Move over, Peloton. Rucking is the newest fitness craze in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Memon is one of the many people in the tech industry who have become avid fans of rucking, a phenomenon that in recent years has become popular among fitness enthusiasts. The premise is simple: Ruckers fill a backpack with weights to amp up exercises like walks and hikes. For people with limited time to work out, rucking offers a one-two punch of cardio and strength training that can be lower impact than a run or a HIIT workout.

In Silicon Valley, specifically, rucking is resonating with entrepreneurs who feel strongly about optimizing every part of their lives, whether the startups and venture-capital firms that they run or the types of workouts that they do. 

Memon, who cofounded the artificial-intelligence healthcare startup Eureka Health, credits rucking with conditioning his body to keep up with his high-energy pup. It’s also become an important part of his mental-health routine and social world as he navigates being a founder. The revered startup-accelerator program Y Combinator, which Memon was a member of in 2010, even has a group of alumni who meet up to ruck, he said.

“I’ll decide on a route ad hoc, and I walk as quickly as I can without headphones or other people with me,” he told Insider in an interview. “It’s an opportunity to recharge, be alone, and be quiet a little bit. It’s had a great impact on my mental health.”

Rucking is making waves in Silicon Valley

“Rucking” in this context takes its name from the rucksack, an alternative word for backpack that’s particularly common among hikers and the military. While rucking is now trendy within tech circles, among fitness influencers, and on TikTok, the act of carrying around heavy things — and practicing doing so — has been around for thousands of years. The rucksack was patented by Henry Merriam in 1878 for US Army soldiers to better distribute weight and increase mobility — though this first version was uncomfortable and quickly discarded, according to a history of the backpack published by REI.

To this day, a staple of US military training is the dreaded “ruck march,” in which recruits must complete hourslong marches in full gear with rucksacks weighing about 45 pounds.

It’s unclear how the tradition, which is seen as a core — albeit hated — military skill, made its way to civilians. But to date, there are more than 20 million videos about rucking on TikTok, and name-brand equipment for the exercise can cost $200 for a weighted vest or $255 for a backpack — plates not included.

Wilson Kriegel is no stranger to strenuous workouts: The serial entrepreneur is a former college track athlete who raced 10Ks and half-marathons before falling in love with extreme sports such as mountaineering and speed climbing.

There’s this consistency of building and solving for things across a variety of aspects throughout your life, whether it’s startups or relationships or extreme sports. Wilson Kriegel

But to complete big athletic feats — a highlight has been speed-summiting Denali, North America’s highest peak, in four days (depending on the route, climbers can usually expect to summit Denali in 15-18 days, according to the National Parks Service) — Kriegel has turned to rucking as a way to effectively train while living in a New York City apartment.

“Denali is 22,000 feet of elevation, and you have to carry 80 to 100 pounds across a glacier,” he said. “To train for that and get comfortable with the discomfort, there’s a lot of stair training and running with weights.”

Kriegel is the cofounder and CEO of Buildstock, a B2B marketplace for construction materials. He also cofounded Pitch and Run, a community that hosts weekly runs for people in tech on New York’s West Side Highway. His weighted pack is a staple at the meetups.

For Kriegel, committing to lofty fitness goals and making a routine out of uncomfortable training is directly related to his approach to building a startup.

“All of the skills that you develop doing fitness are replicable to what you develop working on startups because they’re all about how you fine-tune a craft and develop the mind,” he said. “There’s this consistency of building and solving for things across a variety of aspects throughout your life, whether it’s startups or relationships or extreme sports.”

Memon, the Eureka Health cofounder, said he started rucking about three years ago after noticing that his dog, Joy, had boundless energy on walks. He wanted to build up his fitness to keep up with her, so he grabbed a backpack and filled it up with random objects to make it heavier.

“I was reasonably active and went to the gym to lift, but I didn’t do too much from a cardio perspective,” he said. When he started adding weights, his walks and hikes became even more fun. As Memon continued to evolve his rucking practice, he noticed friends and peers in the tech community come out of the woodwork as rucking fans themselves.

Today, Memon uses a 20-liter backpack from GORUCK with a 35-pound plate and water bottles thrown in for a bit of extra weight.

“It feels like kind of the sweet spot where you can still do everything that you normally do while walking around, and it doesn’t feel too bad on my joints,” he said.

Compared with other forms of cardio exercise, rucking can be an effective way to gain fitness, says Wendy Winn, a physical therapist and orthopedic clinical specialist at Custom Performance, a running-focused physical therapy practice in New York. She told Insider she’d seen an uptick in people interested in adding rucking and weight training to their outdoor activities like trail running and hiking.

“Increasing weight you are carrying increases the demand on your cardiovascular system and therefore has a cardiovascular benefit for exercise,” she said. “The muscular demand is also greater all the way from your hips to your ankles than regular walking, so you will gain strength in your legs over time.”

But Winn also cautioned that rucking carries some risks and that starting with lighter weights and wearing shock-absorbing shoes can help ruckers lessen their chance of injury.

“Even though subjects in studies had high leg stress, they did not report feeling fatigued,” she said. “This means the ruckers didn’t feel tired but were prone to injuries. The major risks in all studies on rucking is overuse injuries of the legs and stress fractures.”

Some founders and VCs are rucking on their own terms

Other startups and VCs are bringing weighted packs into their everyday routines to help them optimize both their fitness as well as their workloads.

Take Charlie Hale, a cofounder of the digital fitness platform Shred who lives in Los Angeles. He doesn’t ruck outside but wears a weighted vest purchased from Amazon while completing his routine in the gym, which includes time on the StairMaster as well as lifting traditional weights.

I’m doing the same exercises, but with 25 pounds more weight. That’s how I’m getting the most return on investment on the time I spend working out. Charlie Hale

“I’m always looking to get a little more out of the time I’m working out and to see how I can progress in 45 minutes and what I can do to continually challenge myself,” he said. “I’m doing the same exercises, but with 25 pounds more weight. That’s how I’m getting the most return on investment on the time I spend working out.”

For Amanda Bradford, the founder of the dating startup The League, which Match Group acquired last year, rucking has been the perfect way to amp up the intensity of group meetings and one-on-ones, which she usually takes during long walks in her Austin, Texas, neighborhood or around Lady Bird Lake. She’s used both weighted vests and weighted belts but also enjoys weighted arm and ankle bands.

“I don’t like running, but to increase the hit rate and intensity of my walks and hikes, I’ll add weights,” she said. “I’m a really big proponent of rucking.”

Bradford added that she’d take as many calls as she could while rucking and that forgoing video calls had helped her improve communication with her teams.

“I’ve learned if you do something over the phone, people will share more when they’re not looking at Zoom screens, which can feel overwhelming,” she said.

On the other hand, Zamir Shukho, a San Francisco venture capitalist, can’t stand cardio and begrudgingly purchased a bike last year to help him stay more motivated about exercising. The general partner at Vibranium.VC says he has friends who are big into rucking but has never been interested in trying it himself, even though an important member of his family regularly wears a weighted vest while exercising: his American Staffordshire terrier, Lord Lincoln, who regularly competes in dog shows.

“My dog looks amazing, but I wanted to develop his chest muscles,” he said. “Almost every day, I take the dog out for a walk and he wears his vest and looks like a military dog. He’s getting buff. When I go hiking, my dog is the one with a heavy backpack.”