What weight to start with on a weighted vest

A weighted vest is the cheapest way to keep progressing once bodyweight stops being hard. It is also the piece of kit most often bought two sizes too heavy and then left in a cupboard.

It depends entirely on what you are using it for

These are two different purchases and people confuse them constantly.

Walking and rucking

Start at about 10 percent of bodyweight. For most people that is 12 to 20 lb. You are going to wear this for forty minutes or more, so comfort and fit matter more than the number. Too heavy and your stride shortens and your shoulders round, which is when a walk stops being useful.

An adjustable vest makes sense here, because the right weight for a thirty minute walk and the right weight for a ninety minute one are not the same.

Pull-ups and dips

Different problem. Here the weight is added to a movement where you might only manage six to ten reps unloaded, so a small number goes a long way.

Start at 10 lb. If you can do ten strict pull-ups, 20 lb is reasonable. Most people who can do fifteen clean pull-ups are working somewhere around 25 to 30 lb, and that is a serious amount of load on the elbows and shoulders.

For this, a fixed vest that sits tight to the torso beats an adjustable one, because anything that swings at the top of a pull-up turns a strength exercise into a balance exercise.

Fit decides whether you keep using it

The vest should sit high and snug on the chest with the straps pulled in. If it drops toward your stomach when you move, the load swings and every rep gets harder in a way that teaches you nothing.

Weight in pockets front and back keeps the load close to your centre. Weight that hangs off the front does not.

Adding load without stalling

Go up in the smallest increment the vest allows, and only when your current weight is clean for every rep of every set. Pull-ups and dips load the elbows fast, and elbows adapt slower than the muscles pulling on them.

A sensible pattern: run a weight for three weeks, add the smallest step, repeat. If your rep count drops by more than two when you add, you added too much.

If you are not getting unloaded pull-ups yet, the vest is not the next purchase. An assist band is.