September 17, 2025 • 29 mins
OVERVIEW
Almost anywhere you go these days, you're likely to see someone walking, running, or climbing stairs wearing a weighted vest. Popularized by Crossfit boxes, mixed martial arts gyms, and boot camp-style exercise programs, “rucking” is a new name for the old concept of an “overloaded training intervention”. The question we get is whether training with a weighted vest (off the bike) will improve cycling performance. CTS Pro Coach Sarah Scozzaro, one of our top strength and conditioning coaches, breaks down the details of whether weighted training works for cyclists.
Topics Covered In This Episode:
- Weighted Vests: Are they effective for:
- Increase Core Strength?
- Improve Strength-Endurance?
- Increase Bone Density?
- Improve VO2 Max?
- Increase Motivation?
- History of overloaded training interventions in cycling
- Separating strength from endurance training
- How to use weighted vests safely
- How much weight to carry
Resources
- Should Runners Train with Weighted Vests? - CTS
- Gravel Racing Gear Guide for Cyclists - CTS
- Weighted Vests Are Now A Fitness Trend. Here’s What You Need To Know
- Hydration Backpack Market Size | Industry Report, 2030
Guest Bio:
Sarah Scozzaro is a CTS Pro Coach who specializes in strength training and ultrarunning. A coach within the CTS High Performance Program, she is on the performance teams for Western States Champions Katie Schide and Abby Hall. Sarah has her Masters's degree in Exercise Science with a concentration in performance enhancement and injury prevention. She has a long list of qualifications and certifications after her name, including being a National Strength and Conditioning Association certified personal trainer (NSCA-CPT) and National Academy of Sports Medicine performance enhancement specialist (NASM-PES).
Guest Links:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now on to our show.
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
(00:57):
Today's topic weighted vests forincreased strength, endurance
and performance.
Not gonna lie, I didn't seethis topic coming on this
podcast, but we've had a fewlisteners write in to ask about
it.
I've found out that I haveathletes that I coach using
weighted vests or rucking withthese goals in mind, and I think
that there's somemisinformation out there when it
(01:18):
comes to loading your body andwhat that does in training
versus loading your body in thegym for strength gain.
So this is a thing in the ultrarunning community as well.
So I turned to the expert inall things strength and ultra
endurance.
To help explain this, cts coachSarah Scazzaro.
Sarah, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Thanks for having me.
This is great.
I'm excited to have thisconversation.
It's a one that comes up quitefrequently for myself as well
(02:05):
having this conversation withyou, so by uh.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So, that being said, I think that this information is
going to be super good.
But you know, I said welcomeback, sarah, because you've been
on the show a couple of timesnow.
But for listeners who haven'tcaught you on on previous shows
and don't know you like I do,could you give us a quick intro
on who you are, what you do andI don't know what's your
favorite?
Uh, what's your favorite brandof weightlifting equipment?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Oh ooh, I've never been asked that.
Sarah Scazzaro, I'm one of thepro coaches over on the ultra
training or ultra running Ishould say side of the group
Been with the company for almostsix years now, so time's flying
when you're having fun.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Time does fly.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, my niche and kind of what I really am into,
and originally when I evenstarted with the company.
Strength for my enduranceathletes is really, really
important to me, so I make surethat it's something that is very
integral and part of what Iprogram for my athletes myself.
(03:00):
I don't know, I think that'sabout it Vanilla, love chocolate
and vanilla.
So anyways, favorite brand ofequipment.
I know everybody wants me tosay Rogue, because Rogue's kind
of like the brand.
I also really like a companycalled Again Faster.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Again Faster Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They put out really quality stuff at decent prices
and I found them really lovelyto work with, no affiliation.
So excellent.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Not looking for sponsorship, but looking for
sponsorship looking to sharegood information.
Yeah, there you go.
There you go we, and, thatbeing said, we are brand neutral
on this podcast.
So anything that we talk about,including weightlifting
equipment or weighted vests orwhatever uh, we have no brand
affiliations.
Also, as a quick transition aswe get going and this is a
(03:49):
little disclaimer and kind ofhigh-level qualifier for this
episode is, this is not meant tobe either pro or anti-weighted
vest messaging.
It is simply to get you, ourlisteners, good information
about what drives a stimulus foran adaptation versus marketing
bullshit.
(04:09):
So let's use that as alaunching pad for today's topic
and way to best.
They are claimed to do all ofthese things, sarah, and then
I'll turn over to you to helpdisseminate what this means.
So they are claimed to increasecore strength, improve strength
(04:29):
, endurance, increase bonedensity, improve VO2 max similar
to altitude and I will link toan article that stated that and
it also can increase motivationand a whole host of other things
.
So, sarah, can you walk usthrough the hype versus reality
of some of these claims?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, where to start?
Do we want to go mostcontroversial to least
controversial?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Wherever you'd like to start.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We can just start with the first one I've got here
the increase of core strength.
So in reality we can't arguethat there's going to be some
minimal core strength benefits.
Of course, anytime you loadyour body and you move through
space you're going to challengethe body in a different way.
It's going to challenge yourcore to stabilize.
It's going to challenge to below responsive, at a very low
(05:13):
level actually.
We'll kind of get to theloading here later.
It's repetitive but it's nottargeted enough to make any
meaningful improvement with corestrength.
It takes away like you're notreally dealing with
anti-rotation, you're not reallydealing with a lot of things
that you're, you know you'remeant to do in terms of quality
(05:34):
core training.
I should say.
So can it increase corestrength?
I have yet to see a study andplease correct me if I'm wrong
if you've come across one thatshows a very appreciable
definition of core strengthincrease, I think it's better
than nothing, but I wouldn'tturn to this if you're trying to
increase your core strength.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, some of the stuff that Isaw that claimed these benefits
were very short-term studiesand also taking well, let's just
face it like either an agingathlete or like a feeble athlete
, like an endurance athlete thatdoes never load, and then they
throw a vest on them and thenthey see improvement in two
weeks, which, again, you justlook at how a system works and
(06:15):
if you haven't been loading andif you haven't had that stimulus
and then you load it, you will.
Especially with strengthtraining that we've covered on
this episode before, a lot ofthese improvements are very
quick, they're neuromuscular andcan happen in two to four weeks
.
After that, though, the loadneeds to be progressive over
time to keep on pushing you andthat's where a weighted vest
(06:36):
really doesn't keep on loadingyou and keep on doing these
things.
So if there's anything, it'sbecause you haven't been moving
or stressing your body.
In a way.
You add, a little bit of stresscan go a little bit away, and
then you're like oh, I'm alittle sore, oh, I feel this,
but it's just like becauseyou're finally doing something.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, and I think that's the key.
I think what a weighted vestdoes for a lot of people.
Maybe we should target this toa lot of, like you kind of
mentioned before, thedemographic that is being
targeted, or demographics, areolder people, peri
postmenopausal women.
It's being targeted as kind ofthis thing, this fix-all, this
cure-all for these populations,and a lot of those populations
(07:14):
I'm going to reallyovergeneralize here tend to not
do much in movement, especiallylike an older population.
So give them any new stimulus.
They're going to see someimprovements.
They're going to see somechanges, like you said, very
short term, mostly neuromuscular.
They're not going to besomething they can usually
continue to build off withsustainably, because and we can
(07:36):
kind of get to this, I'm sure,in a moment of how much you
should safely load with aweighted vest and to the point
of there's going to bediminishing returns if you start
to go above that in terms oflike safety and body mechanics
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So yeah, yeah, and I want to come back to what I said
by calling endurance athletesfeeble athletes, what I mean by
that is feeble high strengthathletes and the reason I mean I
am in this category because Isit at a desk for the majority
of the time and then I go ridemy bike real hard and for long
periods of time.
Then I come back and sit at mydesk and I too can even benefit
(08:13):
from more strength work in mylife, which I've had in the past
kind of go hit and miss it.
So, like I am right here in theneed of better strength and
coordination, all this kind ofstuff.
So for our listeners, who maybegot offended by me calling you
a feeble strengthy enduranceathlete, I'm not taking jabs at
you, I'm taking jabs at us.
And with that being said,though, improved strength
(08:35):
endurance is one of the claimsfor weighted vests.
Can you talk about whatstrength endurance is, why
weighted vests may do that ormay not?
And it's pretty adjacent towhat we just talked about with,
like, if the stimulus has beenso low that you add a little bit
and there's a little gain, cool, but now you need to keep it
going.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, and I think this is um, especially on my
side of things with the ultrarunning community.
Um, recently there have beensome performances at events,
notably UTMB were the winners,both in the male and female
category.
Their coach is very well knownfor using weighted hikes, vests,
packs, whatever you want tocall it as part of some of his
(09:13):
workouts.
You can't argue that obviouslyhis athletes got results.
However, what I think peopletake from that, they extrapolate
from that, is they think, oh,that is the key, that is a
strength workout I need to bedoing, when those athletes are
also from the mouth of thatcoach, doing strength workouts.
This is done as a muscularendurance workout, which is
(09:35):
different than a strengthworkout.
So I think there's like thatseparation that, whereas like a
weighted vest in the use ofultra running to help with you
know, causes extra load on thehips, the legs.
It helps you tolerate stressover time, which is very common
in my sport Hiking up mountainsfor long periods of time with a
(09:55):
pack on.
That's different than going anddoing heavy squats or deadlifts
or things like that.
That's actually going toincrease strength versus
muscular endurance.
So it's a sport specificconditioning vehicle versus a
strength building vehicle and Ithink that gets confused very
easily because you're like butI'm getting stronger at climbing
(10:17):
Hills, yes, sports specific.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yep, yeah, and that sports specific message is
something that we'll talk aboutmore here in just a couple of
minutes, because we havesomething similar for for all
the cyclists listening to thisand they're like, wait, you're
talking all about running yeah,we do, too in gravel, mountain
bike and ultra endurance things.
So let's talk about like packsand weightedness as it pertains
to cycling here in just a minute, but I just want to touch on
(10:43):
increased bone density as wellas improved VO2 max when it
comes to training with the waythe best.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, so the thing that I okay I will preface this
by saying anything that getssomebody moving, it makes me
happy.
I think we've talked about thisonline, so I'm never going to
discourage somebody from pickingsomething up that is getting
them moving, because that'sgoing to have health benefits.
My issue is when people aretaking something thinking that
it's going to be the cure totheir problems or the solution
(11:12):
to the questions they have, inthis case, like bone density,
and because weighted vests aretargeted towards peri and
postmenopausal women with thewhole idea of building bone
density, and so my argument withthat is there's going to be
very, very modest stimulation tothe bone with a weighted vest.
(11:32):
I recently saw a study and I'lltry to find it here so you can
share it as well of womenspecifically women, because this
was the demographic they weretesting wore a weighted vest for
several hours a day around thehouse doing their things, going
for walks around the house.
There was little to zero changein their bone density or bone
turnover.
In order to get that, whilewearing a vest, they had to do
(11:54):
impact work jumps, plyos, thingslike that.
Okay, how safe is that for mostpeople to be using a loaded
weighted vest and then doingplyometric training.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So then we get into a whole, especially for the aging
demographic.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Exactly so.
Just because something canactually have an impact
eventually using certainparameters doesn't mean it's the
safe vehicle to do it.
And I think most people justthink I'm going to put on this
vest and go for a hike and mybone density?
It's the impact, it's theloading that's going to cause
that and the vest simply doesnot provide enough of that.
(12:27):
I'm not taking away from thefact that going out for a walk
is a good thing.
I'm not taking anything awayfrom that.
But if your design is to getincreased bone density, there
are far better ways toaccomplish that than putting on
a weighted vest and then oh goahead.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I was just going to say.
I mean, a couple of things cometo mind is just like, if
anybody's wondering, well, howdo I stimulate bone growth, it
is generally loading the body ina heavy way that actually like
stresses the bone, it wiggles it, and then that forms, or that
provides a stimulus forosteoblasts and osteoclasts to
come in and reshape andrestructure the bone.
(13:03):
That's how you do it.
And then if you say, well, I'man aging, uh, like, like a
middle-aged woman with, you know, pre-osteoporosis, like I don't
want.
That sounds unsafe too, or theweighted vest probably is better
, I would say the blanketstatement of you should do heavy
back squats or you should weara weighted vest.
That's poor advice.
What I'm saying is probably getwith a personal trainer like
(13:27):
Sarah or somebody that's local,that has eyes on you, so they
can guide you through in ahealthy, individualized training
sort of way to get after this,as opposed to buying the
weighted vest, because theinfluencer that your daughter
showed you on Instagram saidthat you should.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Exactly, exactly that .
And there are many, many waysto load a squat and there are
many, many ways to loadmovements like you just alluded
to.
So I think people think, oh myGod, I've never lifted a weight
in my life and now I have to godo a heavy back squat or a big
deadlift.
That's not safe, I don't feelcomfortable doing that.
It's like, oh no, no, there aremany different shades of
strength training and gettingthat, helping to get that
(14:04):
accomplished.
Just don't think that yourweighted vest is going to be the
singular way that you do that,because it's just not.
I think it's disingenuous anddispelling anything.
I would like to dispel thatbecause I think it does a
disservice to people, because Ithink they think, oh, I'm going
to do this, so I don't need tostrength train, and then they
don't get the bone density builtup like they're hoping and
(14:24):
they've spent all this timedoing this activity.
That really didn't help theirend goal and, spoiler alert,
most women and, dare say, men weneed to be building bone
density as we get older, or atleast trying to maintain what we
have.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And that's the misinformation.
It's the over-promised claimsbased on weak evidence, to say
this vest will do X Y Z, when inreality it's a progressive
overload, individual trainingprogram that will get that done
Exactly.
I think VO2 max would probablybe the last thing.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Does a weighted vest improve VO2 max?
Sarah?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
No, no, no, it can make.
No, I mean, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
But it's not similar to altitude training.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
No, imagine that.
Wouldn't that be amazing if itwas no?
Pretty sick so a very short,simplistic answer is no, it
doesn't.
Can it challenge the body incertain ways?
It's just added resistance.
It's not hypoxic adaptation,there's no stimulus.
Just because you're breathingharder because you've got a
(15:30):
weighted vest on you does notequate altitude training.
And so if it were this simpleand I wish, wouldn't it be great
if we could just say put onthis weighted vest and you'll
get all of these things, all ofthese benefits.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, but it's, it's.
It's just the same thing aslike take this pill and you'll
get all these benefits, Right,it's like.
I haven't seen anything.
Yeah, just, I haven't seenanything that works that way.
No, no, we want it.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Oh, exactly.
And again, if you enjoy it andkind of our last point of
motivation, if you enjoy it, ifit's fun, if it makes you feel
good, if you do it with a groupof friends and it's social and
you can do it safely, I willnever take that away from
somebody, but know what you areaccomplishing when you wear a
weighted vest and what you'renot accomplishing or achieving.
(16:10):
And yeah, so anything elsethere with those topics, I know
we've got a couple other loadedpoints.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
We should dive into some of the weighted vests on
the specificity of training, butI think to your point.
What you said is like, again,not to um, you know, poo poo.
Anybody's like stokeness for aweighted vest is.
It's similar to like a I don'tknow an expensive wheel set for
a cyclist.
Like if it, if you have thisthing that gets you out the door
(16:39):
and gets you going, okay, cool.
But just know that if you didintervals and did your long ride
and all this kind of stuff andyou had the wheels that you have
right now versus the $4,000wheel set, you you'll get better
adaptation, you'll get bettertraining.
Combine those two and away wego Right.
(17:00):
So if it is a motivationalthing and makes you feel cool to
pick up the rucking sack or theweighted vest or whatever else,
okay cool.
But just like, take theinformation that Sarah just
provided with you.
Go, start low, go slow, becausethere's some ligaments and
tendon issues too that come.
That comes as a increased riskif you just load too quick and
do too much.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Um, so oh, absolutely , and you know, kind of coming,
and I'd love to hear more aboutwhat you alluded to earlier with
, like the cycling side ofthings, with like weighted packs
and whatnot, but like from anultra running side of things,
athletes there will be athletesthat are doing like weighted.
They're loading their vest upand doing these weighted
mountain hikes and whatnot.
That's sports specific.
That's not what we're talkingabout here.
(17:37):
That is getting a muscularendurance, sports specific
adaptation.
It's all the other things thatthese weighted vest gurus are
claiming that these magicallittle objects do, that just
simply aren't backed by science.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
little objects do that just simply aren't backed
by science.
That's it.
So not backed by science.
Let's talk about sportsspecificity, and it is certainly
more like in the fitness andrunning world as far as using
weighted vest to do a trainingthing and get some sort of
result.
What I didn't know is that theweighted vest market is in 2024,
(18:12):
it was $205 million.
So, again, this is much biggerthan I thought.
It's estimated to be a $350million industry in 2025.
And then finally I looked thisup is the hydration pack market
is around 400 million.
So I mean it is creeping up onthe hydration pack market, which
(18:32):
is that's a big thing in ourworld, right?
It's like well, everybody'susing, you know, hydration packs
.
Most ultra people are using ahydration pack.
So I put that in kind of likereference because when I read
that I was like, okay, this is athing, okay, we should, I
should listen to our people andI should do this podcast.
So here we are and I think itis important to separate sports
(18:54):
specificity loading as itpertains to putting something on
your body or your bike, versusdoing it in training to provide
some sort of stimulus separatefrom the strength training
stimulus to increase muscle size, ligament density, bone density
and all this kind of stuff.
So now to just a little snippeton the running side of things.
(19:14):
Coop has a good article.
I don't think we need to gosuper deep on this, but it kind
of walks through a very logical,sound way of saying okay, if
you're going to have a pack, itshould be roughly what like 5%
of the body weight, because onceyou start to load more, the
body moves differently and thatcould increase a risk of injury.
Do I have that Correct?
(19:35):
Yes, okay, and that it like so.
Then it's like okay, if itshould be around 5%, how about
six or 7% or what?
So where it gets to be aproblem is around 10% of your
body weight.
Then you start to kind of moveall over the place, right?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, precisely, yeah , yeah.
And for most in my field, myside of things, most ultra
runners in an event, I'm nottalking necessarily about fast
packing or anything like that,but for most hundred milers and
below in the ultra distanceniche, you're not going to
generally be carrying more than10% of your body weight at any
(20:10):
point.
Anyways, we have eight stationsRight.
We've got buffets out there youpay for the buffet, all 100
miles of it, um, and so loadingmore than that.
I think, unfortunately, insociety in general, but
especially when it comes to,like endurance sports, more is
more, more is better, more is if.
If 5% works, 10% must be good.
(20:32):
If 10% is good, what about 15%?
How high can I go?
How much can I load?
And it gets to a point, likeyou said, it's diminishing
returns where you're not goingto be getting really any benefit
and you're just going to bestarting to increase the rate of
injury or something happening.
Um, because you're taking thislike, say, overly packed pack or
(20:55):
vest and going out and doing 10, 15, 20 miles.
That's way more stimulus thanyou'd be getting in any strength
session and it's really noteven loading the body that.
You know what I mean.
Think about your volume hereand then trying to move and how
you have to change yourbiomechanics and it just sets
you up for a lot of potentialfor injury without a lot of
reward.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yes, okay.
So on the cycling side ofthings, I haven't found, we
haven't put on an article, Ihaven't found there's not much
research.
I mean, you think about all thevariables that go into, like a
cycling weightedness and what isthe optimization of this?
I't know, maybe silica andmaybe dylan johnson have, I
don't know.
They do like very marginal gaintype stuff like that.
(21:37):
But I will say high level andjust from like coaching people
for a long time in conjunctionwith what is existing out there
on the internet of things, um,if you're gonna carry weight on
your body and on your bike inthe race, you should do it in
training, okay.
So again, like that's justsports specificity and we're
(21:58):
going to for cycling, wedistribute the weight between a
pack and the bike.
One company out there I thinkit's uh, you sweet, uh, they did
.
They come out with a no dancingmonkey thing for a while.
That was like their marketingplay where they had this like
unique strap combination so thatthe pack wouldn't like flop all
(22:18):
over the place.
Okay, and that's usuallyassociated with either a poor
pack or too much weight in it.
So it's just like moving around.
And so if you, if any cyclists,have brought way too much stuff
on the group ride or the raceor whatever, and you're just
like moving all around.
That's what we're talking abouttoo, in the way of like you get
to a point where it's just liketoo much and it's you
inefficiently move.
Okay.
The other thing is like for alot of Leadville people, because
(22:42):
there's aid stations and it'sso well serviced and all this
kind of stuff, I tell most of myLeadville athletes go bottles
only, ditch the pack why youtake that weight off.
I increase speed.
So you have to, depending onthe nature of the race itself.
You got to think about thisweighted NIS advantage being
(23:03):
also a disadvantage in somedegree too.
So, just on the high level,it's like if you're going to
carry it in the race, you know,carry it in training, but then
start to work with how much doyou actually need to carry and
then distribute it.
Distribute it between, uh, youknow, person and bike, because
this rolls back to maybe evenlike project 98.
(23:23):
I remember, uh, chris andgriffey and a bunch of other
coaches talking about how theytried to add weight to the rider
or the bike, um to to.
This was like on the track uh,to get more power production
over time.
Spoiler alert it didn't reallywork.
In fact, when they put it onthe, on the rider, that's
themselves, it was just superawkward.
(23:43):
They couldn't drive the bike,they couldn't handle the bike.
When they loaded the, the, thethe bike with like um, I think
it was like lead weight in thebottles.
They could get going a littlebit better, but then and then
they took it off and they hadthis sensation of being faster,
but they weren't faster.
And that's a key element,because in the cycling world too
, is like we ride our heavierbike in the winter right, but
(24:05):
it's usually like the lessexpensive bike that we don't
carry.
You know about getting wet andall this, but then we go on our
fast bike.
You know, come the spring andsummer and we feel faster.
Unless you've been well, unlessyou've been controlling all of
the elements perfectly ortraining really well, you're not
going to get that much fasterfrom riding a heavier bike
necessarily.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, it's a.
It's a lot of perception.
You know it's riding thatheavier.
Taking out your steel stallionin the wintertime and then
getting onto your carbon bike inthe spring is going to feel
significantly different, Iimagine.
So you're going to feel a lotfaster, a lot lighter, a lot
more nimble.
Same with ultra running you puton a heavy pack and you do your
(24:46):
training and during your raceyou're going to be like, oh, I
feel so light and springy.
And again I do want to prefacewe're not talking about, like
military selection, ruckingpeople, like that's a different
category.
So anybody listening that'slike oh, but what about rucks
for a military Different,different category?
We're talking ultra running andcycling right now, with all of
these opinions and takes andanti-science debunking.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Exactly.
But you know this, this conceptof like overloaded training,
which is what this is.
It's nothing new under the sun.
If we were, I don't know goback to the eighties when we had
like ankle weights.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I feel called out Adam.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Hey, no names shall be named, but baseball with,
like, heavier bats, uh, heavierclubs, and golf and all this
kind of stuff.
So you, you practice or usethese heavier things so that the
, the one that you use on gameday, is lighter ankle weights I
mean, I think that's beendebunked and caused a lot of
injuries and so doing so, Ithink you have to just be really
(25:48):
careful about loading the bodyin a weird way when it comes to
endurance and repetitivemovement versus in the gym and
my main and don't need to gofurther than that, because I
think it's it is out there.
So my main point with this islike, if we're going to load and
if the goal is to gain strength, to increase bone density, to
(26:10):
improve velocity of movement, myadvice is to separate your
endurance training from yourstrength training and work on
strength, velocity and bonedensity and all these goals in
the gym, and then we do oursport for endurance.
Would you agree with that,sarah?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Absolutely 100%.
Okay, yes, excellent, same page.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Okay, so for the next five hours we'll talk about how
to do that.
Now I think, like just give mea very high level, because we're
going to do a tag along episodeto this where we do talk about
how to organize strengthtraining with an endurance
program throughout the year, butmaybe give us a little spoiler
alert of how that would looklike just with one of your
(26:53):
athletes, how you separate thatand how you kind of get away
from I don't know some supersports specific thing in the gym
and we say, oh, we don't needto do that because we get enough
workout running on the trailsor something like this.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Oh, are you talking about how folks say, oh, I don't
need to do any leg trainingbecause I do enough running and
I run up mountains.
So there, yeah, so, yeah, Ihear that a lot Running up
mountains will make you betterat running up mountains, but
it's not necessarily going togive you the same strength gains
, bone density, power, all ofthose things that you can get
via strength training in the gymand actual like.
(27:29):
Again, separating endurancetraining versus strength
training, I love them both.
Let's find a way to make themboth work in your programming.
But saying that a weighted vestis going to give you strength
or that running up mountains isgoing to give you strength, both
are unfair.
They're both.
You know you.
They give you some specificityto your sport, but you're not
(27:50):
necessarily building overallhuman strength.
Yes, so I don't know if thatwas the answer to your question,
but that's when I it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, no, I mean, it certainly is, and I think, like
in a roundabout way, however wecan say it that hits home with a
lot of people is if you cancompartmentalize endurance and
strength training two separatethings but if you balance it and
weave it in the right way, youwill have the best combination
(28:20):
of performance in your sport aswell as, like health, longevity
durability, durability exactlyas a human being, and I think
that that is the main messagethat I want everybody to just
realize.
When it comes to endurance andstrength training and we're
going to talk more about that inthe next episode, but bottom
line here today, with weightedvests and its application to
(28:43):
endurance sport, I would say Iwouldn't use it personally.
I wouldn't use it personally.
There's nothing magical with aweighted vest and if your goals
are strength, you know,increased strength, increased
bone density and all the thingsthat we talked about you're
better off doing that in the gymand then doing your sport and
doing your endurance separately.
So anything else that you wantto add to that, sarah.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
No, I think that sums it up perfectly.
If you like, doing it, great,but know why you're, know what
it's accomplishing and what it'snot, and just be honest with
that about yourself.
So, yeah, beautifully put.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Excellent.
Well, thank you, Sarah, and wewill talk all about strength
training and endurance trainingin our next episode.
See you soon.
Thanks for joining us on thetime crunch cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
(29:37):
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now on to our show.
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
(00:57):
Today's topic weighted vests forincreased strength, endurance
and performance.
Not gonna lie, I didn't seethis topic coming on this
podcast, but we've had a fewlisteners write in to ask about
it.
I've found out that I haveathletes that I coach using
weighted vests or rucking withthese goals in mind, and I think
that there's somemisinformation out there when it
(01:18):
comes to loading your body andwhat that does in training
versus loading your body in thegym for strength gain.
So this is a thing in the ultrarunning community as well.
So I turned to the expert inall things strength and ultra
endurance.
To help explain this, cts coachSarah Scazzaro.
Sarah, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Thanks for having me.
This is great.
I'm excited to have thisconversation.
It's a one that comes up quitefrequently for myself as well
(02:05):
having this conversation withyou, so by uh.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So, that being said, I think that this information is
going to be super good.
But you know, I said welcomeback, sarah, because you've been
on the show a couple of timesnow.
But for listeners who haven'tcaught you on on previous shows
and don't know you like I do,could you give us a quick intro
on who you are, what you do andI don't know what's your
favorite?
Uh, what's your favorite brandof weightlifting equipment?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Oh ooh, I've never been asked that.
Sarah Scazzaro, I'm one of thepro coaches over on the ultra
training or ultra running Ishould say side of the group
Been with the company for almostsix years now, so time's flying
when you're having fun.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Time does fly.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, my niche and kind of what I really am into,
and originally when I evenstarted with the company.
Strength for my enduranceathletes is really, really
important to me, so I make surethat it's something that is very
integral and part of what Iprogram for my athletes myself.
(03:00):
I don't know, I think that'sabout it Vanilla, love chocolate
and vanilla.
So anyways, favorite brand ofequipment.
I know everybody wants me tosay Rogue, because Rogue's kind
of like the brand.
I also really like a companycalled Again Faster.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Again Faster Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They put out really quality stuff at decent prices
and I found them really lovelyto work with, no affiliation.
So excellent.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Not looking for sponsorship, but looking for
sponsorship looking to sharegood information.
Yeah, there you go.
There you go we, and, thatbeing said, we are brand neutral
on this podcast.
So anything that we talk about,including weightlifting
equipment or weighted vests orwhatever uh, we have no brand
affiliations.
Also, as a quick transition aswe get going and this is a
(03:49):
little disclaimer and kind ofhigh-level qualifier for this
episode is, this is not meant tobe either pro or anti-weighted
vest messaging.
It is simply to get you, ourlisteners, good information
about what drives a stimulus foran adaptation versus marketing
bullshit.
(04:09):
So let's use that as alaunching pad for today's topic
and way to best.
They are claimed to do all ofthese things, sarah, and then
I'll turn over to you to helpdisseminate what this means.
So they are claimed to increasecore strength, improve strength
(04:29):
, endurance, increase bonedensity, improve VO2 max similar
to altitude and I will link toan article that stated that and
it also can increase motivationand a whole host of other things
.
So, sarah, can you walk usthrough the hype versus reality
of some of these claims?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, where to start?
Do we want to go mostcontroversial to least
controversial?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Wherever you'd like to start.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We can just start with the first one I've got here
the increase of core strength.
So in reality we can't arguethat there's going to be some
minimal core strength benefits.
Of course, anytime you loadyour body and you move through
space you're going to challengethe body in a different way.
It's going to challenge yourcore to stabilize.
It's going to challenge to below responsive, at a very low
(05:13):
level actually.
We'll kind of get to theloading here later.
It's repetitive but it's nottargeted enough to make any
meaningful improvement with corestrength.
It takes away like you're notreally dealing with
anti-rotation, you're not reallydealing with a lot of things
that you're, you know you'remeant to do in terms of quality
(05:34):
core training.
I should say.
So can it increase corestrength?
I have yet to see a study andplease correct me if I'm wrong
if you've come across one thatshows a very appreciable
definition of core strengthincrease, I think it's better
than nothing, but I wouldn'tturn to this if you're trying to
increase your core strength.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, some of the stuff that Isaw that claimed these benefits
were very short-term studiesand also taking well, let's just
face it like either an agingathlete or like a feeble athlete
, like an endurance athlete thatdoes never load, and then they
throw a vest on them and thenthey see improvement in two
weeks, which, again, you justlook at how a system works and
(06:15):
if you haven't been loading andif you haven't had that stimulus
and then you load it, you will.
Especially with strengthtraining that we've covered on
this episode before, a lot ofthese improvements are very
quick, they're neuromuscular andcan happen in two to four weeks
.
After that, though, the loadneeds to be progressive over
time to keep on pushing you andthat's where a weighted vest
(06:36):
really doesn't keep on loadingyou and keep on doing these
things.
So if there's anything, it'sbecause you haven't been moving
or stressing your body.
In a way.
You add, a little bit of stresscan go a little bit away, and
then you're like oh, I'm alittle sore, oh, I feel this,
but it's just like becauseyou're finally doing something.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, and I think that's the key.
I think what a weighted vestdoes for a lot of people.
Maybe we should target this toa lot of, like you kind of
mentioned before, thedemographic that is being
targeted, or demographics, areolder people, peri
postmenopausal women.
It's being targeted as kind ofthis thing, this fix-all, this
cure-all for these populations,and a lot of those populations
(07:14):
I'm going to reallyovergeneralize here tend to not
do much in movement, especiallylike an older population.
So give them any new stimulus.
They're going to see someimprovements.
They're going to see somechanges, like you said, very
short term, mostly neuromuscular.
They're not going to besomething they can usually
continue to build off withsustainably, because and we can
(07:36):
kind of get to this, I'm sure,in a moment of how much you
should safely load with aweighted vest and to the point
of there's going to bediminishing returns if you start
to go above that in terms oflike safety and body mechanics
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So yeah, yeah, and I want to come back to what I said
by calling endurance athletesfeeble athletes, what I mean by
that is feeble high strengthathletes and the reason I mean I
am in this category because Isit at a desk for the majority
of the time and then I go ridemy bike real hard and for long
periods of time.
Then I come back and sit at mydesk and I too can even benefit
(08:13):
from more strength work in mylife, which I've had in the past
kind of go hit and miss it.
So, like I am right here in theneed of better strength and
coordination, all this kind ofstuff.
So for our listeners, who maybegot offended by me calling you
a feeble strengthy enduranceathlete, I'm not taking jabs at
you, I'm taking jabs at us.
And with that being said,though, improved strength
(08:35):
endurance is one of the claimsfor weighted vests.
Can you talk about whatstrength endurance is, why
weighted vests may do that ormay not?
And it's pretty adjacent towhat we just talked about with,
like, if the stimulus has beenso low that you add a little bit
and there's a little gain, cool, but now you need to keep it
going.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, and I think this is um, especially on my
side of things with the ultrarunning community.
Um, recently there have beensome performances at events,
notably UTMB were the winners,both in the male and female
category.
Their coach is very well knownfor using weighted hikes, vests,
packs, whatever you want tocall it as part of some of his
(09:13):
workouts.
You can't argue that obviouslyhis athletes got results.
However, what I think peopletake from that, they extrapolate
from that, is they think, oh,that is the key, that is a
strength workout I need to bedoing, when those athletes are
also from the mouth of thatcoach, doing strength workouts.
This is done as a muscularendurance workout, which is
(09:35):
different than a strengthworkout.
So I think there's like thatseparation that, whereas like a
weighted vest in the use ofultra running to help with you
know, causes extra load on thehips, the legs.
It helps you tolerate stressover time, which is very common
in my sport Hiking up mountainsfor long periods of time with a
(09:55):
pack on.
That's different than going anddoing heavy squats or deadlifts
or things like that.
That's actually going toincrease strength versus
muscular endurance.
So it's a sport specificconditioning vehicle versus a
strength building vehicle and Ithink that gets confused very
easily because you're like butI'm getting stronger at climbing
(10:17):
Hills, yes, sports specific.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yep, yeah, and that sports specific message is
something that we'll talk aboutmore here in just a couple of
minutes, because we havesomething similar for for all
the cyclists listening to thisand they're like, wait, you're
talking all about running yeah,we do, too in gravel, mountain
bike and ultra endurance things.
So let's talk about like packsand weightedness as it pertains
to cycling here in just a minute, but I just want to touch on
(10:43):
increased bone density as wellas improved VO2 max when it
comes to training with the waythe best.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, so the thing that I okay I will preface this
by saying anything that getssomebody moving, it makes me
happy.
I think we've talked about thisonline, so I'm never going to
discourage somebody from pickingsomething up that is getting
them moving, because that'sgoing to have health benefits.
My issue is when people aretaking something thinking that
it's going to be the cure totheir problems or the solution
(11:12):
to the questions they have, inthis case, like bone density,
and because weighted vests aretargeted towards peri and
postmenopausal women with thewhole idea of building bone
density, and so my argument withthat is there's going to be
very, very modest stimulation tothe bone with a weighted vest.
(11:32):
I recently saw a study and I'lltry to find it here so you can
share it as well of womenspecifically women, because this
was the demographic they weretesting wore a weighted vest for
several hours a day around thehouse doing their things, going
for walks around the house.
There was little to zero changein their bone density or bone
turnover.
In order to get that, whilewearing a vest, they had to do
(11:54):
impact work jumps, plyos, thingslike that.
Okay, how safe is that for mostpeople to be using a loaded
weighted vest and then doingplyometric training.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So then we get into a whole, especially for the aging
demographic.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Exactly so.
Just because something canactually have an impact
eventually using certainparameters doesn't mean it's the
safe vehicle to do it.
And I think most people justthink I'm going to put on this
vest and go for a hike and mybone density?
It's the impact, it's theloading that's going to cause
that and the vest simply doesnot provide enough of that.
(12:27):
I'm not taking away from thefact that going out for a walk
is a good thing.
I'm not taking anything awayfrom that.
But if your design is to getincreased bone density, there
are far better ways toaccomplish that than putting on
a weighted vest and then oh goahead.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I was just going to say.
I mean, a couple of things cometo mind is just like, if
anybody's wondering, well, howdo I stimulate bone growth, it
is generally loading the body ina heavy way that actually like
stresses the bone, it wiggles it, and then that forms, or that
provides a stimulus forosteoblasts and osteoclasts to
come in and reshape andrestructure the bone.
(13:03):
That's how you do it.
And then if you say, well, I'man aging, uh, like, like a
middle-aged woman with, you know, pre-osteoporosis, like I don't
want.
That sounds unsafe too, or theweighted vest probably is better
, I would say the blanketstatement of you should do heavy
back squats or you should weara weighted vest.
That's poor advice.
What I'm saying is probably getwith a personal trainer like
(13:27):
Sarah or somebody that's local,that has eyes on you, so they
can guide you through in ahealthy, individualized training
sort of way to get after this,as opposed to buying the
weighted vest, because theinfluencer that your daughter
showed you on Instagram saidthat you should.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Exactly, exactly that .
And there are many, many waysto load a squat and there are
many, many ways to loadmovements like you just alluded
to.
So I think people think, oh myGod, I've never lifted a weight
in my life and now I have to godo a heavy back squat or a big
deadlift.
That's not safe, I don't feelcomfortable doing that.
It's like, oh no, no, there aremany different shades of
strength training and gettingthat, helping to get that
(14:04):
accomplished.
Just don't think that yourweighted vest is going to be the
singular way that you do that,because it's just not.
I think it's disingenuous anddispelling anything.
I would like to dispel thatbecause I think it does a
disservice to people, because Ithink they think, oh, I'm going
to do this, so I don't need tostrength train, and then they
don't get the bone density builtup like they're hoping and
(14:24):
they've spent all this timedoing this activity.
That really didn't help theirend goal and, spoiler alert,
most women and, dare say, men weneed to be building bone
density as we get older, or atleast trying to maintain what we
have.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And that's the misinformation.
It's the over-promised claimsbased on weak evidence, to say
this vest will do X Y Z, when inreality it's a progressive
overload, individual trainingprogram that will get that done
Exactly.
I think VO2 max would probablybe the last thing.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Does a weighted vest improve VO2 max?
Sarah?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
No, no, no, it can make.
No, I mean, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
But it's not similar to altitude training.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
No, imagine that.
Wouldn't that be amazing if itwas no?
Pretty sick so a very short,simplistic answer is no, it
doesn't.
Can it challenge the body incertain ways?
It's just added resistance.
It's not hypoxic adaptation,there's no stimulus.
Just because you're breathingharder because you've got a
(15:30):
weighted vest on you does notequate altitude training.
And so if it were this simpleand I wish, wouldn't it be great
if we could just say put onthis weighted vest and you'll
get all of these things, all ofthese benefits.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, but it's, it's.
It's just the same thing aslike take this pill and you'll
get all these benefits, Right,it's like.
I haven't seen anything.
Yeah, just, I haven't seenanything that works that way.
No, no, we want it.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Oh, exactly.
And again, if you enjoy it andkind of our last point of
motivation, if you enjoy it, ifit's fun, if it makes you feel
good, if you do it with a groupof friends and it's social and
you can do it safely, I willnever take that away from
somebody, but know what you areaccomplishing when you wear a
weighted vest and what you'renot accomplishing or achieving.
(16:10):
And yeah, so anything elsethere with those topics, I know
we've got a couple other loadedpoints.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
We should dive into some of the weighted vests on
the specificity of training, butI think to your point.
What you said is like, again,not to um, you know, poo poo.
Anybody's like stokeness for aweighted vest is.
It's similar to like a I don'tknow an expensive wheel set for
a cyclist.
Like if it, if you have thisthing that gets you out the door
(16:39):
and gets you going, okay, cool.
But just know that if you didintervals and did your long ride
and all this kind of stuff andyou had the wheels that you have
right now versus the $4,000wheel set, you you'll get better
adaptation, you'll get bettertraining.
Combine those two and away wego Right.
(17:00):
So if it is a motivationalthing and makes you feel cool to
pick up the rucking sack or theweighted vest or whatever else,
okay cool.
But just like, take theinformation that Sarah just
provided with you.
Go, start low, go slow, becausethere's some ligaments and
tendon issues too that come.
That comes as a increased riskif you just load too quick and
do too much.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Um, so oh, absolutely , and you know, kind of coming,
and I'd love to hear more aboutwhat you alluded to earlier with
, like the cycling side ofthings, with like weighted packs
and whatnot, but like from anultra running side of things,
athletes there will be athletesthat are doing like weighted.
They're loading their vest upand doing these weighted
mountain hikes and whatnot.
That's sports specific.
That's not what we're talkingabout here.
(17:37):
That is getting a muscularendurance, sports specific
adaptation.
It's all the other things thatthese weighted vest gurus are
claiming that these magicallittle objects do, that just
simply aren't backed by science.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
little objects do that just simply aren't backed
by science.
That's it.
So not backed by science.
Let's talk about sportsspecificity, and it is certainly
more like in the fitness andrunning world as far as using
weighted vest to do a trainingthing and get some sort of
result.
What I didn't know is that theweighted vest market is in 2024,
(18:12):
it was $205 million.
So, again, this is much biggerthan I thought.
It's estimated to be a $350million industry in 2025.
And then finally I looked thisup is the hydration pack market
is around 400 million.
So I mean it is creeping up onthe hydration pack market, which
(18:32):
is that's a big thing in ourworld, right?
It's like well, everybody'susing, you know, hydration packs
.
Most ultra people are using ahydration pack.
So I put that in kind of likereference because when I read
that I was like, okay, this is athing, okay, we should, I
should listen to our people andI should do this podcast.
So here we are and I think itis important to separate sports
(18:54):
specificity loading as itpertains to putting something on
your body or your bike, versusdoing it in training to provide
some sort of stimulus separatefrom the strength training
stimulus to increase muscle size, ligament density, bone density
and all this kind of stuff.
So now to just a little snippeton the running side of things.
(19:14):
Coop has a good article.
I don't think we need to gosuper deep on this, but it kind
of walks through a very logical,sound way of saying okay, if
you're going to have a pack, itshould be roughly what like 5%
of the body weight, because onceyou start to load more, the
body moves differently and thatcould increase a risk of injury.
Do I have that Correct?
(19:35):
Yes, okay, and that it like so.
Then it's like okay, if itshould be around 5%, how about
six or 7% or what?
So where it gets to be aproblem is around 10% of your
body weight.
Then you start to kind of moveall over the place, right?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, precisely, yeah , yeah.
And for most in my field, myside of things, most ultra
runners in an event, I'm nottalking necessarily about fast
packing or anything like that,but for most hundred milers and
below in the ultra distanceniche, you're not going to
generally be carrying more than10% of your body weight at any
(20:10):
point.
Anyways, we have eight stationsRight.
We've got buffets out there youpay for the buffet, all 100
miles of it, um, and so loadingmore than that.
I think, unfortunately, insociety in general, but
especially when it comes to,like endurance sports, more is
more, more is better, more is if.
If 5% works, 10% must be good.
(20:32):
If 10% is good, what about 15%?
How high can I go?
How much can I load?
And it gets to a point, likeyou said, it's diminishing
returns where you're not goingto be getting really any benefit
and you're just going to bestarting to increase the rate of
injury or something happening.
Um, because you're taking thislike, say, overly packed pack or
(20:55):
vest and going out and doing 10, 15, 20 miles.
That's way more stimulus thanyou'd be getting in any strength
session and it's really noteven loading the body that.
You know what I mean.
Think about your volume hereand then trying to move and how
you have to change yourbiomechanics and it just sets
you up for a lot of potentialfor injury without a lot of
reward.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yes, okay.
So on the cycling side ofthings, I haven't found, we
haven't put on an article, Ihaven't found there's not much
research.
I mean, you think about all thevariables that go into, like a
cycling weightedness and what isthe optimization of this?
I't know, maybe silica andmaybe dylan johnson have, I
don't know.
They do like very marginal gaintype stuff like that.
(21:37):
But I will say high level andjust from like coaching people
for a long time in conjunctionwith what is existing out there
on the internet of things, um,if you're gonna carry weight on
your body and on your bike inthe race, you should do it in
training, okay.
So again, like that's justsports specificity and we're
(21:58):
going to for cycling, wedistribute the weight between a
pack and the bike.
One company out there I thinkit's uh, you sweet, uh, they did
.
They come out with a no dancingmonkey thing for a while.
That was like their marketingplay where they had this like
unique strap combination so thatthe pack wouldn't like flop all
(22:18):
over the place.
Okay, and that's usuallyassociated with either a poor
pack or too much weight in it.
So it's just like moving around.
And so if you, if any cyclists,have brought way too much stuff
on the group ride or the raceor whatever, and you're just
like moving all around.
That's what we're talking abouttoo, in the way of like you get
to a point where it's just liketoo much and it's you
inefficiently move.
Okay.
The other thing is like for alot of Leadville people, because
(22:42):
there's aid stations and it'sso well serviced and all this
kind of stuff, I tell most of myLeadville athletes go bottles
only, ditch the pack why youtake that weight off.
I increase speed.
So you have to, depending onthe nature of the race itself.
You got to think about thisweighted NIS advantage being
(23:03):
also a disadvantage in somedegree too.
So, just on the high level,it's like if you're going to
carry it in the race, you know,carry it in training, but then
start to work with how much doyou actually need to carry and
then distribute it.
Distribute it between, uh, youknow, person and bike, because
this rolls back to maybe evenlike project 98.
(23:23):
I remember, uh, chris andgriffey and a bunch of other
coaches talking about how theytried to add weight to the rider
or the bike, um to to.
This was like on the track uh,to get more power production
over time.
Spoiler alert it didn't reallywork.
In fact, when they put it onthe, on the rider, that's
themselves, it was just superawkward.
(23:43):
They couldn't drive the bike,they couldn't handle the bike.
When they loaded the, the, thethe bike with like um, I think
it was like lead weight in thebottles.
They could get going a littlebit better, but then and then
they took it off and they hadthis sensation of being faster,
but they weren't faster.
And that's a key element,because in the cycling world too
, is like we ride our heavierbike in the winter right, but
(24:05):
it's usually like the lessexpensive bike that we don't
carry.
You know about getting wet andall this, but then we go on our
fast bike.
You know, come the spring andsummer and we feel faster.
Unless you've been well, unlessyou've been controlling all of
the elements perfectly ortraining really well, you're not
going to get that much fasterfrom riding a heavier bike
necessarily.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, it's a.
It's a lot of perception.
You know it's riding thatheavier.
Taking out your steel stallionin the wintertime and then
getting onto your carbon bike inthe spring is going to feel
significantly different, Iimagine.
So you're going to feel a lotfaster, a lot lighter, a lot
more nimble.
Same with ultra running you puton a heavy pack and you do your
(24:46):
training and during your raceyou're going to be like, oh, I
feel so light and springy.
And again I do want to prefacewe're not talking about, like
military selection, ruckingpeople, like that's a different
category.
So anybody listening that'slike oh, but what about rucks
for a military Different,different category?
We're talking ultra running andcycling right now, with all of
these opinions and takes andanti-science debunking.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Exactly.
But you know this, this conceptof like overloaded training,
which is what this is.
It's nothing new under the sun.
If we were, I don't know goback to the eighties when we had
like ankle weights.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I feel called out Adam.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Hey, no names shall be named, but baseball with,
like, heavier bats, uh, heavierclubs, and golf and all this
kind of stuff.
So you, you practice or usethese heavier things so that the
, the one that you use on gameday, is lighter ankle weights I
mean, I think that's beendebunked and caused a lot of
injuries and so doing so, Ithink you have to just be really
(25:48):
careful about loading the bodyin a weird way when it comes to
endurance and repetitivemovement versus in the gym and
my main and don't need to gofurther than that, because I
think it's it is out there.
So my main point with this islike, if we're going to load and
if the goal is to gain strength, to increase bone density, to
(26:10):
improve velocity of movement, myadvice is to separate your
endurance training from yourstrength training and work on
strength, velocity and bonedensity and all these goals in
the gym, and then we do oursport for endurance.
Would you agree with that,sarah?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Absolutely 100%.
Okay, yes, excellent, same page.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Okay, so for the next five hours we'll talk about how
to do that.
Now I think, like just give mea very high level, because we're
going to do a tag along episodeto this where we do talk about
how to organize strengthtraining with an endurance
program throughout the year, butmaybe give us a little spoiler
alert of how that would looklike just with one of your
(26:53):
athletes, how you separate thatand how you kind of get away
from I don't know some supersports specific thing in the gym
and we say, oh, we don't needto do that because we get enough
workout running on the trailsor something like this.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Oh, are you talking about how folks say, oh, I don't
need to do any leg trainingbecause I do enough running and
I run up mountains.
So there, yeah, so, yeah, Ihear that a lot Running up
mountains will make you betterat running up mountains, but
it's not necessarily going togive you the same strength gains
, bone density, power, all ofthose things that you can get
via strength training in the gymand actual like.
(27:29):
Again, separating endurancetraining versus strength
training, I love them both.
Let's find a way to make themboth work in your programming.
But saying that a weighted vestis going to give you strength
or that running up mountains isgoing to give you strength, both
are unfair.
They're both.
You know you.
They give you some specificityto your sport, but you're not
(27:50):
necessarily building overallhuman strength.
Yes, so I don't know if thatwas the answer to your question,
but that's when I it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, no, I mean, it certainly is, and I think, like
in a roundabout way, however wecan say it that hits home with a
lot of people is if you cancompartmentalize endurance and
strength training two separatethings but if you balance it and
weave it in the right way, youwill have the best combination
(28:20):
of performance in your sport aswell as, like health, longevity
durability, durability exactlyas a human being, and I think
that that is the main messagethat I want everybody to just
realize.
When it comes to endurance andstrength training and we're
going to talk more about that inthe next episode, but bottom
line here today, with weightedvests and its application to
(28:43):
endurance sport, I would say Iwouldn't use it personally.
I wouldn't use it personally.
There's nothing magical with aweighted vest and if your goals
are strength, you know,increased strength, increased
bone density and all the thingsthat we talked about you're
better off doing that in the gymand then doing your sport and
doing your endurance separately.
So anything else that you wantto add to that, sarah.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
No, I think that sums it up perfectly.
If you like, doing it, great,but know why you're, know what
it's accomplishing and what it'snot, and just be honest with
that about yourself.
So, yeah, beautifully put.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Excellent.
Well, thank you, Sarah, and wewill talk all about strength
training and endurance trainingin our next episode.
See you soon.
Thanks for joining us on thetime crunch cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
(29:37):
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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