Weighted vests are trending on social media. Can it really help with bone density and weight loss?

A growing number of fitness enthusiasts are turning to weighted vests to build muscle, improve bone density, and burn more calories.

Videos of middle-aged women walking while wearing weighted vests have taken over TikTok, and fitness classes incorporating the gear are springing up across New York.

Building muscle is known to help slow the bone loss that naturally occurs with age, and social media is increasingly promoting the idea of adding resistance to everyday activities without drastically changing routines.

Traditionally used in military training, weighted vests have pockets filled with removable weights to add resistance to the torso.

In a fitness class in New York, United States, participants wear these vests to increase the challenge of their workouts.

"We add a weighted vest as a micro load, right, so their vests are anywhere between five and 12 pounds, depending on which vest you use," said Jessie Syfko, a fitness instructor at Life Time, a chain of health clubs in the United States and Canada.

Do weighted vests work?

But just how much of a difference do these vests make?

Experts say there may be some benefits of the vests for healthy adults, but no one should expect transformative or instant results.

“2025 is clearly the year of the vest,” Kristen Beavers, an associate professor in the department of health and exercise science at Wake Forest University in the United States, said.

"If this is a way for you to kind of incorporate some of these activities, like resistance training-ish, I think it's great," Beavers added.

However, a recent study found that there’s in fact no effect of using weighted vests to prevent bone loss for older, obese people.

In a recent clinical trial, Beavers and her colleagues studied 150 older adults living with obesity who wore weighted vests for an average of 7.1 hours per day over 12 months.

The study “did not find evidence that wearing a weighted vest or engaging in resistance training prevented bone loss in older adults undergoing intentional weight loss”.

Participants experienced a bone loss of up to 1.9 per cent regardless of vest use.

Researchers called for alternative strategies to protect skeletal health in ageing populations with obesity.

Still, Beavers said in a statement that these findings are not a reason to abandon weighted vests in exercise programmes.

“If you squint and try to thread a line through it, it seems like the vests do benefit the musculoskeletal system,” Beavers said.

“People have increased knee extensor strength or they have improvements in their walking ability or balance”.

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