Build serious muscle without stepping foot in the gym
Post Includes 3 huge benefits of weighted vest training, best tips to build muscle, and an 8 move muscle building/fat burning circuit
One of my greatest weapons when it comes to making gains is weighted vest training. This simple piece can take your physique and fitness to new levels without ever lifting a weight, whether it’s being worn on your torso or held in your hands. You can make a cardio session or fat-torching HIIT circuit much more challenging by donning one of these.
You can perform all sorts of exercises with this vest, in particular bodyweight exercises, but now with the added challenge of shifting the additional weight as you work out. And if you’re getting strong enough so the vest isn’t much of a challenge anymore? Get a heavier one!
There are even vests that you can add weight to, so when you need to make the workout harder (for example if you’re doing a pyramid style training session), you can simply slip the extra weights on to add more resistance to the next set.
In my humble opinion this simple piece of equipment is essential to any home gym set-up for anyone looking to build muscle at home. The benefits you can reap from using one of these are incredible. Here are 3 right off the bat:
Simplest way to add resistance to any workout
Whether you want to make gains with weighted vest training, improve cardiovascular performance, or torch fat, weighted vests are a simple yet excellent choice to do this.
- For muscle building, chuck on the vest before performing all sorts of bodyweight exercises (like squats, push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, calf raises). Or add extra resistance to exercises already using weights (like barbell front or back squats, deadlifts).
- For boosting your cardio sessions, go for a run or jog donning the vest to really build up some stamina & endurance. You’ll struggle a bit more at first, but soon build yourself up to an incredible level before long. It’s why the army & special forces use them so often!
- For torching unwanted fat, perform a weighted vest circuit involving many of the compound moves above to really shed off those pounds and build a shredded physique.
Easy way to save money while making gains
Spending lots of money on equipment for your home gym is unnecessary once you’ve got one of these. I got a 10kg vest for £37, and that as a one-off investment has massively boosted my workouts since I bought it nearly two years ago. It’s a shortcut to making gains in your wallet as well as in your training.
Clever way to improve performance in many disciplines
The performance benefits from using a weighted vest are huge. Simply adding this to your cardio or HIIT workouts will increase the amount of calories you burn by some distance. Your body is working harder with the vest on, because you’ve got to make more effort to fight against the additional weight the vest has given you. If you ran 3km with the vest on compared to if you didn’t, you’ve put in considerably more effort to get that far while wearing that additional weight.
This principle works similarly for doing a bodyweight circuit too. The added weight of the vest means you’re having to push that much harder to perform each rep, and once you’ve done a whole circuit of say 4, or 6, or even more moves, you will have torched much more calories & worked your muscles that much harder by simply having that extra weight on you. This is a very efficient way to build great muscles and shred fat all at once. But it isn’t easy!
Tips for Making Gains Using a Weighted Vest
The best way to maximise all-round muscle building using the vest is to think of all your muscle groups you would normally work on, and make sure you’re hitting all of them in the best way that you can. For example, a typical split for a bodybuilder going into the gym regularly would be a push/pull/legs split across 3 days.
For push day, you’ll be looking at working the chest, shoulders, and triceps. This is fairly straightforward to adapt to weighted vest training, as you can do push-ups and raised-leg push-ups to work your chest and some of your shoulders. Then diamond push-ups can test your triceps.
For pull day, to keep things simple you can perform pull-ups and chin-ups with varying grips to work all sorts of muscles in your back and biceps. You could even hold the vest in your hand to perform a bicep curl, if you don’t have any barbells or dumbbells.
For leg day, a squat becomes that much harder with a weighted vest on, and you can either just wear a vest, or add the vest’s resistance to weights you’re already using, like a barbell. Lunges, hip thrusts, and calf raises can also be cranked up by adding the vest’s weight to the exercise.
Workouts don’t have to follow this split though. Of course you can do all sorts of training splits, and full-body circuits or workouts too, which have been upgraded by training with the vest on.
Progressive Overload Using the Vest
Stick to your core training principles and adapt them to weighted vest training: always follow the progressive overload principle, and use many methods to apply this. The obvious way to progressively overload is to add weight, but if you vest is only at 10kg, some other methods can help here.
If you’re performing 10 reps in a set for example, you can increase the amount of reps each time you workout. Or slow each rep down to make them harder (3 seconds on the negative phase of the move this workout, 4 seconds on the negative phase next workout, etc). Or make it a drop set by throwing off the vest after a set to smash out another set without rest. There are so many ways to keep building muscle without needing to add weight.
Here’s our resident model wearing the latest AW22 range in weighted vest:
I kid. It’s me in a vest I got 2 years ago.
The Weighted Vest Workout
Now let’s reap the benefits and make gains using weighted vest training. Try this gruelling circuit for torching body fat & building a solid all-round physique in one hit. Perform each move for 30 seconds, then move straight onto the next one without resting. Once you’ve completed the circuit, rest for 1 minute, then perform 2 more sets. Tell me you’re not exhausted at the end!
Move 1: Jump Squat – With feet shoulder width apart, sink into a squat, before explosively pushing through your heels and jumping. Land and repeat.
Move 2: Pull-up – Grab the bar so your forearms are vertical, and with your legs straight, pull your body up until your chest is almost touching the bar. Lower and repeat.
Move 3: Raised-leg Push-up – Get into a push-up position and place your feet onto a raised object (a stool?), before lowering your chest to the floor and pushing back up. Repeat.
Move 4: Crunch – With your hands touching the side of your head, contract your abs and bring your torso up about 45 degrees, then lower and repeat.
Move 5: Jump Lunge – From a lowered lunge position with your left leg in front, explosively drive both feet into the floor to jump, and switch legs while in the air, before landing and lowering into a lowered lunge position again with your right leg in front. Repeat to swap back your legs again, and continue until the 30 seconds are up.
Move 6: Chin-up – Grab the bar with your palms facing you and about 6 inches apart, before pulling your body up until your chin is, you guessed it, just above the bar. Lower and repeat.
Move 7: Standard push-up – Try this with your hands quite wide to mimic a wide-grip bench press to make each push-up harder! Lower your chest to the floor, push-up, and repeat.
Move 8: Side Planks – Laying on your side, push your body up so your weight is on your elbow & forearm, before lifting your hips to form a straight line from your head to your toes. Hold for 15 seconds then repeat on the other side.
Give this workout a try, and once you’ve started to master it, increase the time taken per move to keep increasing the difficulty and making gains with weighted vest training. No slacking here!! More workouts, recipes and content coming soon.
