Running with a Heavy Pack

[Ian]

Anyone do this apart from Chris and I?

How do you feel it benefits your MA training?

Also, does anyone know what the maximum loading capacity is of a healthy, aligned knee?

[Jeice]

Anyone do this apart from Chris and I?

How do you feel it benefits your MA training?

Also, does anyone know what the maximum loading capacity is of a healthy, aligned knee?

Load isn't the issue unless you're worried about ligament and tendon rupture. Impact is the primary concern for long term injury in knees... And distance running with a weighted backpack is something I would consider potentially "Ridiculously High Impact."

[Ian]

Jeice, would you mind elaborating? And what is your background/experience? Just so I can understand where you're coming from as my experience is the exact opposite. Cheers

[Muad'dib]

I run carrying my children. I am following the model of the Ancient Greek who carried the baby calf every day until it turned into a bull. It seems to be working so far, but the kids are a bit wiggly these days.

Seriously though, I have run with weight, but only gradually. Anything that places a sudden strain on your joints/tendons is not so good, at least in my book.

[Chris McKinley]

Don't know what's being called a heavy pack, but what I'd call a heavy pack precludes running for anything but short distances. Marching/hiking's a different story. Cumulative impact is the primary culprit in injury, assuming you're not stepping so your knee overtakes your toes, in which case sheer force strain on the knee joint also comes into play.

[Jeice]

Jeice, would you mind elaborating? And what is your background/experience? Just so I can understand where you're coming from as my experience is the exact opposite. Cheers

19 years of martial arts, national and varsity competition in rowing, arthroscopic knee surgery on my medial meniscus, a degree in biological science with focus on human kinetics and clinical biomechanics.

[Chris McKinley]

Also, a relevant side point....unless you've got to be somewhere in a big damned hurry, there's never any reason to go running with a heavy pack. It accomplishes very little in terms of productive hypertrophy, and what it can yield in terms of endurance is more than mitigated by a) the fact that you can't do it long enough to become an aerobic activity, and b) it brings with it a host of biomechanical injury possibilities.

All that being demonstrable and documented, what then is the supposed point of running with a heavy pack? What exact results are you attempting to achieve by doing it?

[middleway]

I carry between 35 - 50kg's. 50 is the upper limit for me at the moment, which is a bit tough on the old knees going downhill, but isnt causing any real problems.

All that being demonstrable and documented, what then is the supposed point of running with a heavy pack? What exact results are you attempting to achieve by doing it?

Mine is specifically for military training, where it is a requirement. Our military is famous for its ability to cover large distances with heavy loads by foot in a short amount of time.

Also having trained a variation of different things related to H&F recently ... i would say that Tabbing or Yomping with a heavy pack over hills and peaks is by far the most demanding. It has dramatically changed the strength in my legs and my ability to run decent distances.

regards
Chris

[Ian]

I run carrying my children. I am following the model of the Ancient Greek who carried the baby calf every day until it turned into a bull. It seems to be working so far, but the kids are a bit wiggly these days.

Good idea!

Seriously though, I have run with weight, but only gradually. Anything that places a sudden strain on your joints/tendons is not so good, at least in my book.

Yeah you have to be careful. I do some Egoscue stuff every day to make sure my alignment's ok, and a lot of slow and static work (including zz) to make sure I have enough stability, stength and endurance. Oh and a lot of work on one leg.

Don't know what's being called a heavy pack, but what I'd call a heavy pack precludes running for anything but short distances. Marching/hiking's a different story. Cumulative impact is the primary culprit in injury, assuming you're not stepping so your knee overtakes your toes, in which case sheer force strain on the knee joint also comes into play.

Heavy as in what Chris said. I'm only at max 30kg at the moment.

The distance (for me) is whatever you can cover in a few hours, minimum 20km.

The strategy is to jog on the flats, downhills and shallow uphills, and walk on the steep uphills.

All these numbers are approximate but you get the idea.

19 years of martial arts, national and varsity competition in rowing, arthroscopic knee surgery on my medial meniscus, a degree in biological science with focus on human kinetics and clinical biomechanics.

Ok thanks.

Would you care to say more from a human kinetics / clinical biomechanics perspective?

I'm very careful about how I feel before during and after a workout. I haven't experienced any knee pain yet (unlike with my tkd and chen tjq workouts a few years back).

Also, a relevant side point....unless you've got to be somewhere in a big damned hurry, there's never any reason to go running with a heavy pack. It accomplishes very little in terms of productive hypertrophy

Not to be provocative, but... source?

and what it can yield in terms of endurance is more than mitigated by a) the fact that you can't do it long enough to become an aerobic activity

I don't think that's entirely true, going on personal experience.

and b) it brings with it a host of biomechanical injury possibilities.

I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts on this.

All that being demonstrable and documented, what then is the supposed point of running with a heavy pack? What exact results are you attempting to achieve by doing it?

-It helps me understand physical and mental relaxation. You can't do this if you're not relaxed.
-It's a great test of structure. Any postural deficiencies are immediately glaringly obvious, and you can then go about fixing them.
-It helps me understand breathing under stressful situations.
-Mental toughness, perseverance, all that stuff.
-It helps me understand body unification, especially forward collapsing e.g. putting your body into strikes.
-It's fun.
-In terms of weight training, I'd much rather be able to carry someone or something over a distance than do a military press, squat, row or whatever.
etc.


I'd still be interested to learn about the maximum load-bearing capacity or impact-taking capacity (apologies for butchering the terms here) of a healthy, aligned knee.

[Andy_S]

Tabbing with a belt kit, pack, rifle and tin pot is generally done at fast walk rather than run.

Running with belt kit and/or pack you need to keep the feet very close to the ground, take reasonably short steps and let the weight carry you forward - you wont be bounding along like a marathon runner. The old WWII commando pace was run 100 yards, jog 100 yards, walk 100 yards, but you would be lucky to keep that up for long, especially in hilly terrain.

Make sure you have an internal frame rucksack that molds to your back and belts at the waist; keep it tight, you don't want it banging around. Berghaus was the most popular military sack back in my day. (Not to be confused with the 1950s Bergen rucksacks which have become a bywork for rucksack in the military, but which are today, very, very dated)

As for health...lot's of old soldiers have bad feet, bad knees, and bad backs.

[Ian]

Running with belt kit and/or pack you need to keep the feet very close to the ground, take reasonably short steps and let the weight carry you forward - you wont be bounding along like a marathon runner.

Make sure you have an internal frame rucksack that molds to your back and belts at the waist; keep it tight, you don't want it banging around.

QFT

As for health...lot's of old soldiers have bad feet, bad knees, and bad backs.

May have something to do with the fact that there's no time for fine-tuning (Feldenkrais, Alexander, Egoscue, IMA...) and rest? Only time for crude exercises e.g. pushups and situps (nothing wrong with those, of course... they just don't do anything to fix postural deficiencies).

Or that you're expected to work through injuries?

FWIW I've never been in the military so that's just speculation.

[wiesiek]

in my tournament days
i did "go as fast as u can" with partner on my back ,
so
pack was quite havy
but distance wasn`t very long
100-200 yards
however
hill was pretty steep
It was part of conditioning 1,5 h. "in nature" workout

[Brady]

I like running with a pack, do it every summer, but I don't go higher than 40 lbs in mine. I warm up to it with a couple days of brisk walking to get sunk in structure, then start jogging, then running. I agree its a great test of structure. Afterwards my knees feel better not worse, and I have a history of some issues there.

[RobP2]

I run with a heavy pack - these two bad boys. Luckily I'm the alpha male. Unluckily they can run a lot faster and further than I can - particularly if a grouse goes up

[Chris McKinley]

Ian,

RE: "Not to be provocative, but... source?". To start with, that's not how science works. If you are making a claim that running with a heavy pack produces significant hypertrophy, it's not my responsibility to show evidence that you are wrong, it is yours to show you are right. However, there are so many studies showing that static intensity exercise does not produce significant hypertrophy that you can simply swing a cat at one at an online medical research library. I would suggest you acquaint yourself with the physiology of resistance exercise. Beside the aforementioned body of research, there are numerous books for the layperson available in the exercise section of bookstores everywhere.

RE: "I don't think that's entirely true, going on personal experience.". Personal experience aside, it takes approximately 20 minutes on average for a person's physiology to switch to primarily aerobic function for a given activity. That means that for the first 20 minutes, the energy requirements of the activity are provided from primarily anaerobic sources. Running (not marching/hiking) with a heavy pack (as I was defining it for reference, i.e., roughly 120-150 lbs.) simply isn't going to be possible for all but the most athletically elite for long enough periods of time to exhaust aerobic capacity and significantly stimulate further aerobic adaptation (i.e., minimum of 45 to 60 minutes on average). Now, it's possible you and I are defining the terms "running" and "heavy pack" somewhat differently, such that my point may not be particularly relevant to what you are actually practicing.

RE: "I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts on this.". It's such a well-documented phenomenon that I don't have any new insight on the issue that isn't already de rigeur. Jeice and Andy pretty much summed it up. What hasn't been mentioned is that the knee is not a weight-bearing joint, but a weight-transference joint. It's not meant to take and hold particularly large loads statically; it's meant to transfer the weight across the system. Repeated momentary impact with heavy weights forces the knee to act for that moment as a weight-bearing joint, something it is not adapted for, and repetitive impact trauma to the soft tissues of the knee is not only possible, it is likely.

A very simple example: joggers are far more likely to accrue repetitive impact trauma to the knee and the entire lower leg than runners. In this case, the intensity of the exercise has nothing to do with it. Runners move with a much smoother gait, allowing their weight to be transferred smoothly from stride to stride without as much impact.

RE: "-It helps me understand physical and mental relaxation. You can't do this if you're not relaxed.". An entirely subjective answer. There are, of course, many other ways to achieve either mental or physical relaxation that are at least the equivalent of this activity.

RE: "-It's a great test of structure. Any postural deficiencies are immediately glaringly obvious, and you can then go about fixing them.". Not really. 1) The heavier the pack, the more your structure is altered to support it such that it does not make a particularly accurate guage of unburdened structure. 2) All postural deficiencies are not immediately obvious. Spinal abnormalities, for instance, can exist without overt pain even under load, such that accumulating damage to the spine can go unnoticed until the damage is significant. Similarly, gait problems can produce accumulated repetitive impact trauma over time that aren't apparent until the damage is significant.

RE: "-It helps me understand breathing under stressful situations.", and "-Mental toughness, perseverance, all that stuff." Both relatively subjective answers. The former might certainly be true, but both can be achieved in myriad other ways that don't have the same attendant risks.

RE: "-It helps me understand body unification, especially forward collapsing e.g. putting your body into strikes.". For this purpose, it is a particularly poor practice. It will teach your body to grossly miscallibrate the body momentum you can bring to bear in a given strike in a real unencumbered situation, and the mass of the pack can be sufficient such that recovery from committed movement and adaptation to maneuverability requirements becomes significantly hampered. You're much better off learning to do this correctly without the pack since it will yield much more accurate, and more realistic, results that won't throw off your timing so dramatically.

RE: "-It's fun.". Can't argue with that, but again, it's a subjective answer.

RE: "-In terms of weight training, I'd much rather be able to carry someone or something over a distance than do a military press, squat, row or whatever.". Completely inaccurate, and thus functionally invalid, comparison. Put simply, they are apple and oranges....and further, they are not mutually exclusive. Further still, there are situations where the skills called for cannot be met by both skill sets interchangeably. Being able to carry someone to safety is great, especially if you think you may need such ability by profession or such, but it will do you little good if the task at hand calls for being able to pry open a damaged car door, lift an obstruction off of an injured person, or even having the strength to strike with significant power or restrain someone to de-escalate a situation. Those situations won't be affected much by how far you can march.