Walking with wrist weights

Anyone know whether walking with wrist weights is more beneficial than walking without?

Leonard Schwartz has a book out called Heavy Hands where he claims that there's a benefit to it, but meh, I think that he's very much overstating the case of how much better using some weights when walking is. Wrist weights at least have the advantage over ankle weights that they aren't as likely to cause long term joint and tendon damage, but I'm still skeptical.

 you might want to see what Leonard has to say about it, but color me skeptical, at least.

I'm not sure what your goal is, but if you want to burn more calories when you walk, try carrying a backpack with some books in it.  This assumes you are just walking, not jogging.  Also, they have vests that you can wear and add/subtract weights.  I can't imagine that wrist weights are going to be heavy enough to burn many more calories, but I would imagine that 20 pounds or so in a backpack, or a weight vest would make more difference. 

Of course you could always burn more calories by walking faster/farther or on an incline...   but as I say I'm not sure what your goals are.

I wondered about this as well because I am a walker.  I tried doing some on-line research and what I read was not to use them, because they can throw your balance off.  I bought a pair anyway and tried them, I found that they slowed me down so I stopped using them.  I figured any small thing I could gain from carrying them wouldn't make up for the speed I lost.  I have also read, like the above poster suggested, that carrying the weight in a backpack is better.

there are also thigh weights that work well whether you are walking or running. I'd be hesitant for using the wrist weights for anything other than toning exercises, due to the risk of injury.

melkor:  Dr. Schwartz would agree that just sticking weights on your wrists wouldn't be useful.  HeavyHands is about much more than just doing that.  Done "right", it's challenging.  I suspect this enthusiast is sincere :

http://members.tripod.com/~salty_eagle/HH_mar ty.html

...

The demise of Heavyhands, an amazingly effective system of cardiovascular fitness, was unfortunate. The training aid wasn't a fake or a fraud; its death was due to the faulty technique of its users. It deserves to be exhumed and dusted off. Utilized correctly, Heavyhands is one of the most intense, effective and time-efficient forms of aerobic training ever devised.

Clarence Bass wrote a few articles about it on his site, and an experiment he tried hints at why "the real deal" can be effective:  he set his treadmill to a fixed, relatively relaxed speed, and strapped on a good heart rate monitor.  Then he measured his heart rate while doing various things with dinky one-pound hand weights until reaching steady state.

Walking without weights, his heart rate reached 86 beats per minute (bpm).  As he expected, grabbing 1-pound weights and pumping them to waist level only increased that to 89 bpm -- just a tiny bit harder.  Then he tried pumping the weights higher, first up to shoulder level, then to head level, and finally all the way overhead.  Heart rate increased significantly the higher he pumped, maxing out at 138 bpm with the full-range "all the way overhead" pumping.  Schartz predicted all of that .

He's in phenomenal shape, so that surprised him:  you can indeed greatly increase heart rate (and so also, by implication, oxygen consumption and calorie burn rate) just by adding various sustained, vigorous, full range-of-motion arm movements, against light resistance, to moderate-pace walking.

Increase the weights, walking rate, & duration and this can get very hard indeed.  But, of course, most people don't follow instructions for long, and then blame lack of results on the program.

Old-time Olympic coach Harry Sneider independently developed a similar scheme for use on rebounders (mini-trampolines), using light handheld sandbags.  I have a lot more experience with that form, and can testify it delivers a great cardiovascular workout just as intense as you can tolerate pushing yourself.

Both forms work the shoulders relentlessly, hitting lots of the smaller muscles hard to get at with free weights.  It makes a nice complement to lifting weights, and, once you get reasonably good at it, on "cardio days" can get you the calorie burn rate of running hard without the leg and foot pounding running entails.  I prefer the rebounder form, because that's easier on joints than even walking is, more core muscles are engaged to maintain balance, and boosting jump height hits leg muscles harder than walking can.

Frankly if you are wondering if they are more beneficial than walking without weights at all, the answer would be yes. If it slows you down, it is just temporary while your body readjusts and then eventually gets strong enought o move just as fast with them than without them.

It doesn't matter if it only burns a little more calories, its the little more calories that it does that matters.

Plus a lot of people, when they are trying to lose weight, forget about their arms and then end up with some pretty serious saggy arm, so walking with wrist weights (or wrap them higher up around your arm, if they are the velcro-wrap kind) will help to tone them while walking.

If you haven't bought anything yet, I would suggest the weight vest for the most beneficial.. although they a probably much more expensive. But, as I said before, any little bit will help more, and the wrist weights will help avoid saggy arms =]

I have never read where this is recommended. However, I have used hand weights in the past on the treadmill. I currently use them while walking hills. I use them because they tone my arms. I am VERY careful regarding my form... the basics, shoulders down and back, stand up straight,do not rock side to side .You do have to walk slower but faster doesn't neccasarily mean better. I wear a neoprene wrist brace to protect a gaglian cyst( this developed before I started with the weights).I started with very light weights , about 1.5 lbs.each, and increased as I felt comfortable.I am up to 3 pounds each now and I don't think I will add any more. My weights are sand in neoprene and look like no finger gloves,they wrap around my palms and the back of my hand. They secure around the hand and wrist.

Once I felt comfortable simply walking with my hands in a natural position I started to pump the weights, following the natural rythym you use when walking , flexing as I raise my hands to about waist level bending at the elbow.This should be a natural fluid motion. I do this when I'm on level ground or a slight incline.

Uphill walking , I keep my elbows bent and follow the form recomended on this sight.

Downhill I extend my elbows back, do NOT strain, and pump my arms backward.

In all I keep my elbows close to my body.I find that this works all the muscles in my arms and shoulders. I walk 5 days a week for an hour each time and I use the hand weights 3 times a week with a weighted vest.

I  have worked up to using a weighted vest...I started with a back pack at 10 pounds. I wrapped hand weights in a towel and strapped it on snug. The danger with this is that the weight is not evenly distributed on your body and can cause strain or injury. Belts and vest are reccommended for that reason. Leg and thigh weights were never reccommended in my research but please do your own.

I find the vest is so much more comfortable and I add 2 pounds each month. Of course you will have to figure out what works for you.

On cc the more weight I add the more calories I burn.

I hope this helps but above ALL else please be VERY careful if you decide to try weights with your walking...start slow and small and stay safe.

Hmm, that was interesting - and yeah, I buy the argument Marty makes that results from skimping on intensity would be notoriously lacking.

 I think my friend O. has a copy of the original book, I'll see if I can borrow his for a while and see what it says - I certainly think he's on to something when he points to cross-country skiers as having high VoMax values, though I think it should be noted that it's generally common for endurance athletes :-P

 And now you have me thinking of my old notion of getting a rebounder - I think most cardio is plain boring, but you and 2beittybitty both seem to like the bouncing fun of using a mini-trampoline ;)

About Vo2max, it seems intuitively obvious that firing more muscle tissue requires more oxygen for fuel, and for a pleasant change reality actually seems to match intuition for once .  As I recall, as a group rowers score highest on absolute VO2max (liters of oxygen consumed per minute, regardless of how much they weigh), but c.c.- skiers rise to the top for "normalized" VO2max (the absolute rate divided by body mass, or by various small powers of body mass -- e.g., the Wikipedia article mentions that some authors normalize VO2max via dividing by body mass raised to the power 2/3 (or, as they put it, the cube root of the square), but that's not the only variation in use).  Regardless, c.c. skiing and rowing both engage major muscles all the way from toes to neck.

What's surprising here to me is how much tougher walking or rebounding can be made by adding vigorous & "long" arm movements while holding small hand weights.  Suppose you do add a pound to each hand.  Then each time you pump your hands to waist level (basically half a curl), you're doing 2 foot-pounds of extra work (rasiing 2 pounds total about a foot).  Raise the weights all the way overhead, and that's about 3 feet, for a total of 6 foot-pounds of extra work.  But, just try it, and I expect you'll find it increases the intensity by much more than a factor of 3 (compared to pumping just to waist level).

IOW, there's a seemingly "something for nothing" boost here.  Maybe it's because just pumping to waist level is essentially hitting only forearms and biceps, while going all the way up forces the larger triceps and delts to do work too?  That would make sense if oxygen uptake spikes in response to engaging a muscle at all.  Whatever the reason, the end result is all good .

I think most cardio is plain boring ...

Hey, you write that as if it were a personal opinion -- but it's objective truth .  Treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, ... plain suck.  The human body and mind just weren't designed to do the same damn thing thousands of times in a row.  Hiking on natural trails works for me, ditto riding a bike through varied terrain.  But indoors the only cardio I can stick with (or even want to try sticking with) consists of sports or some form of circuit training (changing activities every few minutes).

A rebounder is great for the latter:  there are half a dozen different basic things you can do with your legs, and dozens of different things you can do with your arms and trunk, and that multiplies out to hundreds of possible variations.  Do 30 repetitions of one combination, and if you get bored you can instantly switch to a different combination.  Intensity can be changed instantly too (e.g., switch between jumping high and easy in-place jogging, or even just bouncing lightly keeping both feet on the mat).  In fact, I find it almost impossible not to do a form of interval training on a rebounder.  Even if I intend to do nothing but three minutes of baby bouncing while watching TV, after a minute that's so relaxing and refreshing it's just natural to want to go harder.

So, ya, if you suffer "cardio boredom" too, I recommend giving it a try.  Bonus:  I can't find a reference now, but a study I read long ago matched my own experience:  across various forms of aerobic exercise reaching a given heart rate, the perceived effort ("how hard" a person believes they're working, on a subjective scale from 1 through 10) was lowest for rebounding.  I'm not sure why that is, but the upshoot is that it makes exercise at a given level less mentally demanding.  I suspect a large part of it has to do with the mild G forces at work.  For example, you literally feel weightless for a brief time at the top of each jump, and that's refreshingly fun.  For another, you feel 2x (or so) heavier at the bottom of each jump, and, among other things, if you're relaxed enough that tends to drive the air out of your lungs, which in turn makes it feel like breathing is effortless (even when you're actually breathing pretty hard).

Even so, lifting weights is more fun .

Hi,

You might be interested in my recent post to a question on this topic titled, “How effective are wrist weights for toning?”

Mary