Zufelt on a night ruck in the rain

Before Rucking Tough

Justin Zufelt swore into the Army on July 8th, 2001, two months before the world changed.

He started as a cannon crewmember. Then ordnance officer. Then a logistics officer. Somewhere along the way, through two decades of service, deployments, and the kind of wear that doesn't show up on a DD-214, the mission shifted. In 2017, he joined the Chaplain Corps. By 2021, he was commissioned as a Chaplain.

Twenty-plus years in uniform teaches you something that no leadership course ever will: Soldiers don't break because the ruck is too heavy. They break because they're carrying it alone.

Why Rucking Tough Exists

This didn't start as a business. It started as a Chaplain watching soldiers struggle, not with fitness, but with purpose. With direction. With the slow erosion that happens when someone doesn't have a goal worth grinding for.

Rucking is the most military thing you can do. It's simple, it's brutal, and it strips away everything except the question: Can you keep going?

Justin and his wife Leilani built Rucking Tough to give soldiers, veterans, and anyone willing to carry the weight something real to work toward. Not a participation trophy. Instead, rucking medals that have meaning. Some are  official foreign military awards, handmade by Czech and Austrian military associations, earned the same way soldiers have earned them for decades. Others help honor those who have been rucking rough before us. 

But the awards are just the finish line. The real point is everything that happens between registration and completion:

  • Community

    You're not rucking alone

  • Purpose

    A specific goal with a specific standard.

  • Resilience

    The process of building your ability to keep moving when everything in you says stop

  • Education

    Military history, traditions, and the stories behind the marches

  • Survival Tips

    Real talk about navigating military life, from a guy who's lived it for over two decades

What We Actually Do

We organize virtual and proctored ruck marches tied to official Czech, Austrian military marche programs, and historical events. You register. You ruck the required distance, under the required conditions, on your own route and your own schedule during the event window.

Complete the standard, and you earn the real thing — badges, ribbons, and certificates produced and verified by the foreign military associations themselves. Not replicas. Not "inspired by." The actual awards that have been earned by soldiers in Central Europe for generations.

Your route. Your conditions. Your effort. The standard stays the same.

Who Rucks With Us

Active duty. Reserve. Guard. Veterans. Civilians who refuse to take the easy path. International military partners who know these traditions firsthand.

We've had ruckers complete events on multiple continents in deserts, in snowstorms, on bases and in backyards, alone at 0500 and in groups of fifty or 800. What connects them isn't a branch or a rank or a flag. It's the decision to pick up the weight and move.

The Family Behind the Mission

Rucking Tough is a family operation. Justin and Leilani with six kids who've grown up in the rhythm of military life. PCS moves, deployments, new schools, new friends, starting over. They know what it costs. They also know what it builds.

This isn't a corporation. It's a family that decided the best thing they could give the military community was a reason to keep moving forward.

Join the Ruckhouse

Our community lives in The Ruckhouse on Facebook where ruckers share their routes, their photos, their award walls, and the kind of encouragement that only comes from people who know what mile 10 feels like.

Whether you're chasing your first foreign award or building a collection, there's a ruck with your name on it.

Join the Ruckhouse