A Weighted Vest Adds Stamina

Jan 15

I am a big believer in pushing cardio, and in building stamina. Kettlebells are really good at building both of those blocks for better health, but sometimes you just need an extra nudge to keep your body honest, and your mind at full capacity.

My weighted vest adds a lot of natural resistance to my walking workouts. Sometimes I just do squats instead of walking. I do have a fear of being outside the house, and not being able to get myself back home because my weight is weighing me down!

My vest is a short-vest version, so it sits pretty much only on my ribcage, and doesn’t touch my stomach or interfere with my breathing at all.

When I started using a weighted vest, I was using about 30 lbs of weight, and I’ve now doubled that weight to the full capacity of the vest. Yes, 60 lbs is a lot of weight to carry around! You get winded faster. Your stamina dies quicker. Your heart rate immediately rises. You might just get stranded on a street corner, gasping for air, if you’re not careful.

Now the scary thing about carrying around 60 lbs of additional weight is not the weight itself — it is in the irritating unwieldiness of getting the thing over your head! 60 lbs in a non-conformist package is something that will transform your life, in bad ways, if you are not careful.

Picking up this weighted vest is like trying to wrangle a bunch of puppies in a sack who are playing with kittens. The weight shifts, and shorts you, and surprises you. Just lifting it up enough to go over your giant head (well, my giant head) and then slowly lowering it to your shoulders without shearing off both ears, is a feat of strength that will challenge any Kettlebeller.

The trouble with using a heavy weighted vest is getting it off your shoulders when you’re done working out. It is difficult for me to unstrap and then lift up 60 lbs of moving weight back over my giant head and then gently returning it to my weight bench for cleaning.

What I do, when I am especially weak, is I use my bed to help me remove the vest. I unstrap. I then kneel before the bed, and I gently lift up the back of the vest and lean forward on the edge of the bed to remove the vest by maneuvering the back part of the vest over my head and onto the bed.

I have to be careful, and strong, not to drop 30 lbs of half of vest on the back of my head during removal — believe me, it happens! It can happen. It has happened! — and to then move my head, and ears, out of the vest while my elbows, on the bed, do their best to hold up the weight for my removal. Yes, it’s a silly, but sacred process.

I may have been better served to leave the whole vest weight at 30 lbs instead of bumping it up double, but ego, and pride, and temptation, are powerful pillars of power — and once you go up in weight, you never really want to travel back to where you were before you realized your best success.