What’s in a Identify?
I just lately noticed a good friend strolling up the road in my neighborhood with a loaded backpack on his shoulders. He was in exercise garments and sweating exhausting. I requested him what he was doing and he smiled and mentioned, “Rucking! Have you ever heard of it?”
I had heard of it. “Rucking” is the newest health craze to hit journey sports activities, the place athletes don heavy packs and stroll round for an prolonged time period. If that sounds acquainted to you, that’s as a result of it’s precisely like mountain climbing, solely take away the beautiful views and add a coronary heart fee monitor. Oh, and provides it a badass identify. That’s the key to turning one thing that’s been round eternally into advertising and marketing gold. Identify it one thing cool.
On this case, the identify (rucking) is borrowed from the navy, the place troopers put on tremendous heavy packs and set out for a day of distress as a method of getting used to carrying heavy issues and being depressing. Now weekend warriors are rucking up and down the suburbs like weary troopers. By no means thoughts the truth that my 14-year-old daughter additionally lugs round a 40-pound backpack all day on a regular basis whereas going to highschool—the identify is cool and it has its personal setting on my Garmin watch, so let’s begin a YouTube channel and launch a shiny Rucking Month-to-month journal.
This isn’t the primary time an outdated, comparatively tame exercise has been reborn because of a brand new moniker. Bear in mind when “automobile tenting” was that factor you probably did if you weren’t in adequate form to go backpacking? A number of years in the past, any individual determined to rename that decades-old exercise “overlanding,” and hastily automobile tenting is probably the most badass factor you are able to do over a weekend. I’m not pointing fingers right here; I personally spent a small fortune overhauling our outdated 4Runner with top-of-the-line overlanding gear designed to do the very same factor I had been doing in that very same 4Runner for years with only a flimsy household tent and leaky cooler.
Have you ever heard of “forest bathing?” It’s all the fad within the wellness neighborhood proper now. Let me describe “forest bathing” for you: It’s if you sit or stroll for an prolonged time period within the woods, letting the vitality of the pure world wash over you. In the event you’re of a sure age, you would possibly acknowledge this exercise as “getting excessive.” Today, you’ll be able to pay some fake shaman from L.A. a whole bunch of {dollars} to guide you on a forest bathing journey, and he doesn’t even provide the weed.
By no means underestimate the facility of a reputation. Take a tiny ski hill with a solitary double elevate, name it “boutique,” and we’ll fall throughout ourselves for a season go. Hell, “tenting,” is likely to be one of many oldest examples of this advertising and marketing trick. Individuals had been sleeping outdoors for hundreds of years—actually, our ancestors labored actually exhausting to develop societies with roofs and partitions, however give it a brand new identify and a few devoted gear and hastily, individuals with completely good houses suppose sleeping outdoors is a superb concept.
I imply, the distinction between getting kicked out of the home by your spouse and residing the dream is whether or not or not you name it “vanlife.” I’m not taking a nap, I’m doing a “restoration session.” I’m not simply strolling my canine by means of the neighborhood whereas carrying a cup of espresso and listening to a podcast, I’m “mushing.” See, I’ve my coronary heart fee monitor on! It is a exercise!
The probabilities of renaming mundane actions are infinite. One among my favourite issues to do is journey my bike to a sequence of bars for chilly drinks and snacks. It’s positively not hardcore; I’m consuming extra energy than I’m expending. Historically, we name this journey a “pub crawl,” however that identify lacks the “je ne sais quoi” to earn it its personal hashtag. So, what may we rename it in order that the New York Occasions will name it a scorching new health development?
Let’s see…there’s a progressive nature to the exercise…What about “progging?” After a little bit on-line analysis, I’ve found that “prog” is British slang that means “to go looking or prowl about, as for plunder or meals; forage.” That sounds spot on, and I just like the foraging affiliation, as a result of these pub crawls have that feral type of facet to them. However “prog” is a little bit bizarre, and there’s the entire ‘60s progressive rock factor. We is likely to be onto one thing with “prowl,” although. It sounds robust, it’s enjoyable to say, and it’s nearly a portmanteau of pub crawl! To prowl about. I like that. To prowl. Prowling. It’s not a pub crawl, it’s prowling. I’m occurring a prowl.
“Dudes, saddle up for a prowl!”
Expectantly and a few magic from the out of doors trade advertising and marketing machine, prowling will discover new life as a health development and also you’ll take heed to a four-minute phase concerning the well being advantages of prowling on NPR. Perhaps bike producers will even make prowl-specific bikes with built-in cupholders on the handlebars and lane-assist tech that retains you from swerving in your journey residence. And perhaps my spouse may have extra respect for this explicit pastime of mine.
“Honey, I’m not simply racking up bar tabs at a sequence of watering holes, I’m prowling. It’s a factor. Look it up.”
#prowl
