Effects of Long Term Use of Weighted Vest

no idea where to post this. please move it to where you see fit :slight_smile:

a friend of mine is going to do an experiment on him self.

he is a parkour athlete. his goal is to get to the level that he is at now but with his weighted vest on. he will start at 2.5 kg and build up.

he has a few tests to see if he has gotten to his current level and is ready to move up the weight.
when he can do 3 muscle ups on rings, jump the same distance as he can now, and one other that i cant remember lol. when he can do those things he will move up the weight and see how far he can get.

hes basicaly going to wear the weighted vest at all times and see what happenes.

i think that he will get stronger and probably alot of hypertrophey (not nessisarily a good thing for parkour athlete) but he wont be able to move as quickley and may loose alot of speed. maybe his potential for speed will go up. but i think that a more balanced training program of heavy squats for strength and plyometrics and weighted vest box jumps for speed and power will give him much faster results.

i would be interested in hearing some educated guesses as to what will happen and what results he will get. (doing alot of climbing, running, jumping) also if there has been any studies on this type of thing.

No studies that I know of. I’ve heard that in the old days knights and other warriors would train bodyweight exercises with armor on for strength. I also heard that they lifted the old cast iron bells in training which is where the term ‘barbell’ and ‘dumbbell’ came from (if true).

I’ve been using a weighted vest on many of my bodyweight circuits for a while now. It definitely helps with strength in those movements and endurance. I also build circuits using more advanced exercises (ring pushups instead of regular pushups, etc). I work for improved times on these, works really well. I always avoid running with a vest on due to greater joint impact.