In the real world, when we need to lift or haul something challenging, it’s less often because it’s terribly heavy and usually because it’s awkwardly shaped. Stones are bad. A half-filled keg is worse. It is like a stone whose center of gravity sloshes around and wrenches it from whatever tenuous hold you have. It can be an ordeal to shoulder just 50 lbs., much less to move around with it for a few minutes.
And what if you had to carry that 50 lbs. for 24 hours? What would be the ideal shape? That is the question for the upcoming GORUCK Heavy event, where aside from rucksacks and other evil toys, we also need to devise a 50-lb. “team weight” and carry it for the whole 24 hours.
Again, it is about center of gravity (COG). Theoretically, you want to carry weight directly above your COG. On top of your head is the most efficient, or at least across your shoulders.
But for GORUCK, the problem is that everybody will already be shouldering heavy rucksacks and be a little stooped over.
Sometimes you can rig a shoulder pole or yoke that slings the weight below your center of gravity, for stability, so you aren’t top-heavy and precariously balanced. These would be great if we didn’t need to climb hills and rocky defiles. But at GORUCK we will.
The Army field manual suggests carrying part of your load on your waist. It’s efficient because you can make the load hug your center of gravity. Similarly, a “double pack” divides the load between your front and back, so that you can (more or less) share a common COG with your backpack while standing upright. The Army literature recommends these when practical, but that is rare in military settings. (For one thing, you can’t crawl well.) It also won’t quite work for us at GORUCK–everybody will already be carrying an individual ruck–but it does give me ideas…
So behold [drumroll] the Steel Snake!
With quick and dirty sewing lessons from Lauren the Miraculous, I sewed up 50 lbs. of lead weights and steel chain in a 9′ (2.7m) ripstop chain sleeve and took it out for field tests with a rucksack over a 2.1 mile (3.4km) stretch of country road.
With the Snake, you can re-distribute the weight in the most efficient, comfortable way at any given moment–around your waist, over one or both shoulders, on your chest, on your back, even shared between two people–and you can keep shifting it as you go, from tired muscles to fresh muscles. It’s not exactly a hot soak with essential oil, tea lights, and an Enya album. But for lumbering overland with 100 lbs. (rucksack + team weight), this is actually pretty pleasant. And for extra cool points, people will think you’ve been accosted by a boa constrictor in a clown suit.