Co-Suffering | An American Ruck Story

SPC Kyle McClintock — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:03:48 -0500

Trust isn’t built over an obligatory coffee. Or on a hurried lunch break. Or watching football together in silence.

Veterans and members of the military know this well, especially upon coming home and realizing that no one understands. It seems easiest to suppress the pain too dark to share. Drive past opportunities for connection like passing billboards at 100mph. And create a self everyone will admire and no one will know.

But some of us discover that trust is built in the suffering; particularly, suffering alongside a brother or sister during a difficult circumstance.

War teaches this lesson so viscerally. But there are opportunities in civilian life, too.

At American Ruck: http://americanruck.com (our fitness company designing American-made, highly-functional fitness gear for the great outdoors), we learned to build trust in similar co-suffering situations with people who were not Veterans but were humble, hard-working people discontent with the status quo.

We find that fitness communities (e.g. F3/FIA) in general accommodate this need for co-suffering, as do a number of martial arts organizations (e.g. jiu jitsu), faith communities and high-performing corporate teams. But they ALL share this sort-of unwritten mantra in common: experience hardship together, share one another's burdens… and you will build deep, trustworthy relationships.

It really can be that simple.

For us it was about finding the activity that recreated that kind of co-suffering the best, and that was RUCKING. (Yes, the grueling thing we did just to hoof gear we NOW do to build community, lol).

Objectively, it is great for health: https://rly.pt/3Iz4nwf, unusually large amounts of time for community-building AND lends itself to a rugged, highly sustainable fitness journey. So naturally it became our preferred method for suck.

But it’s not just “embrace the suck” to embrace the suck, or to commiserate in brutal beatdowns just for the hell of it. It’s learning to actually give a fuck and be real. To RISK being vulnerable while being in motion, laugh, cry… learn to trust again.

2 of us are Vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who came back with scars both mental and physical.

The other 2 are civilians in addiction recovery programs, also working to address wounds and make amends in the process to the people we love.

But we found common ground in rucking and ultimately built a company together: https://www.americanruck.com/about

Now we’re living the dream of building stronger bodies, stronger communities AND better gear.

This is our American Ruck™️ story!

And we will ALWAYS hard commit to giving a portion of every dollar to Veteran and civilian suicide awareness and addiction recovery, because we suffered too much alone. Change is possible. And every dollar and every hand reaching out is an opportunity to co-suffer where you’re at and never go alone.

If you’d like to support our Kickstarter campaign, visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ruckpaincakes/ruck-paincakes-functional-ruck-weights-for-delicious-gains

AmericanRuck

Response by SrA Ronald Moore made Mar 2 at 2022 5:07 AM

SrA Ronald Moore — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 05:07:48 -0500

Thanks for sharing