Should you get this on your chest as opposed to off it? You may have seen people wearing what are called “weighted vests” while walking on hiking trails, treadmills or TikTok for that matter. These weighted vests kind of look like space-age versions of sweater vests but instead of ridicule they hold weights. The argument is that wearing such a vest can help build muscle and bone strength and endurance as well as help you burn more calories. In fact, some social media influencers have acted as if wearing weighted vests while walking is “rucking” amazing. But before I weighed in on the matter, I decided to try a weighted vest workout myself.
How Weighted Vests Are Being Incorporated Into Workouts
I went to an Equinox Club in New York City to experience their “Fully Vested” workout. You may have heard of the term “rucking,” which as I indicated in Forbes a couple years ago has become quite popular on social media. If you are wondering where the ruck this term came from, it originated from a “ruck march,” which is military term for a very brisk walk over rough terrain while wearing a rucksack. A rucksack is a backpack but larger with more compartments. Well, people have been using the word “rucking” to represent any type of walk while wearing any type of weights.
David Silk, who is the program and content director of Precision Running at Equinox and the author of the Ultimate Treadmill Workout, has developed a treadmill workouts with a weighted vest that fulfills this popular definition of rucking but is hesitant to use this term to describe this workout. He told me that he wants to respect the original military term. Instead, he calls his program “Fully Vested” in part because it involves you wearing a weighted vest fully on your chest while walking on a treadmill. He told me that, “Wearing the vest can result in a 10 to 15 percent increase in calories burned.”
The first step was to put on what’s called a Precision Vest, precisely because it can be adjusted to match your size, shape and desired weight. To adjust the last thing, the vest included a number of weight pockets. Each weight pocket allowed you to insert a 2.5 pound weight brick (a Micro Kettle Bell) and thus control how heavy you want to make the vest. Each pocket had a magnet that could keep the pocket closed so that you wouldn’t throwing your weights around, so to speak. The vest also was comprised partly of memory foam for comfort and adjustable for different body sizes and shapes.
Silk walked me through—or rather I walked through while he explained—a 25-minute segment of the workout on a treadmill. This included changes in the speed of my walking and the incline that I faced. He said that the workout could also include “Fly segments,” where you’d strip off the vest and then start running, more like what you would do in his standard Precision Run class. Silk talked about how, “You then feel very light and fast. It decompresses your body after it’s been loaded.”
I sort of went fly bye for this particular workout and stuck with wearing the weighted vest throughout. The Fly segment doesn’t have to be part of the Fully Vested workout for anyone. In fact, the speeds and inclines that you go through and the weights that you carry or don’t carry can be tailored to your needs, hence the concept of a precision workout.
Silk described how the Fully Vested workout was being soft-launched at certain Equinox clubs to gather info to then adjust the program before a full launch. He said then regarding weighted vest use in general, “I am seeing more posts and stories of people sharing their experience.” He said, “What has been an emerging trend is now an accelerating trend.”
Weighted Vests Could Help You Burn More Calories And Build Endurance
One of the potential benefits of wearing a weighted vest while walking or doing other activities is what Silk mentioned, burning more calories. In theory, if you are increasing the effort needed, your body will need to expend more energy. Of course, the calories you burn will depend on the activity that you are doing, your own metabolism, the amount of weight you are carrying and other conditions. So, fittingly, there can’t be a one-size-fits-all expectation when it comes to weighted vests and calorie burning.
A similar situation applies to endurance. Since carrying more weight could make your walking or workouts harder, it could also help further build the endurance that you are trying to build. Again, how much more endurance you build depends on a many different factors.
Weighted Vests Could Potential Help Build More Muscle Strength
When you think lifting and carrying weight, you must think muscles as well. A weighted vest in theory should increase the work that your muscles do when walking. This should include the muscles that help you walk, including all those in your lower extremities, and the ones that keep you upright, such as you abs and glutes. If you are still harboring hopes of winning those Mr. or Ms. Olympia body-building contest, keep in mind that you start progressively losing muscle mass in your 30s, which means you have to progressively work harder at keeping up your muscles. Your muscles also play important roles in protecting your joints and in the case of your core muscles your spine from injury.
To date, there have’n’t been enough good quality scientific studies to tell exactly how much muscle strength a weighted vest will help build. Plus, the impact of the weighted vest likely depends on a number of factors such as your current muscle mass, the size and shape of your body, the type and intensity of the workout, the weight of the vest and the surrounding conditions like whether they are playing the Karate Kid movie song “You’re the Best” in the background. So, it is difficult to tell how a weighted vest workout might compare to other muscle building workouts. The answer may be different for different people, hence the “p” word, meaning precision.
Weighted Vests Could Potentially Help With Bone Health
Then there are the skele-ton of other possibilities, that using weighted vests could help strengthen your bones or at least keep them strong. The evidence, though, for this is not yet super strong. But more on that later. To understand how weight-bearing could help your bones, you have to understand how your bones work. They aren’t just static entities but instead are continuously undergoing bone formation and bone breakdown. In the earlier part of your life up to your mid-20s, the rate of bone formation typically exceeds the rate of bone breakdown, so that your bone density continues to increase over time. All of this changes around the age that you are finally able to join the Pony Club in the U.K., meaning when you are 25 years of age. After then, the rates of bone formation and breakdown tend to stay relatively equal so that your bone density remains relatively the same for a couple decades.
Things change again around age 50, though, when the rate bone breakdown usually begins to exceed that of bone formation. This can mean a progressive loss in bone density over time. When your bone density drops below what’s considered normal for your age, it’s classified as osteopenia. Consider this a step before having osteoporosis. The lower your bone density in general, the more at risk you are for fractures throughout your body.
If you start off with smaller and less dense bones, you may have less reserve when you start to lose bone density. Plus, going through menopause and the corresponding drop in estrogen levels can further accelerate bone loss as estrogen has a protective effect on your bones.
All of this is why many training programs encourage weight-bearing and resistance exercises at any age. Such exercises can put appropriate amounts of stress on the bones—tolerable stress that will lead to some bone material breakdown that’s followed by the bone material being built back up so that it’s stronger and not intolerable stress that leads to fractures or your bones curling up in the corner and saying, “I’m not worthy.”
Therefore, in theory, a weighted vest could provide such “good stress” to your bones like those comprising your spine, hips and lower extremities. A number of studies have supported the use of weight-bearing and resistance training in general to prevent bone loss and promote bone health. However, one may have a bone to pick about the studies on weighted vests specifically. For example, one study published in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy and another published in the The Journals of Gerontology: Series A did show promising results among post-menopausal women, suggesting that incorporating weighted vests into exercise programs was associated with less bone loss. However, these studies had relatively small numbers of participants. Another relatively small study of women from 30 to 60 years of age published in the Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand found no difference among those who wore weighted vests while walking versus those who didn’t.
The Risks Of Weighted Vests
Ultimately, your choice of workouts should be a balance between what the potential benefits may be, whether you will actually do the workout and hwo risky the workout may be specifically for you. A weighted vest isn’t the type of thing that will get others to say, “OMG, how brave of you to try that.” You should be careful if you do have some kind of injury in any part of your body that may be affected by the vest, particularly your neck, shoulders or back. It’s also better to play it safe and check with your doctor first if you lower bone density or some kind of muscle problem.
Of course, the risks can depend heavily on the type of weighted vest that you are using. You don’t want to just strap a bunch of barbells to a cashmere sweater vest and call it a weighted vest. Stick to a vest that’s been specifically designed and tested for the workout that you will be engaging in and make sure that the vest truly fits you. Make sure that the weight in the vest is properly balanced as well. You shouldn’t feel like the Leaning Tower of Pisa while walking.
Should you want to try the weighted vest thing, think of the Eagles song and take it easy from the start. Be conservative about how much weight you want to carry. Remember what may seem like no big deal at the beginning of a workout may not be that way in the middle of or even later in the workout. You can always gradually up your weight over the next bunch of workouts if you are aiming to weighted vest trash talk at your next cocktail party.
Stick to activities that are already part of an established and recommended weighted vest workout program. That certainly includes walking and walking on a treadmill. But you may not want to be playing weighted vest basketball or dancing weighted vest Oppan Gangnam Style just yet without first checking with and getting proper guidance from a legit fitness or health professional.
Keep in mind that while a properly fitting weighted should give you a fair amount of freedom of movement, you can’t just do anything that you would do without wearing a weighted vest. Be particularly mindful of maintain balance of your body. Be very careful when bending or leaning over. Use the same precautions that would if you were carrying something such as bending your knees and firing your abs.
Weighted vests do give you an other way to vary and enhance your workout. They certainly seem increasing in popualrity right now. One market report estimated the size of weighted vest market to be $205 Million in 2024 and expects this to grow to $350 million by 2033. However, when deciding how you should work out, remember to “p”— meaning use precision. You’ve got to do what works for you specifically. That includes choosing a workouts that you are more likely to complete, ones that your are fully-vested-in to continue. And that may or may not include a weighted vest.