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Can A Weighted Vest Make Your Walk More Effective? I Tested It

Author: Ava Durgin

March 23, 2026

Assistant Health Editor

By Ava Durgin

Assistant Health Editor

Ava Durgin is the former Assistant Health Editor at mindbodygreen. She holds a B.A. in Global Health and Psychology from Duke University.

Image by Ava Durgin x mbg creative

March 23, 2026

I’ll admit it…

The weighted vest trend got me.

It started the way most of my health experiments do: a few intriguing studies, a handful of expert quotes, and just enough testimonials to make me wonder if I was missing out on something simple.

Research claims they burned more calories just by wearing a vest during walks. Some said it improved strength and posture. Others swore it made their workouts more efficient without adding extra time.

As someone who already walks every morning, the promise was appealing: same workout, better results.

So, naturally, I had to test it.

Over two weeks, I repeated the exact same walk four times. Same route, same distance, same time of day, same pace. Two walks with a weighted vest, two without.

Then I compared the data.

The results? Not what I expected.

But before getting into the numbers, let’s talk about why weighted vests have become such a popular fitness tool in the first place.

Why weighted vests are suddenly everywhere

Weighted vests aren’t new, but they’ve definitely moved from the CrossFit world into everyday fitness routines. Several research-backed claims have fueled their rise:

First, the calorie burn claim

Studies1 suggest that wearing a weighted vest equal to about 10% of body weight can significantly increase energy expenditure compared to exercising without one. In theory, carrying extra weight forces your body to work harder, even during low-intensity activities like walking, making it a potentially efficient tool for weight management.

Second, strength & endurance

Because the resistance is distributed across your torso, weighted vests engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously. Walking suddenly requires more effort from your legs, core, and stabilizing muscles. Even simple movements, like stairs, lunges, or squats, become more demanding.

Then there’s bone health

Bones respond to load. When you apply stress through resistance or impact, they remodel and strengthen over time. Weighted vests increase skeletal loading, which researchers believe may help support bone density when combined with strength or impact training. That said, the evidence here is mixed—some studies2 show benefits, while others find little change3—so the research is still evolving.

Taken together, it’s a compelling argument. Which is exactly why I decided to run my own mini experiment.

My weighted vest experiment

For this test, I used the OMORPHO G-Vest Icon, an adjustable weighted vest that can go up to 12 pounds. I wore it at its heaviest weight for every vest walk.

The structure of the experiment was intentionally simple. I completed four identical walks:

- ~60 minutes

- 3.6 miles

- The same route

- At roughly the same pace

Two walks were done wearing the vest. Two were done without it.

I tracked everything using my Oura ring and fitness watch, including heart rate, calories burned, step count, and pace.

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The results

When I compared the numbers from all four walks, something immediately jumped out.

They were… basically the same.

- Every walk clocked in at 3.6 miles in 62 minutes.

- Step counts were around 6,800 steps each time.

- Calories burned sat between 232 and 233 calories.

At first glance, it looked like the weighted vest made almost no difference at all. I expected to see at least a noticeable bump in calories or heart rate.

But the numbers barely budged.

Image by Ava Durgin x mbg creative

The one metric that actually changed

There was one measurable difference, though, and it showed up in my heart rate zones.

On the walk where I spent the most time in Zone 1, I was wearing the weighted vest. During that session, about 35 minutes of the walk fell into Zone 1, compared to closer to 20 minutes during one of the non-vest walks.

That’s not a dramatic shift, but it does suggest my cardiovascular system was working slightly harder while wearing the vest, even if the overall averages didn’t move much.

So while calorie burn and pace stayed almost identical, the vest did nudge my heart rate upward enough to spend more time in a higher effort zone.

In terms of measurable differences, that was the most notable one.

What the data doesn’t show

While the data stayed consistent, my experience definitely did not.

The vest walks felt dramatically harder.

About 20 minutes in, I noticed my legs working more during small hills. My posture was more upright. My core was engaged without me thinking about it.

But the biggest difference was psychological. Those 62 minutes felt much longer. Not miserable, j