This article is designed to give you an insight into the many different way you can use weight vests. Weight vests can be used to increase the challenge of strength, power and body weight exercises.
Weight vests work really well with strength exercises that specifically challenge one body part over another. The overhead squat is a good example of this, the weight you use is limited by the amount of weight you can stabilise over head, not by your leg strength. By adding the weight vest you’re increasing the stress on your lower body without increasing stress on the upper body. There are a lot of exercises for which the weight vest can be used in this way, like farmers walks where the limiting factor is your grip rather than leg strength.
The weight vest can be used with power exercises like the kettlebell push press. Again this will increase the challenge to the lower body, but this time it increases the challenge on the upper body as well. This is because you’re not getting as much power going into the kettlebell from your legs as you would normally. This would be a great overload if you were looking to make the weight harder before you move up to a heavier kettlebell.
Weight vests are the one of the best ways to load body weight exercises because the weight sits around the core torso. This means that the resistance will be more evenly distributed when you’re working out. In other words it doesn’t have a tendency to pull you backwards or forward. For example chin ups with a vest is a different exercise to chin ups with a weight hanging from your waist. They are both great exercises, but it just means that chin ups with a vest have a greater carry over to body weight chins because the torso path is the same with the vest. For the same reason, weight vests are great for loading plyometrics or any agility drills. They also work really well for agility drills because they force you for decelerate harder.
When using the above exercises with lighter loads, say in circuit training, the weight vest increases the demands of every exercise, by making you work a little harder just to carry the extra load on your body the whole time. In this way it can even be used for body-weight exercises to make it a little harder without the need to incorporate other equipment.
Exercise ideas:
Strength/Power
- Farmers walks
- Drop snatch
- Side dead lift
- Jerk push press
- OH squat
- One arm dead lift
- Renegade row
- Walking lunges
- KB squats
Body weight exercise
- GHR
- Running- SPP
- Agility drills
- Speed drills
- Planks
- Push ups
- Pull ups
- Jumping squats
- Jumping lunges
- Conditioning drill