Training Wearing A Weighted Vest

Training Wearing A Weighted Vest

Weighted vests are used by many people to add more resistance to their training. From amateur to professional sports people, and also regular people who are into keeping fit and want to make their usual training methods more intense.

Fitness and stamina will be greatly improved from training wearing a weighted vest. Your body will get used to the carrying the extra weight around, becoming much more efficient when not wearing the vest. You will feel very light, literally like a weight has been taken of your shoulders! After a while of exercising in the vest, training without it will feel so much easier then usual.

If your considering wearing a weighted vest and doing any form of training, from running, to press ups, pull ups, sit ups, or any other physically demanding exercises, the vest will make the exercises become twice as hard to carry out. Training in a weighted vest adds more pressure on certain parts of the body, and not just on your heart, muscles, and lungs either, but also on your bones, and nerves. It's common for people that have not been doing any form of exercise or training for a while to suddenly become eager to start back up, and they think, "i'll buy a weighted vest and start training", only to become injured pretty quickly because their body as a whole needed a few months to get back into the swing of just doing some normal training without any added weight. This way the body can slowly become used to being worked again. Wearing a weighted vest when you have not been training for a while is asking for trouble. Muscles, nerves, and bones need time to adapt, they are not used to the extra weight and need to be broken back in to a training routine gradually.

This is why training wearing a weighted vest should be done so with caution. If you are just getting back into training and are eager to wear your weighted vest, it is best to put the vest on and just go for a walk a few times. Then maybe do a few squats, a few press ups, get your body slowly used to the extra weight. If you don't let your body gradually get used to the extra weight you have a higher chance of injury. The most common injurys that occur from training too hard when you have not been training regularly are muscles and nerves seizing, or getting pulled, mainly in the neck, as well as the upper and lower back. Your neck and back are much more vunerable to just "go", seeing you become totally out of action, to the stage where you will have trouble doing normal, everyday tasks for at least a week, in many cases much longer. Anyone that's had this happen to them knows how painful it can be. These are not the only injurys that can suddenly pop up from wearing a weighted vest when your body isn't used to the strain.
 
Bad knees are another very common problem that people report from using a weighted vest to go running in, causing aching, and damaged knees from the extra weight. This is why you should train without the vest, get your fitness to a high level, then try out the weighted vest. Even if your fit and exercise regularly you should still take it easy when wearing a weighted vest the first few times. Of course, you can get injured like this from not wearing a weighted vest, but by wearing one, you maximize the risk.

Only wear a weighted vest for training when you have been exercising regularly, for at least 6-8 weeks without the vest. This way your muscles, tendons, bones and nerves are much more capable of handling the extra weight from wearing the vest without injury. Your body will adapt and become stronger the more you work it. Keeping active is vital, but overwork your body when it has been used to doing no training for a while and you will pay the price with an injury.

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