The Absolute Best Exercise for Founders

So this last weekend was my partner Jamie’s birthday, and we went up to Duluth on the north shore, lake Superior, up here in Minnesota, and it’s gorgeous this time of year. Beautiful hiking trails, absolutely wonderful weather. And while we were up there, I got her hooked on what is my favorite exercise, my favorite workout, and it’s an exercise that I recommend every entrepreneur takes up in their own life, and they start deploying this exercise at least three times every week. If you do this exercise three times every week, it will transform your life. It will transform your energy levels, will make you feel better. It will do wonders for your cardiovascular system. And the beauty of this is that it’s not terribly difficult. It’s a little exercise called rucking.

Now, let me tell you about how I came to understand or learn more about rucking. It’s from a book Peter Attia wrote called Outlive. And I read this last year, and in there, he lays out the. The four horsemen of the apocalypse. That is, what are the four things that lead to the highest prevalence of death? So he has, like, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline. Right? And he’s saying, okay, how do we. How do we eliminate this or reduce the risk of these four horsemen, which account for 80% of deaths. Right.

And what he identified was that if you really do these four things, if you fix. If you fixate on these four metrics, you will not just increase your lifespan, but your health span. That is the quality of life that you can experience over the span of your years, because it’s not good enough just to live to 92 years old. You want to be a thriving 92 year old. Right. That’s the real goal. That’s what we really want for ourselves, is to live a thriving lifestyle. And so what he identified was one vo two max is closely identified with longevity.

So we want to be increasing our vo two max. We want to be increasing our strengthen, because strength is one of the best indicators of long term quality of life. One of the first things that goes as we get older is our strength. And the thing that leads to so many deaths in later years is injuries related to falling. And the reason that you fall is because you don’t have the strength to catch yourself in the fall. And so the more strength that you build up now, the more reservoirs that you have, as you will inevitably lose that strength as each decade goes by. So you kind of want to build that reservoir now. So we have our vo two max, we have our strengthen.

He talks about balance and stability again. Falling is a big thing. Right? We need to be stable. We need to be flexible because our joints, our bone, our tendons, our muscles, they start to get kind of decrepit y and rigid. And so the fourth thing that they identified, what was it? It was. Now I’m blanking on it. So we have our strength, vo two max stability. I am blanking on the fourth thing.
Doesn’t really matter. The exercise that I want to share with you, though, helps you. Oh, it’s your overall cardiovascular capacity. And the exercise I’m going to share with you is the thing that helps you build out that cardiovascular base, that, like resting heart rate, your hrv, which is your heart rate variability. So the exercise is called rucking. And rucking is simply walking with really heavy weights on. It. Doesn’t have to be really heavy weights, but, like, heavy enough.
And it’s think about, like, military army dudes walking around with their backpacks on. Right. Just. It’s pretty much that. Just going for a hike, getting your heart rate up into what’s called zone two. So zone two is at that rate where you’re working hard, you’re breathing hard, you can still hold a conversation, but they can tell that you’re working hard and you’re sweating, but, like, it’s not so difficult that you’re getting exhausted, you’re not getting muscular fatigue or anything like that. You’re staying in that zone where your heart rate’s elevated, you get a really good sweat, and you just stay in that for 60 to 90 minutes. You do that three to four times a week.
So your goal is to stay three to 4 hours every week. Zone two. And we. So I took jamie went up to duluth. We got her a wrecking bag. Well, she’s had this for a while. We’ve done wrecking before, but for whatever reason, this time it finally, like, clicked in her mind is like, this is awesome. And we just.
Every day would go for a 1 hour hike. We’d keep our heart rates right in that 120 to 130 range with the weights. I wear a bag from a company called Goruck, and that has a 30 pound plate in it. And then she had one that has 20 pounds in it. And you just get the heart rate up and you just feel. You just go chugging and you feel great because it’s low impact. You’re not going to feel it on your joints, you’re not going to feel it on your muscles the next day. You’re going to recover nice and quickly.

You’re trying to spend as long as possible with your heart rate in that elevated state. Such, you’re getting the capillaries, what do they call it? The capillarization effect. So blood flowing through your capillaries, through your vessels, expanding it, engorging it, causing more dense capillaries to be produced within your dense muscle groups. And all of this just helps build out your cardiovascular base, your aerobic base, which as a consequence, will raise the anaerobic peak that you can achieve, which is your vo two max. So rucking is like my favorite way to get a workout. It feels so damn good. And I would recommend you go grab a bag from go ruck you. Go throw some weights in there.

If you don’t even want to invest in that, just get a backpack and throw something in there. Throw some water bottles in there, right? And just go for 60 to 90 minutes, walking briskly, trying to get your heart rate up to that point where like, you can hold a conversation. You’re not trying to get like, lactic acid built up, but you are trying to get tired, you’re trying to be working hard, right? And you do that, you’re going to feel this boost of energy, you’re going to feel this boost of clarity. You’re going to feel this boost of flexibility too. Honestly, like, my joints just feel really good at every time I go rucking. So I highly recommend this best exercise I can recommend for entrepreneurs. One is like, we know the studies show if you can get an average of 6000 steps per day that you have a lower prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, all those, those things, right? So just getting out and getting 6000 steps on its own, massive benefits, doing that with weight, getting your heart rate up even better. So take that exercise, run with it, and I’ll catch you guys in the next episode.

Until then, stay happy. Focus, my friends.