This ruck workout program is for elementary school-aged students. It is written as a curriculum for any teacher or parent/guardian/coach to use in their own context. 24 lessons (12 per age group) are fully formed with warm-up, workout, and cool-down, but you are free to adapt the content however you’d like to fit your own context. The workouts are split into 8 years old and under, and 8 years old and over.

The Elementary School Ruck Training Program is meant to build familiarity with functional movements in a fun and engaging way. The workouts are designed to be led by an adult; children should be monitored at all times. It is recommended that the focus of the program is on moving the body and having fun doing it.

Children should remain unloaded until they have good foundations of perfect movement. Remember that children cannot build muscle mass dramatically before puberty (without the appropriate levels of testosterone and estrogen present), but they can build neuromuscular connections.
Doing fitness consistently and practicing great movement patterns build synaptic connections that are the foundation for weighted movement in the future (when a child reaches puberty). Children encode information better with repetition, so you will see yoga poses, movements, and breathing practices repeated throughout the program.
Allow children the space to have fun with this program, teach them how to execute the perfect range of motion for each movement, and enjoy spending time with them working out.

Equipment Needed

Rucksack or backpack (unweighted or with very little weight; less than 10 lbs/5 kg); Optional: very light sandbag or medicine ball (4 - 10 lbs or 2 - 5 kg)

Program Notes

24 lessons are offered: 12 for 8 and OVER and 12 for 8 and UNDER. Choose to follow the program that is developmentally appropriate for your child/group of children.

If more than one workout is scheduled in a week, it is recommended that children take at least one day of rest in between each workout.

Workouts are designed to be done as written; energy starts off low with yoga poses, picks up with the “standard warm-up” and movement demos, then rises high during the workout, and finishes at a low again with the breathing exercises.

Movement corrections and cues are not necessary when children are unweighted; let them move however they’d like when they are working out. However, if children are advanced and old enough to use weight, place an emphasis on perfect movement before adding load. When they are moving with weight, make sure they are moving correctly.

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