Rucksteady

Ace the ruck.

12 miles, 35 lb, 3 hours. Rucksteady records the ruck with the phone in your pack, dates a 13-week plan to your test day and paces you on the examiner's clock, pauses included.

  • Download on the App Store

Recording, history and the health export are free. No account.

Pack it, start it. The app does the rest.

Records in the pack

Press start, put the phone away. Recording keeps running with the screen off and while you use other apps. On iPhone, a Live Activity on the Lock Screen shows it is alive.

Counts the load

Calories come from a load-carriage model that counts your pack weight. 35 lb on your back is not a walk, and your numbers say so.

Lands in Health

Every ruck is saved to Apple Health or Health Connect as a hiking workout with its route.

Named standards, stated in numbers.

Each plan names the test, the numbers and the public source, so you can check them yourself. Three of the 28 named standards in Premium.

  • EIB 12-mile ruck

    Distance
    12 mi
    Load
    35 lb
    Cut-off
    3:00

    Source: USAIS Pam 350-6

  • Leistungsmarsch (Gold)

    Distance (7.5 mi)
    12 km
    Load (33 lb)
    15 kg
    Cut-off
    2:00

    Source: bundeswehr.de, Leistungsabzeichen

  • KSK Eignungsmarsch

    Distance (12.4 mi)
    20 km
    Load (44 lb)
    20 kg
    Cut-off
    3:30

    Source: bundeswehr.de, KSK

Coming next: the Norwegian Foot March and the Légion étrangère march.

Then the civilian marches, in Premium like every other named standard:

  • Nijmegen 4Daagse4 days, 30 to 50 km a day. Military: 4 × 40 km with 10 kg.
  • Megamarsch50 km in 12 h, 100 km in 24 h.
  • Bataan Memorial Death March26.2 mi. Heavy division with 35 lb.

Sources: 4daagse.nl, megamarsch.de, bataanmarch.com

13 weeks, one step at a time.

The plan to the 12-mile ruck. Each week the distance or the load rises, never both. Weeks 4 and 8 are easier. Week 11 is the rehearsal: 11 miles, one step below the standard load. Week 12 tapers with 35 lb in the pack. Week 13 is the test.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  • 27 lb
  • 29 lb
  • 31 lb
  • 33 lb
  • 35 lb

Week 13: 12 mi with 35 lb in 3:00. Test day.

  • Longest ruck of the week, 5 to 12 mi
  • Easier week and taper
  • Test: 12 mi, 35 lb, 3:00
A retest every two weeks moves the plan with you: continue, repeat, skip ahead or step back. Enter your test date and the plan tells you whether the weeks you have are enough.

Free to record. Premium to plan.

  • Free

    Forever, no account

    • Recording with the screen off
    • Calories that count the load
    • Apple Health and Health Connect export
    • History with every route
    • Badges, the monthly challenge and share cards
    • The complete 5 km plan, adaptive, with retests

  • Premium

    Monthly or yearly subscription, 7 days free on the yearly plan

    • Every plan: 10 and 20 km with your own load and goal pace
    • All 28 named standards from 11 countries, with their published numbers and source
    • The live pacer: a ghost walker at your goal pace, ahead or behind at a glance, and the cut-off clock on test day

    Renews automatically. The store shows the price before you buy.

Prices are shown in your currency in the App Store before you buy. The yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial; nothing is charged before it ends. Premium renews unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends; manage it in your account settings.

Silhouette of a hiker with a pack walking up a hill against an orange dusk sky

Out before dawn, phone in the pack.

Rucksteady keeps recording with the screen off and the phone buried under 35 lb. If your phone stops the app anyway, the ruck is still there when you reopen it, and the gap is marked instead of guessed.

  • Silhouette of a man with a loaded pack, seen from behind, on a grassy rise in front of a hill at dusk
  • A soldier with a pack walks away down a dusty track at first light
  • A rucker with a large pack and a rolled mat walks a foggy trail, seen from behind
  • Silhouette of a person with a backpack standing on a ridge in front of the low sun
  • Dark silhouette of a person in a cap on a hillside at dusk, a light beam through the mist behind them
  • A hiker with a backpack follows a path along a foggy grass slope
  • Soldiers in camouflage with heavy packs and rifles march along a road
  • A lone figure crosses a grassy hill in dense fog, trees fading behind
  • Silhouetted hikers climb a mountain ridge under a cloudy sky

Photos: Valna Studio, Maël Balland, elroy, Joachim Lesne, Taiwangun, Taeyoon Moon, Navy Medicine, Gabriel Cirelli, Rafi Ahamed, Bernd Dittrich, on Unsplash.

Yours, without an account.

No login, no cloud. Your routes and rucks stay on your phone, not on our servers.

  • Download on the App Store