Weight Training Blog

A reader wrote in to me today with the following question:

Chris,

I ran across your site and wanted to pick your brain about weighted training vests.  The deal is:  my son-in-law is very VERY thin and wants to use a weighted training vest to improve his physical strength and increase muscle mass.  He told my daughter he really wants to use a weighted vest (50-70 lbs) to accomplish this.   My questions are:

1)  Are there any vests out there that are “expandable” – meaning, start out w/ 40 lb but have room for additional weight packets?
2)  Do you happen to know if these vests are good or bad for people with back problems?
3)  Can you recommend any of the weighted vests?

Thank you very much for any information you can give!

Regards,
The Mother in law. . . . 

I’m going to be honest here, I’ve never actually trained with a weighted vest before, but I have seen others who have trained with weighted vests. They typically do them while doing pull ups, chin ups, climbing ropes, or anything else that involves just the body as a form of resistance. If you use the vest in a manner like that, then I would have to say that it will help put on muscle mass in the targeted areas – in most of those exercises it would be the lats (back) and the biceps.

On the other hand, if he wanted to wear the vest simply while running, he’d more than likely lose weight rather than gain weight simply because the heavier you are, the more calories you will burn while running. For someone who is already very thin, I’d advise against running too much as that would only help to burn more calories that he or she might not be able to spare.

From what I have seen, most weighted vests are adjustable – They have pockets that will allow them to adjust from as little as 2 pounds, all the way up to 40 pounds. Rest assured that the majority of weighted vests advertise themselves as being adjustable if indeed they are.

As always, if someone has chronic back problems, special care should be used when lifting any weight – not just free weights – to avoid future injuries.

If he’s going down the route of doing pull ups, chin ups, and push ups and hasn’t really worked up his stamina and strength to be able to do many sets of each without struggle, a weight vest may be discouraging to him because of how much more difficult a weighted pull up can actually be. However, if he’s able to get more than 20 or so pull ups with just his body weight, then a weighted vest might be something he could get some use out of.

Hopefully that helps. Feel free to write back if you have any more questions about weighted vests.

So you’ve been around the gym for a while and you’ve been hearing the terms “body building” and “power lifting” being thrown around here and there. To the novice, these two terms are interchangeable. However, in reality they do have some differences. It’s true that they share many similarities, but the end results are where the major differences are noticed.

The end results of the two differ as follows:
Power lifting is solely concerned about how much weight can be lifted – mainly in three lifts which consist of squat, bench and dead lift – without much regard to how the body looks. Body building on the other hand is more concerned about looks (IE: Definition, fullness, vascularity, etc) rather than total weight lifted.

Getting to these end results requires different disciplines in training, as well as dieting. A power lifting workout routine will consist of a relatively few exercises with limited reps, but with very large amounts of weight allowing the person performing the lifts to only get out about 6 good, clean, safe lifts per set. With traditional body building, typically lighter amounts of weights are used across more exercises and more reps.

In regards to dieting, your typical power lifter doesn’t really care what he or she looks like. Therefore, they will eat pretty much whatever they can get their hands on that will provide them with some good, solid nutritional value. We’re not talking about pizza, fast food, and other fried foods here, but rather things like red meats, fish, eggs (not just egg whites), bread, and pasta. Body builders on the other hand are very conscious about what they look like, therefore their diets reflect this and are much more strict as a result. They mainly stick to foods that are low in fats and simple carbohydrates which include things like egg whites, fish, chicken, brown rice, and oatmeal.

Lifter or not, milk is something that most people over-look in their diets. I’ll admit that I was one of them too. For a while I was mainly drinking lots of water to stay hydrated which is alright, but what I forgot about was the vital vitamins and minerals that are found in milk that will help develop a stronger body.

Not only will it help supply vital nutrients to your body after a hard workout, but for those of you who are “hard gainers” will be able to put on some extra mass and pounds from the addition of milk to your diet.