Your rucking coach
Every ruck, with a plan.
Rucksteady is a coach, not just a tracker. Pick a goal - just get started, get fitter, or train for an event - and it builds an honest, week-by-week plan: today’s ruck, progress you can see, and it adapts to how you’re actually doing. Honest load-aware calories underneath, synced to Apple Health.
Coming to the App Store. iPhone and Apple Watch.
How the coach works
Pick a goal. Get a plan. Ruck today.
Every rucking app tracks what you already did. Rucksteady tells you what to do next - the difference between a logbook and a coach.
1 · Set a goal
Casual-first, not just events
Just getting started, getting fitter, getting stronger, or training for a GORUCK event - pick where you’re headed and Rucksteady builds an honest, week-by-week plan around it.
2 · Open Today
Your next ruck, decided
A “Today” home shows the exact ruck to do - load, distance, and why - with your week’s progress always in view. One tap starts it, pre-loaded.
3 · It adapts
Honest, and it listens
The plan reads how you’re actually doing - easy days move you up, hard or missed ones ease you off - progressing safely, never past a third of your body weight.
A coach you can trust.
The plan sits on an honest foundation: a rucking-only tracker with load-first, citable calorie math - not a general fitness app, not a run tracker. Every number is one you can trust.
The load is first-class
Track the carry
Log ruck weight per session and watch route, distance, pace, and elevation gain roll in from GPS. The load is what makes a ruck a ruck, so it is front and centre everywhere.
Honest math
Load-aware calories
Calories come from published load-carriage models - a blend of LCDA, Pandolf-Santee, and GoRuck - never generic-walking METs. We show the honest variance instead of faking precision.
On the wrist
Apple Watch, mid-ruck
Start and steer a ruck from your wrist, where the phone stays in the pack. Big, glanceable numbers - elapsed, distance, pace, kcal - at a single look.
A look inside
Big numbers, honest math, warm and calm.
Start in one tap
Pick your load and go. Your weekly progress and momentum sit right there.
Glanceable mid-ruck
Elapsed time in big type, your load pinned up top, and a gentle hydration nudge.
See what the load added
Every ruck shows the honest calorie delta the load earned you - never an inflated claim.
Your route, as a hero
The map is the illustration.
Every ruck draws a considered graphic - your trail traced in amber over quiet contour cartography, with start and finish markers and distance ticks. Not a widget in the corner, the whole point of looking back.
Offline map packs mean the trail keeps working when the signal does not.
Syncs to Apple Health
Every ruck is written as a workout with active energy and route data. Apple Health is the system of record - your data is never trapped in the app, and it is always yours to export.
Rucksteady on the web
Review and curate on the big screen
Your rucks sync to a calm web dashboard - browse your history, study each route full-size, and tidy up titles and notes with a keyboard instead of a thumb.
Open the dashboardRucking is better together
Record who carried it with you.
Tag the people who rucked with you and, honestly, what each of them carried. Rucksteady totals the real weight your group moved together - no account needed on their end, no live session required.
You get a rucker name and a @handle of your own, so partners can find and tag the real you. It is the first step toward Ruck Together- invite-only shared rucks, in person or apart, with each other’s live metrics side by side. Coming after the core loop settles.
Invite-only, always. No public feed, no strangers.
A reason to lace up again
Every ruck moves you up the trail.
The work you carry - load times distance times climb - becomes XP that levels you up and unlocks rucker titles. All warmth, never shame: nothing useful is ever locked behind a grind.
Ruck Level
Your work, as XP
Every loaded mile adds XP that climbs the trail from Trailhead to Skyliner, each tier unlocking a title you wear. It only ever goes up.
Weekly streak
Weeks, not days
A forgiving weekly streak - ruck once and it holds; rest counts. Consistency framed as an invitation to come back, never a nag.
Your goal
A goal you set
Choose your own weekly target - rucks, distance, or time - pick the days, and get opt-in reminders. It adds up, and we show you how much.
Already using Apple’s Hiking workout?
We build on it, and add the part it is missing.
Apple’s Hiking workout is a fine walk tracker, and every ruck you record still lands in Apple Health as a workout. But Hiking has no idea you are carrying a pack - and the load is the whole point.
No knock on Apple - we keep Health as the system of record. We just add the rucking layer on top: the load, the honest math, and the curation.
Questions, answered honestly
Is Rucksteady a tracker or a coach?
- A coach, on a tracker foundation. You pick a goal - get started, get fitter, get stronger, or train for a GORUCK event - and Rucksteady builds an honest, week-by-week plan. A Today home tells you the exact ruck to do (load, distance, and why), shows your progress toward the goal, and adapts to how you are actually doing: easy weeks progress a little faster, hard or missed ones ease off, always kept under a third of your body weight. Underneath sits a genuinely complete rucking tracker with honest load-aware calories - so every number the coach uses is one you can trust.
What is rucking?
- Rucking is walking with a weighted pack. The load is what turns an ordinary walk into real strength and endurance work, without the joint impact of running. Rucksteady is built entirely around that loaded carry.
Does Rucksteady work on Apple Watch?
- Yes. You can track a ruck from iPhone or Apple Watch, and every session lands in one history through Apple Health. The watch leads with big, glanceable numbers for mid-ruck.
How does Rucksteady calculate calories?
- It uses published load-carriage models - a blend of LCDA-2024, Pandolf-Santee, and the GoRuck 2025 correction - fed by your body weight, pack load, speed, grade, and terrain. It reports honest net active energy with a stated variance of roughly plus or minus 10 to 20 percent. It never uses generic-walking calorie math and never claims an inflated 'burns 3x walking' figure.
Does it work offline, with no cell service?
- Yes. Rucksteady is local-first: a ruck tracks fully offline, and offline map packs let you download regions so the map keeps working on no-signal trails. Your data syncs later when you are back online.
Why not just use Apple's Hiking workout or Strava?
- Neither lets you add your pack weight, and the load is the whole point of rucking. Rucksteady gives you load-aware honest calories, live heart-rate zones without a paywall, and ruck-only history and curation - while still writing every ruck to Apple Health as the system of record.
Does my health data leave my device?
- Body weight read from Apple Health is used on-device for the calorie estimate and never leaves the device. Finished rucks are written to Apple Health. There is no account and no cloud sync yet; when cloud sync ships, the privacy page will say exactly what leaves and when.
Can I ruck with friends?
- Yes. On any finished ruck you can tag the people who rucked with you and note what each of them carried, and Rucksteady totals the real weight your group moved together - they do not need the app. You also get a rucker name and @handle so partners can find you. Full invite-only shared sessions with live partner metrics (Ruck Together) are a committed feature coming after the solo core loop settles.
Is Rucksteady free?
- It is free while in TestFlight. A freemium model is planned - a genuinely complete free solo tracker, with cloud sync, offline maps, and multiplayer as a paid tier. The honest calorie math is never paywalled.
Get outside. Carry something.
A steady companion for the trail - warm, honest, and pointed at exactly one thing.
Join the TestFlight