Wearing a weighted workout vest is a hot new trend making its way into many areas of training. It is becoming particularly common among runners. The idea behind this heavy piece of clothing is to give you the chance to benefit from weights without having to carry them. It is meant to help you to get more out of your workout.

What is a Weighted Workout Vest Supposed to Do?

A weighted workout vest is precisely what it sounds like. It is a piece of clothing worn in the same way as a regular vest. However, this one has small weights worked into it. It is work similar to puffy vests for wintertime or life vests for boaters.

Due to its design, a weighted workout vest requires your body to have to carry extra weight. Therefore, any workouts you do while wearing them will require you to have to work harder. This includes anything from walking, jogging or running to pull-ups, burpees or climbing. It may not seem like too much at first, but it doesn’t take long to notice the difference.

Wearing a weighted workout vest forces you to have to burn more energy to complete any normal exercise. In theory, this can boost fat burning, muscular endurance and cardio capacity as well as boost your strength. It’s the same concept as holding dumbbells or wrist weights while you run, only instead of having to have the weights in your hands or around your wrists, it’s dispersed over your whole upper body.

Will a Weighted Workout Vest Boost Your Workout Performance?

If you want to up the challenge and, therefore, results from your workout, a weighted workout vest may very well do the trick. Give a couple of moves a try when you try the vest on in the store. Try a burpee. Just one. You’ll see a difference. That should be a good demo of what you can expect from everything else.

If your workout is already quite challenging to you, you might not need a weighted workout vest quite yet. However, if you want to keep walking for the same length of time, but your maximum speed just isn’t doing it for you anymore, this could be the tool for you. If you’ve started finding your jumps, burpees or other moves aren’t what they used to be, this could boost your performance and results.

Studies have shown that an adult woman walking on a flat treadmill at a regular pace wearing a vest that weighed the equivalent to 15 percent of her body weight burned about 12 percent more calories than similar women who were not wearing a weighted workout vest.