Build Your First Ruck Training Plan
Holidays bring family, food, chaos, and enough calories to fuel a squad for a week. That’s part of the holiday charm. But the morning after? That’s when reality hits. You wake up knowing you ate enough stuffing, candy, and baked goods to fill a ruck, and the sluggishness settles in.
This is exactly why ruck training is the perfect post-Holidays reset. Rucking burns calories fast, engages your whole body, clears your head, and gets you back on track without needing a gym or complicated equipment. If you want a simple, highly effective way to work off Holidays and kickstart your winter training, this is where to begin.
This guide walks you step-by-step through building your first ruck training plan—easy enough for beginners, challenging enough for seasoned ruckers, and perfectly timed for burning off the feast.
Start With Your Baseline
Your baseline is nothing more than a light, easy ruck. 1 mile. No stress. No time goals. Just movement after a big holiday meal.
Rucking after the Holidays actually helps digestion, reduces inflammation, restores circulation, and boosts metabolism. That alone makes it the perfect Day-After protocol.
Use this session as a gauge for how your body responds under a little load after a day of eating and relaxing. This will guide the rest of your training plan.
Choose a Starting Weight You Can Sustain
After a Holiday isn’t the day to throw on fifty pounds and sprint. A sustainable starting weight is usually between ten and twenty pounds. Light enough to move well, heavy enough to elevate calorie burn.
This is also where the Mothman Pack naturally fits the mission. It’s designed as a compact 24–48-hour tactical pack, Berry-compliant, American-made, and extremely comfortable under small-to-medium loads. Its internal structure distributes weight evenly, making it ideal for early training or post-holiday rucks when your joints aren’t ready for heavy stress.
Pick a Realistic First Week
Your first training week should be simple. Aim for two or three short rucks, one or two miles each. Focus on posture, breathing, and consistency.
This week isn’t about speed or max effort. It’s about waking up your metabolism, getting your legs moving again, and establishing consistency during the chaotic holiday season.
A single mile with light weight burns more Holidays calories than most people realize because rucking engages far more muscles than walking.
Adjust Only One Training Variable per Week
The One-Variable Rule protects your joints, connective tissue, and long-term progress: increase only one variable at a time.
If you increase the distance, keep the weight the same.
If you increase weight, keep pace the same.
If you increase pace, keep the terrain flat.
Holidays are a terrible time to overstress your body. You’re already inflamed. You’re already digesting. Stacking stress is how injuries happen. One variable per week keeps you improving safely.
Build Momentum Through Micro-Gains
Ruck training progress happens through small, controlled increases. Add a quarter mile. Add a few extra minutes. Add one or two pounds.
Every improvement counts. One pound. One minute. One-tenth of a mile. These small gains compound into real, noticeable progress—especially when you’re burning off a holiday feast.
THE HOLIDAYS CHALLENGE: PROVE IT TO YOURSELF
If you’re serious about burning off the extra Holiday calories and building real physical readiness, here’s your challenge:
Complete three rucks between Christmas Eve and New Year's.
Keep them simple. Keep them controlled. Choose one variable to increase and follow the One-Variable Rule.
If you’re a beginner, increase the distance slightly.
If you’re more experienced, increase weight or pace—just not both.
You know you did it right if your posture holds during the final mile, your pace stays fairly steady, and you feel stronger at the finish than you did at the start.
When you’re done, take a picture of your ruck session and tag @squatchsurvivalgear on Instagram. We’ll share your hard work with the entire Squatch community. Challenges accepted and completed deserve to be seen.
We build the most comfortable and functional American-made packs on the market for one reason: real training demands real gear. You put in the work under load—we build the gear that holds up when it counts. Burn the calories. Build the discipline. Execute the plan.