What to Expect When Walking With a Weighted Vest (Rucking)

Adding weight does make your body work harder, but fitness training guidelines show that more weight does not automatically equal more results. Any extra load is going to make your body work harder and increase your metabolic demand and your calorie burn, which is why many people find the weighted vest is the more comfortable method to add resistance during cardio.

A weighted vest looks like something a cute little dog would wear, but it's loaded with heavy plates or sandbags or iron sand. The idea is add weight, burn more calories, and build strength. The term rucking comes from the military where they carry heavy rucks sacks for long distances, and that term is kind of thrown around with any sort of walking with weight.

Andy is an NCAA champion athlete and a former wildland firefighter. To qualify for that job, they had to do what is called a pack test: wear a 45 lb weighted vest and walk, not run, 3 miles in under 45 minutes, with the same standard applied to both men and women. This past month, he wore a 12 lb weighted vest on his walk every day.

Adding weight means burning more calories. Research shows that adding about 10% of your body weight will increase your energy expenditure by roughly 10%. In practical terms, if you burn 200 calories on your walk, a vest might bump that up to 220. It's not huge, but over time those calories will add up.

You still need a daily calorie deficit to lose weight.

Weightbearing exercises help build bone density, and a vest adds a little extra stimulus, but studies show modest benefits. Older women wearing weighted vests and jump training for a 5-year period increased bone density in the hip by about 4%. Walking with a weighted vest might give your hips and bones a little extra boost.

A weighted vest leaves your hands free and doesn't change your gait like holding dumbbells or wearing ankle weights might do. You just put it on and walk.

A Stanford study showed that walking at a comfortable pace has shown to boost creative thinking by up to 60%. In Andy's experience over the past month wearing his weighted vest, his brain was mostly free for creative thought, but not quite as good as if he was walking without weight.

Walking with extra load means more muscles kick in. Your legs, especially your quads and your calves, push harder each step, and your core and your back have to stabilize the extra weight. Because the vest sits on your shoulders, your upper back and traps have to work to keep the vest into position.

This is all low intensity steady resistance — it's not enough to build big muscle, but if you don't do any strength training at all, it is enough to cause muscle hypertrophy, which means muscle growth. Over time, you might see a little bit more muscle growth, you'll feel stronger in those areas, and you'll have more muscular endurance for those weighted walks.

Andy bought a 12 lb weighted vest that came out to about 7% of his body weight. His first impression was, "Wow, this is really heavy" — and he's a guy who goes to the gym every day and lifts really heavy weights, talking like 225 on the bench. A 12 lb weighted vest doesn't seem like that much, but for something like a walk, it actually was kind of heavy.

Wearing a weighted vest will raise the center of gravity in your body, so it made him feel a little tipsy. After walking for about 30 minutes, he could really feel the muscle engagement in his quads, his inner thighs, his heels, and the bottom of his feet. Every step just had much more weight. Most importantly, he felt it in his traps, his upper back — and since he works his back all the time in the gym with a lot of heavy weight, he has a feeling you're going to feel that in your back too.

There's a potential that walking with weight is going to increase the size of your muscles in certain areas versus others. The repetitive load of walking with weight puts more emphasis on your quads from taking those steps, your calves, and your upper back or the trapezius muscle, but not so much your arms like your deltoids or your biceps. Additionally, this extra weight doesn't really put load on your glutes either.

The result: you might strengthen or slightly enlarge your quads, your calves, and your upper back without really seeing any additional gains in size in your glutes.

Just because a weighted vest can add a few % of density to your bones doesn't mean that's going to make such a big impact on the outcome. According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, lifting weights or walking with weights might increase bone density by only a few%, but it is estimated that a 20% increase in bone density is needed to offset fractures. Therefore, the biggest protector against fractures is actually training to avoid falls in the first place, and that means good balance and leg strength.

Extra weight means extra stress on your body. There have been accounts of people with neck or back issues having problems with weighted vests. If you have plantar fasciitis, that extra weight is going to add even more pressure on the bottom of your feet. The increase in center of gravity is also going to mean a higher risk of falling down — Andy felt this firsthand when he attempted to do lunges with the vest on.

A weighted vest is for three groups:

- The plateaued walker: if you're already walking regularly and you need more of a challenge without going further or faster, a weighted vest can help, especially with that extra 10% calorie burn. - The social walker: if you love walking with groups and at an easy pace, wearing a vest can make that same workout more challenging still while keeping your hands and your mind free. - The feels hardcore crowd: you might love the badass vibes of a weighted vest. If it makes you feel motivated and tough and gets you out exercising, then that's a big win.

A weighted vest is not for:

- Pure fat loss seekers. If you think a vest alone will shred fat, think again. The extra calorie burn is modest, just 10%. Without diet discipline, you're not going to see any changes in your body fat. - People concerned with physique changes. If you're afraid of adding muscle to your thighs and your traps, your upper back, a heavy vest might not be ideal. Those physique changes might be minor, but if you wear a vest heavy enough, you're going to get some muscle hypertrophy or muscle growth just in those areas. - Those with pain or balance issues. If you have existing knee, back, or foot problems, or you struggle with your balance, adding weight could make this a lot worse and potentially even dangerous.

It's widely recommended that if you do get a weighted vest, you start very light. Somewhere around 5% of your body weight is a good place to start — even Andy, when he tried 7%, felt that was kind of heavy. Later, he recommends starting light, somewhere around five or maybe 10% of your body weight, but for a lot of people he thinks it's probably unnecessary.

If you just have your 1 hour a day for your workout and you've been walking but want to level it up — especially if you want to target your glutes and improve your balance — add body weight exercises:

1. Start your 60-minute workout session with 15 minutes of body weight moves. 2. Do alternating lunges for three sets of 10. 3. Then do squats for three sets of 10. 4. With the remaining 45 minutes of your workout, go on your regular walk.

If you haven't done these in the past 6 months, you're going to be sore the next day just from your own body weight. This combination helps target your glutes, builds leg strength, and improves your balance better than walking alone.

For the overachievers, you can still wear the weighted vest while you do these leg exercises. In fact, NASM even suggests wearing a weighted vest while you do body weight exercises to make them more effective. However, Andy was wearing the weighted vest after his gym workout and he could barely even do a couple lunges, so this is going to be really hard.

Fitness prudence is about making smart, intentional choices instead of chasing around fads and trends. Prudence means asking, "Does this actually move me closer to my goal?" It's not just about doing more. It's about doing what's effective for you. A weighted vest might be a great tool, or it might be totally unnecessary.

A weighted vest can totally ramp up your walking workouts: you'll burn 10% more calories, challenge your muscles, and even nudge up your bone strength. However, these benefits are relatively small overall, and you have to use the vest wisely to avoid strain. Start light, somewhere around five or maybe 10% of your body weight — but for a lot of people, it's probably unnecessary. You're much better off adding body weight exercises in the beginning of your walk.

A friend of Andy's, an occupational therapist, told him they used to give weighted vests to kids with autism because it helps them feel grounded, and back in the day they actually used fishing vests with ziplock bags full of sand in the pockets.

When Andy walked one day without the vest, the walk was a lot more enjoyable for him. He was fully able to let his mind wander and think about his work, and he didn't have that feeling of, "When is the walk going to be over?"

Andy linked the exact vest he bought in the description. He wanted something affordable, so he chose one of the cheapest options he could find: it was $23. The prices on Amazon bounce around all the time, and the prices change when you click the different amount of weight on the vest.