Training

I've been doing a variety of exercises, sort of a combination of specific training for the GORUCK as well as general fitness and strength building exercises. I'm trying to run with my pack at least 3 days a week, I'm up to right around 3 miles now (at about a 10/10:30 pace). If I'm at work, I'll actually wear an SCBA (somewhere in the vicinity of 25lbs) instead of my brick pack, and do my running on the treadmill. I've also started doing sprint intervals, generally without any weight, but I'll probably start adding that in just because.

As far as the other stuff, I've been doing a lot of focus on my legs. I'll do lunges with my pack on, as well as while carrying a 20-ish pound weight in front. Right now I can usually make it through about 25 each leg before I'm ready to fall over. I'm also filtering in bear crawls and burpees while wearing the pack. In addition to that, I've started using a tractor tire we have at the station for a bunch of exercises. The tire weighs something like 425 pounds, so I'll do dead lifts and flip it as many times as I can; I'll do "ninja jumps" (standing jump onto the tire, landing as lightly as possible on the balls of my feet, hold for a second, then jump back down); and my favorite, basically beating the shit out of it with a sledgehammer. I'm guessing you don't have access to something like that where you are, but check out "tractor tire workout" on YouTube to get a feel for what I'm talking about.

I'm throwing some general P90x-type stuff in there as well, for legs and abs, as well as general fitness. I don't really have a strict workout by any means, but the biggest things I'm trying to do is wear a weighted pack as much as possible, even just when walking around, and hammering on my legs. I think these things are going to come down to physical and mental endurance more than anything else, but I'm certainly not going to sit idly by and wait for the day to come!