 Assault pack 15.6 pounds, chest rig 15.1 pounds, rifle with a magazine in the gun 11.8 pounds, plates 14.8 pounds, helmet 4.9 pounds, ruining your perfectly good joints for the rest of your life. Well that's just the price of doing business. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense and we are back with another edition of American Minuteman Gear, one of our longest-running series here on the channel and I am happy to be back. I hope you're happy to be back because today we're going to talk about weight limits. All this stuff, all the gear right that we've talked about in this series, I got a bunch of gear laid out on the table here that you can't see, but all of this stuff it weighs something, right? There's a weight component to it and you as a human being only have a limited amount of capacity. There's only so much weight you can carry and maybe you've thought about this, maybe you haven't but the weight of the gear that you carry has a large effect on your performance and so we're going to talk about that. The United States Army considers anything over 45% of your body weight to be an excessive load. Now that's comical for a couple of reasons. The first off being that the US Army in general as far as I know blows right by those numbers all the time and has their guys carry excessive loads all the time and that's why there's so many veterans with knee, joint, hip issues because they've been carrying these super heavy loads for their their entire career, right? And that just that wears on your body after a while. It's not necessarily your muscles that are the problem, it's your joints and their inability to accommodate that much weight over that long of a time. The second thing is so I have cut weight, I'm down to about 205 now depending on the day, balance between like 204, 206 and 205. 45% of 205 pounds is 92.25 pounds. So theoretically I should be capable to carry up to 92 pounds without hitting the excessive load point, right? Whatever that means. If you're a tiny guy you're coming in at like 150, 140 whatever, 140 I did the math and or 140 I did the math and it is 63 pounds I believe is what it comes out to be, right? That's not that much weight as we're going to see as we're going to talk about here. So I write out the gate at the 45% number I consider that maybe not arbitrary but even that is high, right? Me to carry 90 pounds of gear and you got to remember that 90 pounds number it's not just your ruck, right? It's all the stuff. So it's your boots, it's your clothes, it's your knee pads, it's your eyeglasses, it's your ear pro, it's your hat or helmet or whatever, right? It's all the stuff that you carry and that stuff adds up pretty quick. So I consider that 90 pound number even high for me to run around in 90 pounds a year. Can I carry 90 pounds of gear on me? Yeah, sure I can. For how long? Not quite sure. Am I going to be able to go make a five mile movement and then effectively fight at the end of that or if I'm in the middle of a really long movement like I'd say a multiple day movement and I get ambushed on the you know a day and a half in after I've been rucking I don't know 10, 20, 30 miles. Am I going to be able to effectively fight then, right? After I've been exhausted and worn down? I don't know probably not very well, that's for sure. So I think it's important to start to take these weight considerations in because it's not just 10 I move the weight, sure you can move the weight but go ahead get out, ruck those 10 miles with that 30 pound pack on and let me know how that goes for you. Let me know how long it takes for your feet to recover from the blisters, how long it takes your legs to recover from the strain, right? That's just a 35 pound pack, that's not with your rifle and your plates and whatever. Go do it with all that stuff on and then let me know how that goes. There is a cost to carrying all this weight and it's not just necessarily the long-term joint impact stuff although that is a problem. It's the immediate recovery of like I said blisters, muscle pain, etc. and if you have to do that multiple days in a row how are you going to survive that? Now there's one objection that says well hey Dylan just get stronger, lift more, you know work out more, be better and then that won't be such a big deal and I would say okay there's some truth to that, we all need to be more physically fit, there's no argument there. However, no matter what whatever you carry is going to wear on you, the weight is going to wear on you, that's true no matter what happens. So it doesn't matter how fit you are necessarily, what matters is that the more stuff you carry the more tired and more exhausted you'll get and again remember it's not just moving it from point A to point B it's maybe having to fight in the middle or at the end or at the beginning or whatever there's maybe some kind of fight involved there and that is especially exhausting and when you've already been worn down by carrying a bunch of stuff and you don't have any gas left in the tank that's not going to help you out either and it doesn't matter how fit no matter how fit you are there's still going to be a wear factor. So the purpose of this video isn't necessary to tell you how much all my kit weighs right, the purpose of this video is to get you thinking about weight and how much it is that you're carrying. I weight my stuff if I carry just my plates my helmet my chest rig and my rifle just that no other sustainment gear right I got a liter of water on my chest rig but no other sustainment gear that's over 45 pounds of kit. Now you could say oh again well Dylan you know you have 90 pound limit so you know it's only half you can carry 45 pound pack on that on top of that and I would say huh good luck with that let me know how that goes I'm not going to do that. So again you have to start considering what is what is your weight limit is that a hard number is it a flux number like 45 percent again these numbers come from fit 19 year olds in the army right that's where we're pulling these number from. You are probably not in peak physical condition although you'd like to be right and you have to decide if you're an overweight dude and you're coming in at 300 pounds does that mean you can carry 150 pounds with a kit? No no it does not because you're probably not super fit and that that fat to muscle ratio just isn't there for you in order to be able to accommodate that much gear right so body weight is somewhat of an imperfect measurement we need to take these things to consideration and in my mind there's some kind of hard limit of it's somewhat arbitrary but like 80 pounds anything but 80 pounds is just too much I don't care who you are I don't care how big you are I don't care how strong you are if you're carrying more than 80 pounds of stuff around that's a lot of stuff and again especially when it comes to fighting the other argument is oh hey Dylan you know you can drop a rock it's not a big deal like we'll just you know when you take contact that's why you drop rocks and I'd say okay but again as an American minute man are you going to be able to drop kit because most likely you're not sticking around for a long-term engagement when China invades or whatever uh you're sticking around to move and groove so you can't don't necessarily have the luxury probably of being able to drop kit because you're going to shoot and scoot so you're still going to have to carry and fight in all the stuff you carry probably depending on your different SOPs and tactics and how you decide to run it you do you but what I'm saying is if we're assuming that you're going to carry and fight in everything that you that you have you're not dropping rocks you're not stashing stuff here what is it that you really want to carry so again I hope the purpose video is to get you to think what do I really need ounces equal pounds pounds equal pain right what is it that I really need in order to be effective what can I cut do I need to carry four double a batteries or can I only carry two do I need to carry you know six cr123s or can I get away with three like start thinking in terms of every little bit that you can cut off what's this buckle on this milsurp pack that I got do I really need this no cut it move gone start trimming things down start thinking about how you can cut little fractions of an ounce because that all adds up if you can shave five pounds off your loadout believe it or not that's a big deal and that's going to get you in a place where you can start to actually benefit from that the other thing I would point out is when it comes to the big rock right the big rock I right now have a somewhat arbitrary personal limit of 30 pounds I think carrying anything in that big rock that weighs more than 30 pounds will not behoove you again based on everything we just laid out based on the fact that it's not just the rock if it's a 30 pound rock it's my chest rig and it's my rifle I'm coming in at about 55 60 pounds right there I mean that's not counting my clothes or my helmet if it's a helmet I mean now we're up to easily over 60 pounds and that's just in again rock chest rig rifle and you go out and you move around in that for a while and it's going to get tiring you're going to get tired even though we're not even talking about plates right so in my mind that's kind of the limit for my rock and at this point going forward I'm always going to try to keep my rock under that amount because I think the wear and tear factor isn't worth it when you get above that number that's me you do you again you think about what your number would be but get out there experience this stuff move yourself under load over time and you're going to start to find those limits I do like getting a just a little this is a cheapy off amazon scale it's used to weigh your luggage right and this is what I use to weigh all my kit it doesn't give the most precise readings in the world but it gives me a good idea so I can start to write these numbers down and figure out objectively what's that objective number for me of how much I'm willing to carry how much what gets me past that point of the wear and tear just isn't worth it anymore and again what do I really need what gear can I cut what gear do I have on here when you start like this is a good example right here with this big pack right I put these external pouches on here these are all coming off because one I don't need to have extra capacity to add a bunch of stuff that again I need to stay under that 30 pound limit anyway so I should be able to fit it in the main compartment if I can't probably don't need it and additionally that pouch that pouch has weight right I don't know what that pouch specifically weighs but I'm going to guess around like 12 ounces well I have four of them on there all of a sudden hey now I'm adding you know three pounds just in pouches let alone what actually goes in them so you need to start thinking and being real miserly real real Nazi like about what you are going to allow on your kit or not in order to understand that you're trying to cut wear and tear off your body so that you can more effectively do the job that you're there to do one more thing I do want to add in here is again if you're more mechanized right you can carry more stuff because you can just leave it in the vehicle but when it comes time to actually put stuff on you those weight limits still apply right so I might have like a hundred pounds of personal gear in the vehicle right with like my overnight rock and maybe some plates and whatever but I might only walk around in a chest rig in a little assault pack right that could happen and then as I need it I'll go back and I'll maybe I'll put the plates on or whatever so there are options and you can flex in and out depending on how mechanized you're planning on being however in general when that kit goes on your body that's when my numbers start coming in so I hope this has been helpful I hope this gets you thinking about weight limits and what your kit weighs if you've never weighed your kit I highly suggest that you go ahead and do that and start getting some completely neutral data of how much your kit weighs write those numbers down think about what you can cut think about what you can shave and then go out and move in it and let me know how that works out for you because again the less stuff we carry the happier you're going to be and the more effectively you will fight do brave deeds and endure