GORUCK Kit Bag vs Gym Bag – Our Review

I’m of the mind that most people frequent the GORUCK website because they’re interested in picking up a cool backpack (ruck!), unique training shoes, or even some type of accessory item.

(at least that’s why I became interested in the company in the first place!)

With that being said, there is apparently a large subset of the population that’s interested in the company’s more “specialized” offerings. These range anywhere from dopp kits (“Field Pockets” to be precise) to fanny packs (“Belt Bags“…I guess that sounds tougher than “fanny pack”)…anda also include today’s contestants.

The GORUCK Kit Bag and the GOGUCK Gym Bag.

Of course, people want to be able to haul their gear around in a more of a duffel-bag variety sack and prefer to buy their gear from outlets known for their quality products.

Nothing controversial about this and no questions from us here.

As you’ll quickly realize, of these two options…there is really only one option. Let’s take a closer look at both of these combatants and make a deeper dive into these two.

Before we get started, check out our definitive guide to GORUCK backpacks, bags, and vests. If neither of these options turns out not to be the bag for you, maybe one of the other 9 in our review will work out for you!

Also, if you’re interested in GORUCK footwear offerings, check out our definitive guides on the GORUCK boots and GORUCK shoe lines!

GORUCK Kit Bag vs GORUCK Gym Bag

You know, this is just the section where we give the initial introduction to each of the products, but it seems like the Gym Bag is already taking a beating. I mean, just take a look at the differences between how GORUCK describes each on their respective sales pages

First, the Kit Bag aka the “Special Forces Flight Bag”

“Special Forces Flight Bag

The Aviator’s Kit Bag is used on all Airborne flight operations (jumping out of planes or helos). Special Forces and other units started using the Aviator’s Kit Bags as travel bags, pilot flight bags, and deployment bags because of the large opening at the top, which is plenty big enough to comfortably allow body armor to fit inside.

Our Kit Bags are inspired by classic aviator’s kit bags, which are also used by Special Forces teams to transport a small army’s worth of gear (per person). We’ve modernized the aviator’s kit bag and added functionality not for jumping out of airplanes, but for daily use, travel, and storage.“

Next, check out the gym bag’s description:

“FUNCTIONAL GYM BAG

Everything you need for your sweat session all in one place. From belts, to water bottles, your sweaty Ballistic Trainers, and more, our new Gym Bag is purpose built to help you organize all of your stuff so you can focus on performing at your best.”

I mean, all things being equal (and they definitely aren’t between these two), who’s actually gonna choose a “FUNCTIONAL GYM BAG” over a “Special Forces Flight Bag”…?

Those intros aside…

Gym

I know that as logical of a category as this may seem like to include something called…ya know…a “gym bag”, it may seem a bit strange to include the GORUCK Kit Bag here.

Taking a quick look at the marketing material, it appears as though it isn’t as strange as you might think.

Anyways, we’ve decided to include the “gym” scored category for these two since using either of these to cart gear to and from the weight room is probably a more likely activity for most than using them to take TPS reports or whatever to the office or to jump out of helicopters with (sorry, GORUCK; I’m not sold on your marketing!)

…and both of these bags do the job…well enough.

Looking first at the GORUCK Gym Bag (which seems to make sense in this context), with just a 30-liter carrying capacity, it just doesn’t provide enough space to haul any meaningful amount of gear. I pretty much always have the following items in my bag and its starting to get crowded:

• Thick, leather lifting belt
• Knee sleeves
• 1.5-liter water bottle
• Hand towel
• Grips
• 2 jump ropes

Much of the time, I’ll throw in my weightlifting shoes, as well. However, these pretty much have to go into the main compartment because even with this much stuff, it gets tough to manipulate the dedicated side “shoe compartment”.

The internal mesh and “hanging” pockets actually have caused me more anguish than anything else when smaller items I have thrown in the bag (ex. wallet) have inadvertently landed in there. I never intentionally use these pockets.

If you have to change clothes from the office or whatever and expect to be able to put them in with your gym gear…good luck. The whole point of the shoe compartment is to keep “smelly shoes away from the rest of your gear”, but there is no equivalent feature to keep your “smelly gym gear” (my belt, knee sleeves, towel, and grips all smell, to varying degrees) from whatever clothes you’re changing in or out of.

Finally, I found the included strap to be a bit short for my liking so I actually swapped it out with one from an old laptop bag. Take that for what it’s worth.

To be honest, the GORUCK Kit Bag has many similar features to the Gym Bag, especially the smallest model. However, even this bag has 2 extra liters of carrying capacity to go along with more functional exterior pockets and pouches.

The interior zipped pocket is more practical than any of the Gym Bags pockets and makes it easier for my wife (who primarily uses our 32-liter Kit Bag as her gym bag) to separate a few items (her barbell clamps, thumb tape, and chalk bag).

The 57-liter Kit Bag unfortunately doesn’t have an external zipped pocket, but with 25 extra liters of carrying capacity…well…I’d suggest just wrapping your shoes up or putting them in a plastic bag or whatever if they’re really that gross.

A last thing I’ll mention is kind of…odd. I can’t really explain it or rationalize it, and I certainly can’t quantify it…but…the Gym Bag is just kinda a “black hole”.

Don’t get me wrong; I put almost zero effort into organizing my gear in my bag before or after training sessions (I don’t think I’m really alone in this, though…). I’ve been this way as long as I can remember.

However, I’ve never had a bag where stuff is, for whatever reason, so hard to find. I constantly find myself endlessly sifting through my bag to find my grips, or towel, or tape, or whatever. I don’t know if it’s some odd, paranormal (since there is no other reason to explain it), but it’s just another (very personal) strike against the Gym Bag.

If you happen to have the GORUCK Gym Bag and have the same problem, please let me know…I don’t want to keep feeling like I’m being personally haunted by it!

Winner: Kit Bag

Travel

After laying out most of the major features associated with both bags as they work as gym bags, we may as well as discuss how they hold up when you hit the road or are lining up at passport control. We won’t go into too much more detail here since most everything has been covered already.

I know a lot of people probably don’t look to a gym bag for travel, but I think the gym bag actually fits better into this category than it does for EDC. In a pinch, it could work as a personal item…just not as a very good one.

The good news is, since you’re traveling, I’m going to assume that all of your stuff is clean(ish), making the whole separation requirement less important. Assuming you’re packing softer, more malleable clothing, it’s reasonable to expect that you’d be able to fit dress shoes into the side shoe pocket, although you’re still not getting much utility from the internal pockets.

Any type of secure laptop storage is pretty much out of the question, as well.

In contrast, the any of the Kit Bag variations is going to allow you to lug more stuff with you with the 57-liter bag presenting the added bonus of still being carry-on compliant.

The 32-liter bag’s external pocket could be used as a more secure (but still nothing all that special) laptop compartment with the interior pockets being functional areas to store things like chargers or toiletries or other small items.

The Kit Bags’ straps are decently substantive, as well, and neither me nor my wife have felt the need to switch these out/around.

As I mentioned above, not too much extra to add here. Main takeaway is that other than the GORUCK Gym Bag’s shoe compartment being a bit more functional during travel endeavors, it still doesn’t come close to being on the level as any of the Kit Bag options.

Winner: Kit Bag

Load Capacity

Regardless of how you look at this one, the GORUCK Kit Bag wins this one. Depending on which size you have your eye on, it would end up winning in a blowout.

Making a genuine apples to apples comparison, there isn’t that much separation between the bags. The Ripstop Kit Bag has a 32-liter capacity while the Gym bag has a 30-liter capacity. Definitely a “win” for the Kit Bag, but only a small one.

However, as we’ve alluded to before, the Kit Bag’s variations make yuge capacity jumps. The 57-liter variation is almost twice the size of the GORUCK Gym Bag while the 84-liter monster almost triples it up.

To the latter point, I’ve always thought that GORUCK’s marketing for the 84-liter bag is a bit excessive. I think that’s Jason McCarthy’s (GORUCK’s founder) older, skinnier father holding that monster up.

Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like a behemoth in comparison to him!

Anyways, once again, no matter how you slice it, the Kit Bag wins. If you’re looking at sheer load capacity, it’s always the clear choice.

Winner: Kit Bag

Customer Reviews

While, like most of GORUCK’s items it’s all but impossible to find reviews for either the Kit Bag or the Gym Bag on any third-party site, to include major retail sites. If you want to find a lot of reviews in one place, you pretty much have to go to the GORUCK main site.

The good news is that the reviews for both items are exceptionally high, even relative to the high scores that many of the company’s products garner. Also, with the Kit Bag, the sample size is decently high/sufficient enough to come to some very real conclusions about how customers feel about their purchase.

There isn’t as much separation here as there are in many of the other areas, but the GORUCK Gym Bag loses to the Kit Bag, once again. To be fair, with its smaller sample size, if you removed its single 1-star review, we’d probably have a tie score for this category.

…about that 1-star review…it, and a couple others seems to parrot my main gripe about the bag…

Interestingly, even though the 3 variations of the Kit Bag collectively have close to 10 times as many reviews as the Gym Bag, only one of them mentions that the bag is “small”.

I’m telling you…despite the similar sizes of the smaller variations, there is just something about the Gym Bag that makes it seem much smaller than the Kit Bag!

Winner: Kit Bag

Price

I hate to say it, but…we’ve saved the worst for last!

However, when you clicked on this review, you probably had a pretty good idea of GORUCK’s reputation, specifically in regard to how their products are priced…

…and if you don’t…well…let’s just say that they generally aren’t the least expensive on the market.

That out of the way, it’s a bit more difficult to find direct competitors to the unique structure and design of the GORUCK Kit Bag. When you do find them, though, they are generally a bit less expensive, especially those of smaller load capacities (compared to the 30-liter GORUCK Kit Bag).

Of course, head over to Amazon and search for “gym bags” and you get exactly 2894,19230FFgw409234,12983X3S results back

(NOTE: Your personal results may be different than mine!)

As you can imagine, of these almost infinite number of search results, most are less expensive, in some cases significantly less expensive, than the GORUCK Gym Bag (again, controlling for load capacity).

With either option you’re going to be paying a premium for, in most cases, higher-quality and better material-ed bags and the GORUCK name. However, with the Kit Bag, the price differential between it and the competition isn’t quite as steep as it is with the Gym Bag.

Winner: Kit Bag

Overall Winner

According to our metrics, the GORUCK Kit Bag is your winner!

If GORUCK Gym Bag and Kit Bag were going head-to-head on College Football Saturday (screw the NFL!), you probably would have changed stations long before we made it this far; it was that much of a beatdown!

The thing is that this is the first of our GORUCK “vs” reviews where I can’t really say that “both of these are actually good products…one of these is just ‘better’ (in my opinion)”. The Gym Bag is by far my least favorite piece of GORUCK gear and is an item I simply can’t recommend…at all. I still use it out of convenience, but I will likely purchase a second 32-liter Kit Bag as my primary gym bag (I don’t want to use the 57-liter bag as I prefer to keep that one as a dedicated travel bag; my gym gear is nasty!)

If you feel the need to get your hands on every piece of GORUCK gear out there, I guess you’ll end up getting both of these items. In all other situations, there is absolutely no reason to opt for the Gym Bag over the Kit Bag.

None.

Our Testing Process

Despite being more niche (or at least more “speciality”) types of products, the Kit Bag and Gym Bag are probably the GORUCK items we use the most. We still go into the gym 3 or 4 day each week (we’re still finishing up our home gym) and these are the bags we haul our gear in.

My wife has taken a few short trips recently and was kind enough to clear out her gym gear to see how her 32-liter Kit Bag held up on one occasion and hauled the 57-liter variation with her on another one.

Interestingly enough, none of this has really been dedicated testing as much as a compilation of more “pure” use cases.

Frequently Asked Questions

I think we did a pretty good job of answering all of the biggest questions, but here are a couple more answers to a couple of the questions you might still have about these two:

The GORUCK Kit Bag and Gym Bag…the have and have-not…

In case it’s not clear (or if you skimmed to the end here), there is zero reason to opt for the GORUCK Gym Bag over the Kit Bag.

You might question why we compared these two, specifically, but these are my wife and my main gym/training bags and the smaller variations are of a similar shape and load capacity. It just made sense to do so.

I hope that this can be a resource for people who are considering the Gym Bag and will (hopefully) prompt them to opt for the Kit Bag instead (since it obviously can serve a similar purpose…and is better at facilitating this objective, as well).

Worst case, you opt for a larger-sized Kit Bag that is way too big for your gym gear needs and you need to run out and buy new weightlifting shoes, a thick belt, and some fractional plates to fill the space…

…you can see how all of those elite athletes end up going broke!

As we finish things up, check out our definitive guide to GORUCK backpacks, bags, and vests. If neither of these turns out not to be the bag for you, maybe one of the other 9 in our review will work out for you!

Also, if you’re interested in GORUCK footwear offerings, check out our definitive guides on the GORUCK boots and GORUCK shoe lines!