It is easy to see how weighted vests can make your workouts more challenging. Find out whether this also results in building muscle or not.
Whether or not weighted vests will build muscle depends on things like your current strength level, what movements you do, how heavy the weighted vest is, your nutrition, and how much rest you give your body.
As a rough general guideline, if you can do a movement for more than 25 repetitions in a row while wearing a weighted vest, you will likely not build any muscle.
Exercises that are more challenging than this have the potential to help you grow and strengthen your muscles.
Since some muscles are stronger than others, the optimal weight of the vest can vary from exercise to exercise. This makes good adjustable weighted vests valuable workout tools.
What it takes to build muscle
To grow and strengthen muscles you first of all have to put them under enough pressure and with enough repetitions and sets.
These things start a variety of internal processes to make the muscles better prepared for similar efforts in the future.
Something important to keep in mind is that you still need to give your body enough nutrients and rest on top of that.
How much resistance and how many repetitions and sets are enough to build muscle varies from individual to individual and movement to movement.
For a person who is used to squatting 200 pounds (90.7 kg) walking up the stairs will likely not be enough to see significant muscle growth.
On the flip side, someone who is not used to working out could build some muscle by climbing stairs and skipping a step each stride.
Additionally, some muscles are bigger and stronger than others. You will need a lot more weight to grow the strong glute (butt) muscles than to grow your bicep muscles.
Do weighted vests build muscle?
So to build muscle you have to make certain movements hard enough, do enough repetitions of these, provide your body with enough nutrients, and rest enough.
In short, one of the benefits of weighted vests is that they could help you build muscle.
How heavy your weighted vest should be
To build muscle, a rough guideline is that your weighted vest should be heavy enough so that you can barely complete 5 to 25 repetitions per set of the exercise you do.
For some individuals, bodyweight pushups will be enough for optimal chest, tricep, and deltoid gains. Others need to do pushups with a weighted vest of 70 pounds (31.8 kg).
On the other hand, to make squats challenging enough with a weighted vest, experienced lifters may need a model of 150 pounds (68 kg).
What muscles do weighted vests work?
Because weighted vests can be used to add extra resistance in so many different movements, you can say that they can help you work basically every important muscle.
For example, in pushups, a weighted vest will help you work your chest, tricep, and shoulder muscles more.
In walking and running, the weighted vest will help you work your glutes (butt), hamstrings (back thighs), quadriceps (front thighs), calves, hip adductors (inner thighs), and hip abductors (outer thighs) more.
Weighted vest exercises to build muscle
There are many weighted vest exercises to choose from. Some will be better than others for building muscle.
For example, running and walking with a weighted vest will likely not build that much, if any, muscle since these exercises are typically done at an intensity where you can do them for at least a few minutes and many “repetitions”.
Some examples of weighted vest exercises to build muscle include:
- Squats to build quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, calves, and erector spinae
- Pull-ups to build latissimus dorsi, biceps, and scapular muscles
- Pushups to build chest, tricep, and shoulder muscles
- Good morning to build glutes, hamstrings, and erector spinae
- Pike pushups to build shoulder and tricep muscles
There are many other options but these movements help you work most of the important muscles.
Make sure to adjust the resistance so you can do about 5 to 25 repetitions per set of the exercise. You will likely have to increase the weight of the vest as you get stronger over time.
