i needed to improve my conditioning after rucking for a while and to kind of expedite that i still kept the ruck on and i would i would do these alternating uh i guess workouts i would I would rock out a pretty significant pace for a quarter mile and then get back in the backyard, do step ups, you know, like 20, 25, 30 of them, and then go around to

17:02 another quarter mile and step ups again. I did that for, you know, four each. And after about, I don't know, after just like a week, I noticed a significant difference in like my calves, which is what I was. targeting. I really needed to develop the strength in my calves. And like that did the trick. Like I just, after a week of doing that, it was, uh, my calves are already getting strengthened. Okay. So that was lower body. Let's move to upper body. Okay. So upper body, um, very, very similar things that you can do with the rock, whether it's on your body or not. Um, you take it off and what you discussed earlier is like a farmer's carry. So you hold it in one arm. So your body's coming you know your body's pulling a little bit to that side and then you're straightening it up so you're engaging your core that entire time And also you're engaging, you know, your forearm, holding the bag. So that's strengthening that. It is technically, it's like a shoulder exercise. You're strengthening this area because it's pulling. But more importantly, because you're doing it on one side, you're having to focus to tighten your core and stand up straight and not do like the teacup where you're leaning over walking like this. And you're strengthening that core area. Then you switch to the other side. Another thing that you could do with it is, well, you can do curls easily, right? You can do either set of handles here or turn it long ways in here and you're doing hammer curls.

18:32 Or you can grab into the side handles like this and you're curling like that, right? With your palms upwards. Same with triceps. You bring in it over your head. and you're doing triceps like this backwards. Yeah. And you get the same type of effect. Another one that is a little bit more advanced but is easy to catch up with is plank pull -throughs. A buddy of mine that was doing that is, so he will plank, so you don't want any bend in your butt, all right? You want to be flat all the way down to your feet. Okay. And then he would set. You set the ruck up on one side of you as you're playing like this on the ground and you pull it through to the other side. And that's engaging all of this and the shoulder. Because you think of like if you went to a gym and you're doing a pulling machine like this, you're strengthening this area of the shoulder head, right? The deltoids, right? The middle deltoids. And then also you're strengthening your lats and your core. And as it's there, then you put your other hand, you switch hands. Put your other hand down, pull it back through the other way. Cool. Gotcha. Yeah. A lot of these, there's a, there's seems to be a recurring theme.

19:50 It's, it's not just a lower body workout. It's not just an upper body workout. It's like a full body workout. You're activating everything. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, talking about curls, that's what, uh, I have a sandbag in the backyard too. And I've been using that to do some curls. I've also been doing cleans with that, which takes us into. i guess the the next segment let's focus on core so like we talked about lower body we talked about upper body but are there any specific workouts that just target the core with the rucksack or is it pretty much like everything you're going to touch with the rucksack is going to activate your core well yes and yes all right so everything that you're doing with the rucksack is to some degree is going to engage your core due to just the destabilization factor right but if you want to do specific workouts like you could you could literally do sit -ups with it like butterfly sit -ups so as you sit on your butt a butterfly sit -up is your legs instead of having your knees bent your knees are bent out to the side like a butterfly so your legs are like this this if my hands are my feet and you start with the rock behind your head as you're laying down And lift the rock forward and in between your feet and you're doing a full sit up and then back. And so now you're doing a strength involved, you know, a much harder core involved exercise with that. The same thing with if you're doing flutter kicks or leg lifts is if you held the weight over, if you're laying on your back and you held

21:23 the weight straight out over your chest, the rock by the handles again. And then you lift your feet and you might be doing kicks or you might be just doing straight leg raises, either all the way up hinged or just a couple inches off the ground. You holding that weight straight forward like this over your chest, straight out over your chest, you're going to engage that core much more significantly because you don't have your hands planted on the ground trying to brace yourself. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I was in preparation for this. episode on, you know, using the rucksack to, for strength training purposes, I came across one called a bear hug carrier. Are you familiar with that one? Where essentially you're hugging the rucksack and kind of doing like a farmer's carrier, but instead it's like more towards the center of your center of gravity. That's a new one for me. I hadn't seen that one. I might give that one a try as well. Yeah. And that also works. So the bear hug is, you know, like you explained, you're literally just taking your rucksack and you're hugging it. Yeah. And that also works for another version of the squat with the front squat, because now having it on your back, you're holding it up front and you're doing the same squat and it hits your leg and your hip muscles differently.

22:39 Yeah, that would not work in my favor because I have a horrible time because my core is so weak and I need to do more of these exercises of actually going too far forward, you know, knees out in front of toes. I'm keeping mine on my back for now to do those squats. But I mean, you build rucking backpacks that when you're designing them, do you think about these activities? I'm sure that you do. And how that you, you know, how you design them and think about how the bag sits and the load that the body's, you know, carrying during these movements. Absolutely. So. At Frontline, we're fortunate enough to also be the ruck partner for Spartan races, for Spartan DECA specifically, which is a 10 -station race, whether it's DECA Fit, which is a 5K doing these stations, DECA Mile, which is a mile, or DECA Strong, which is no running. And what you do during these events is you hit these different stations, and some of them are burpees. And some of them are box step overs. But one of the biggest things that I did with our bag was to make it functional for all different types of exercises was in our weight pocket on the inside, at the top of the pocket, there's these thick padded strips. Okay. At the fold where the weight, where the pocket flap, the flap comes over the weight.

24:07 Sure. What's going to happen, even though our ruck comes with a hip belt and it helps keep it tight against your body and reduces slide, is if you're doing a bear crawl or if you're doing a burpee, that ruck is going to slide up and it protects the back of your head. So you're not getting steel against your head all the time, banging into the back of your head and you get a concussion, right? You're still going to feel it to a degree. Because it is steel coming against your head. But now the padding kind of takes the edge off. So you're not really feeling that discomfort that you would have just metal hitting your head. So you have that padding there. And that's something that we put in place. Another thing that we put in place is, you know, our lumbar strip. So it fits because nobody's back is straight up and down, right? All of our backs curve inward towards the lower abdomen and then back out with your buttocks. So that strip sits in there and keeps the ruck straight. Because one thing that we did not do with our rucks is we did not put a plastic frame sheet in there or a metal wrap sheet that goes around the side like a hiking backpack. And there was a reason for that. It was more for comfort. So we have a very dense EVA foam in the back of our packs and in our shoulder straps. And we have found

25:38 in our testing that your rock plate gives you all the rigidness that you need. all right so the rock plate in there you don't need like this extra plastic or anything like that or steel frame for one of our rucks because your steel plate does everything that you need it to do it's rigid right it's not soft and then what our eva does and the way we split up our back panel is is it shapes better to your back than a plastic or a steel frame. So in regards to that, then what you have happening is you have this pack that form fits better to your back specifically as Spencer or as Drew or as anybody else using this, it forms to your shape of your back, but stays rigid due to the plate. And when you take it off, it's still rigid because of the plate. So we found that the plastic or the metal frame Kind of is an unnecessary added extra because your steel plate does all the work that you need it to do. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm sorry, Drew, I'm not familiar.

26:54 I've never actually used one of those frontline athletic rucks. But yeah, I've noticed that they have the handles on the both sides. They both look incredibly durable. John Ross Wiley, a former guest of the show, loves loves frontline athletic packs. He's always posted videos and I always see him working out with them. Like they're the structural integrity of those things are. They hold up well, I guess you could say. Yeah. John is a monster, man. You know, he's a middle school principal. Yeah. And I believe middle school. John, I'm sorry if it's high school and I discredited you by saying middle school. My apologies. But he's a school principal and he's not overly imposing.

27:36 He just looks like a guy, like a dad, you know. And that guy is when it comes to fitness, he's an absolute beast. Yeah. He's doing the Rock Race League right now. And one of their events was how much weight can you load up into it? And in his frontline rock, he said that he got it up to, I believe he said 168 pounds in there before there was no more room in it, right? There was no place to put any more weight and he was rocking with it. And, um, I was like, that's awesome. Kudos, man. I never, well, now I know that I can, you can put 160 pounds of steel at 165 pounds of steel in there. Cause the bag itself is three. for for the 21 liter uh the 14 liter is 2 .6 but yeah he had like 165 pounds in there to get to 168 i was like well now we know that's phenomenal yeah okay so we went over all the different types of workouts we could do with the rucksack but let's talk about like how to build those workouts into some sort of a plan or how do we actually you know implement the rucksack into our our strength training um Now, let's just say, you know, someone's already rucking in, you know, two or three days a week and they want to start using the rucksack to start building some muscle outside of, you know, muscle they're already building in their back and their legs.

28:55 How would you build that into their plan? Are there like some workouts you'd start out with and then progress to? I think it's it needs to be user centric. It's like what works for them, not. myself or any one of our affiliates or ambassadors specifically saying, this is what you need to do because any affiliate gym that uses our equipment or uses rocks in general for, you know, part of their training is going to speak to the client and find out what their level of fitness is, what their capability is and what their comfort is, and then tailor a workout to them. Well, and then in that note, So let's say you, Spencer, you've just gotten yourself your very first ruck, and you might say, like, okay, I'm going to start with the rucking plan on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you know, to get acclimated to this.

29:47 I'm going to do a mile and a half. I have 20 pounds in my ruck. So I'm going to walk to such and such location. And I'm going to stop and I'm going to do squats. It's leg day. All right. Now I'm going to stop. I'm going to take it off and I'm going to do some deadlifts. I know where this park bench is. I'm going to do 20 step ups. Okay. As I'm circling back around and come back. Then on Wednesday, it may be like, okay, I'm going to stop at this, you know, field or this area in the neighborhood. And I'm going to take my ruck off and I'm going to do. uh chest press with it so i'm gonna lay on my back and do some chest press i'm gonna maybe maybe you're gonna use some uh some upright rows so you're gonna hold it like this uh out in front of you and you're gonna bring it up to chest height and then bring it down to your waist chest height then your waist uh to work your shoulders and then maybe you're going to do some bent over rows where you're going to bend over your rock, keeping your back straight so you're not curving your back. And you're going to row that weight up into your chest, not to your hips, because you're not getting a good range of motion there.

30:59 You want to actually pull those handles into your chest area, into your pecs. And that's going to give you that tight squeeze across the middle of your back that is going to help develop that muscles. If you're just... pulling up to your belly uh you're missing a whole area of the back muscles that that could be activated with this exercise and that's great that's a great exercise there and then okay so friday i did so wednesday i did shoulders different arrangements of shoulders uh chest and back uh friday i want to do um arms and a little bit of more shoulder stuff all right so then you're, then you're doing your, you're doing your walk. You stop, you do your curls, you stop, you do some tricep extensions, or maybe you do both. Maybe you do curls and tricep extensions, go to the next spot, curls and tricep extensions.

31:52 Then the next stop you do, what you said is you do your farmer's carries, uh, one arm, like you take it off and, uh, For a beginning, let's say you walk out 10 feet and then you walk back 10 feet and then you switch arms, walk out 10, walk back. And then maybe you do that two or three times or two or three reps. Put your weight back on and you keep walking. And now you're exercising your entire body instead of just going for a walk with weight on your back. Yeah. And here you describe that sort of a plan. The one thing that, and you sort of mentioned it, the one thing that I'm thinking about is recovery. If someone's just starting out, definitely. go slow. And like you said, it's, it's user centric. So you know, your body, you know, what you're capable of.

32:34 Don't, don't try to overdo it, but also, you know, your strength training. So you need to push yourself, but I'm just thinking about the recovery. If someone goes too hard, too fast, but in terms of recovery, what would you suggest? They take a day between the two, or like you said, just alternate between muscle groups is probably the play there. Let's say that a little bit of both. So. Yeah. If you're first starting, you're not going to be in a place where you're rucking every day. If this is your first time getting a ruck and you want to get out there and get active and you have lesser weight in there, you're also not going to be doing 165 pounds like John Ross Wyatt. You might be doing a 20 -pound plate. You might be doing a 30 -pound plate, depending on what your body weight is and what your confidence in your strength is and in your endurance. You're going to go out for that walk. you're going to integrate in some of these exercises that you feel would work well for you depending on the days. And then in the beginning, yes, I would highly recommend that you take a day off from rucking. And that doesn't mean that you have to take a complete rest day, but maybe that day you don't wear the ruck and you just go for a very light leisurely walk for a mile. You know, to get that lactic acid moving, right? Because in the beginning, like any training program, you're going to have soreness as your body gets acclimated to it. So going out for a light recovery walk will get that lactic acid moving, especially if you have a desk job and you end up sitting afterwards or sitting the next day, you know, you're going to tighten up.

34:04 So a little bit of stretching, a light walk, and then sleep is so important. All right. As adults in our 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond, it becomes more and more important for you to get a good night's sleep or a good day's sleep if you're a shift worker. But sleep is crucial. And there is no exaggeration in saying the importance of eight hours. However, that may not be possible. Like I might not be able to get, I might be too busy, uh, you know, as a, as a law enforcement officer and running a business, uh, you know, and having two teens that are athletes too busy to get eight hours. Okay. Well, then set your sight on six hours, right? Six hours of continuous sleep where you're not up and down and up and down and up and down because your body. heals and recovers when you sleep. So you may break down the muscles and have some nice pump after you've been doing, you know, 50 rock curls or whatever. And you're like, Oh yeah, I'm looking big. I'm swole, whatever, whatever phrase you want to use. Right. Yeah. But that's going to go down because it's engorged with blood. Your muscles are engorged blood and they're swollen and inflamed due to you breaking them down during the micro tears you're making. The healing and the strength in the building happens while you're sleeping. So the body is, you know, you always hear the saying that, like, you know, the beach

35:36 body is not made in the gym. It's made in the kitchen. That's no difference for rucking, right? How you eat affects 100 % of how you're going to heal and how you're going to sleep to heal, right? Yeah. If you're eating garbage. You know, you're eating a burger fries at 830 at night and then you're going to bed at 930. Well, I can guarantee you that you're not going to get a good night's sleep and you're going to wake up with an upset stomach. Yeah. Yeah. It's my own personal experience. My performance is noticeably different. But if I get, you know, less than eight hours versus more than eight hours, I've recently started running and, you know, I kind of made a common mistake where I'm going. doing too long, too fast sort of situation. And like, I'm just noticing it in my body. I don't, I don't go as quick or I don't move as, as, uh, I can't go as long either. And similar with rucking when I was developing, uh, you know, the, the, the muscles to a ruck in the early stages, like if I wasn't sleeping in between those longer rucks, my performance significantly was, was impacted.

36:45 And yeah, we kind of touched on a lot of common mistakes, you know, going too heavy too soon, maybe doing too much, uh, maybe, um, you know, skipping, uh, some muscle groups. Can you think of any other like, uh, mistakes newcomers to strength training with a ruck might make? Um, well, I would say the absolute biggest one is, is too much, too long, right? Like that, that is the number one thing that is going to, um, that is going to kill your progress and your interest in the activity is going too hard, too fast. Right. And, and not scaling it to your needs. I'd say that's huge. Uh, sleep and nutrition is huge. Um, and then, um, setting, setting aside time is the biggest mistake, right? Like, cause, cause it is so easy for me. I typically do it first thing in the morning when I get up, like I would get up, I will make some coffee. I have a cup of coffee. I will, right now I'm reading the Bible from cover to cover. So I'll read, I have a little devotion time. So I'll read two chapters of the Bible. And then I'm trying to read 10 pages of a book. So this is like this quiet time of settling into a spot. for your day. And then I will get up, get out of the house, put that ruck on, and I'm out the door and I'm walking. And I do that because the day gets busy,

38:18 especially if you have children. And if you're going to save it for like, oh, I'm going to do it at lunch. And then all of a sudden, guess what? You work through lunch. Oh, I'm going to do it at three. And guess what? Now your team needs to go somewhere. Oh, I'm going to do it at five. Well, now it's five o 'clock and I got to start preparing dinner. Right. I got to get dinner ready. Oh, I'm going to do it after dinner. Well, now I've got this belly full of food and I don't, I don't really feel like I'm tired. It's been a long day. You know, I'm kind of stuffed, uh, uh, feeling a little sluggish now. I'd like to just wind down. Well, guess what? Now you've gone through the whole day and you never rocked. Yeah. Yeah, it's the whole thing. You got to make time for it or else it's not going to happen.

38:59 I have, you know, with a family, a full -time job, crazy busy schedule. If I don't put something on the schedule, it's just not going to get done. Yeah, I like that. Well, Drew, this was a very helpful episode, I think, for a lot of people wanting to start strength training with Ruck. If there's one thing that you want the listener to take home with them or the one thing that you wish that they remember from this episode, what would that be? I'd say just get out and do it. Just get out and do it. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, some Amazon weighted vest that you spent $50 on or a Jansport and you threw two dumbbells in there that you wrapped in a towel. Start somewhere. Get out and do it. get under a little bit of weight and get for a walk.

39:50 And as you get acclimated to it and you decide it's for you, then yes, absolutely. You know, you can look at us or look at other companies and decide that like, this is something that I love and I want to, I want to do more of it. And I want to, I want to be more intentional about it. But the key is started. So get out there, start, get under weight, you know, get some fresh air, get out in the sunshine. If you know, don't be afraid if it's sprinkling. Or there's a light rain to throw on a rain jacket and get out there and do it anyways, because you will find that being out in that nature, even if it's raining, when you come in, you will feel so much better and so healthier and, and have a, such a more positive outlook on everything going around you. And it's just that unexplainable factor that being outdoors has with you, even if it's in the rain. I'll be out there in the rain and I'll come in and, you know, pour a cup of coffee, get out of my wet clothes. And, you know, it's a great day. And I just spent 45 minutes in a downpour. Yeah. And be proud of your work after that too. Take it from the guy out there in minus eight weather, rucking in January. Yeah.

41:00 Well, people are driving by looking at me like, um, I just broke out of an insane asylum or something. Yeah. Drew, this is great. If people want to follow you and what Frontline Athletic is producing or your products, where should they go? So I appreciate you asking. Our website is FrontlineAthletic .com, all one word. There's no S on the end. Sometimes people make that mistake. It's specifically athletic to fit what our community is. And so frontlineathletic .com. We are on every social media platform. However, our primary platform is Instagram. And so there you could go at frontline underscore athletic, and you'd be able to find us there also. Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube.

41:52 We have channels everywhere. Just search frontlineathletic and we'll come up. But specifically for Instagram, it's at frontline underscore athletic. Excellent. Well, Drew, I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining me today. Have a good one. Thank you for having me, Spencer. I look forward to chatting with you again later. All right. That wraps up my conversation with Drew Snary from Frontline Athletic. You can check out Frontline Athletic gear on their website, FrontlineAthletic .com. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to find out how to put your rucking training to the test, stay tuned because in next week's episode. which is the third and final part of this Training with the Ruck series, we'll close it out with various endurance challenges you can explore. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Rucker's Edge.