All the exercise gurus on Youtube have made their own quarantine workouts. After reviewing a few I decided to make up my own routine. I start walking, then do 10 push ups, 10 jumping jacks, 10 body-squats and finally 10 lunges. Then I continue walking until my heart rate returns to normal and do it again. This is a pretty good workout for my level of fitness but I decided that I don't want to do it every day. I would like to intersperse it with different workout so I can mix it up. My normal routine is Gym, Pool, rest day in that order.
Somehow I ended up on a webpage discussing the benefits of Rucking. Pretty simple. You get a backpack or "Rucksack" as it's called. Put weight in it. Then go walking. The site claimed that you could get 85-90% of the benefits of jogging but it was much easier on your joints with the correct amount of weight. They recommended starting with either 10% of your body weight or 30 lbs in your ruck. I was sold.
I went to Walmart and picked out a backpack. It was $27 dollars. Normally I would try and find a second hand bag at a thrift store but they are all closed because they are considered non-essential businesses during the shelter in place orders.
Next, I needed to find some weights to put in the bag. At first I considered filling the bag with bottles of water because then I could drink the water as I walked. The problem was that water sloshes all over the place and isn't really all that heavy. I also considered buying some weightlifting disks and putting them in the back but I had already spent $27 on the backpack so I didn't really want to spend a bunch on the weights.
I needed something durable and dense. Like my skull. Then it hit me. I could fill the bag with rocks. There are rocks all over the place that I could have for free. I drove to the dollar store and bought a box of large zip lock bags to put the rocks in. I figured if I filled each bag they would weight close to 10 pounds. As I was doing my deliveries later that night I hit pay dirt. Free rocks.
That night I couldn't wait to try out rucking so even thought it was 11:00 pm I decided to go for a trial walk. Success. I walked about 1.2 miles with the bag and had a great workout. When I returned to my appartment I was bushed. I decided that I would remove one of the bags for future rucks because the sack was too heavy. Today I took another ruck of about 2.5 miles and 3 bags of rocks was the perfect amount. When I get stronger I can continue to add more rocks.
It turned out to be a great workout plan. I would highly recommend taking up rucking until they decide to reopen the gyms. You might even have a backpack already. Then all you need is some weight and somewhere to walk.