Ruck Calories

Calories that know you're carrying weight - inside Garmin's own Hike, Walk, or Trail Run. Your watch has no idea there's a 40 lb pack on your back. It counts calories as if you were strolling empty-handed, so a hard ruck reads like an easy walk. This data field fixes that without replacing the activity you already use. Add "Ruck Cal" to a data screen in any activity, set your pack weight in Garmin Connect, and go. Your hike is still a hike - same GPS track, same elevation profile, same hiking summary, same auto-titled "Morning Hike" in Garmin Connect. You just get an honest calorie number next to it. The math: the Pandolf load-carriage equation (US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, 1977), the standard model for the metabolic cost of carrying a load. It accounts for your body weight, the weight you're carrying, your speed, the grade you're climbing, and the ground underfoot. Settings, on the watch or in Garmin Connect: - Pack weight, in pounds or kilograms - Terrain: road, trail, snow, or loose sand - loose sand costs more than twice what pavement does - Body weight is read from your watch profile automatically, with an override if you'd rather set it yourself You can set all of these on the watch itself, no phone needed. From the activity that has the field: hold MENU or press START to open the activity settings, scroll down to Connect IQ Fields, and choose Ruck Calories. Grade is measured live from your barometric altitude and distance, so climbing with a pack counts for what it costs. In Garmin Connect afterward: a Ruck Calories total in the activity summary, plus a graph of the burn across the session. Works in any activity that records speed - hiking, walking, trail running, treadmill with a weight vest. Uses the same engine as the Ruck app, so the two agree on the same walk. Use Ruck when you want a dedicated ruck session with its own screens; use this field when you'd rather stay in Garmin's native activity. No phone, no account, no subscription. Help me help you! Send me suggestions for any changes you would like to see - use the Contact Developer link on this page - and I'll see what I can do :)

Settings can now be changed on the watch. Pack weight, units, terrain and body weight are all available from the activity's own settings menu, so you no longer need Garmin Connect to set the field up. If the Connect settings screen ever fails for you, everything is still reachable on the wrist. A settings change now also takes effect during an activity, without restarting it.