You and your ruck buddy crush the same 3-mile route with identical 30-pound packs. Your fitness app...
RuckIt vs Apple Fitness: Which App for Rucking?
If you're using Apple Fitness to track rucking, you're getting the wrong numbers. We know because that's exactly why we built RuckIt.
The Problem: Apple Fitness Treats Rucking Like Walking
Apple Fitness calculates calories as if you're taking a casual stroll, completely ignoring the pack on your back. Carry 30 lbs for 2 miles? Same calorie count as walking empty handed. This isn't a minor rounding error. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what rucking costs your body.
We've documented how fitness apps systematically undercount ruck calories in our analysis "Your Fitness App Is Lying About Rucking Calories Burned". The gap can be 200 to 400 calories per session, which means your training load, recovery needs, and nutrition targets are all wrong.
Why RuckIt Exists: Personalized Load Aware Math
RuckIt doesn't just track your pack weight. It personalizes calorie burn to your body using your resting metabolic rate, age, and biological sex. When you log 30 lbs, RuckIt shows both the absolute weight and the proportion (12% body weight in this example). This matters because carrying 30 lbs affects a 150 lb person very differently than a 250 lb person.
Your 2.03 mile ruck burns 349 calories, calculated using military load carriage research validated in metabolic studies, not generic walking formulas. RuckIt also protects your VO2Max estimate by not reporting it during rucking, since carrying weight fundamentally changes the cardiovascular demand in ways that would skew your aerobic fitness baseline.
You'll see metrics Apple Fitness can't provide: average METS adjusted for load, pace over time charts showing fatigue under weight, elevation profiles, and heart rate trends. All contextualized by the specific load you carried relative to your body.
The Honest Comparison
| What Actually Matters | RuckIt | Apple Fitness |
|---|---|---|
| Tracks pack weight (lbs and % body weight) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Personalized calorie burn (RMR, age, sex) | ✅ Yes | ❌ Generic |
| Load aware metabolic calculation | ✅ Research based | ❌ Walking formula |
| Protects VO2Max accuracy | ✅ Yes | ❌ Skewed data |
| Load specific analytics | ✅ Full detail | ❌ Generic stats |
| Price | $35.99/year | $9.99/month |
Choose Based on Your Standard
Use Apple Fitness if approximate numbers are fine and you ruck casually.
Use RuckIt if you train seriously, track progress over time, or prepare for events where accuracy matters. You can't optimize what you can't measure correctly, and Apple Fitness isn't measuring rucking at all. It's just measuring walking and pretending the weight on your back doesn't exist.
We built RuckIt because we got tired of being lied to by our fitness apps. If you're carrying weight, you deserve numbers that reflect the actual work you're doing.
