[Healthy4Life]

I know in the WATP videos Leslie uses the weighted balls and says that they increasing your calorie burn, makes you use more muscles. However, I read in a walking book that the small amount of weight that you carry while walking just makes your body walk in awkward motion and prevents you from swinging your arms fully, and that you would have to wear a 30-pound weighted vest for the weight to affect the calorie burn in your walk. Any ideas or opinions on this?

[MTHead]

I'd heard from trainers that holding hand weights was not really a good thing when walking/jogging for the reason you mentioned. I just read in Fitness magazine about weighted spandex/lycra jogging pants, and the writer really liked them. And someone else just started a post about a weighted vest in "Does it Work?"

[Mel]

Years and years ago I thought that doing aerobics tapes holding 8 pound dumbbells would be a great way to combine strength training and aerobics...and get it all over with at the same time. This was years before I actually had any training and became certified I did this everyday for months, and gradually upped my weights. I did lose more weight, but my shoulders started to ache. Then hurt. Then it got to the point that I couldn't hold a heavy pot, pull up my pants, or swing a tennis racquet.

What I did was create small tears in my rotator cuff muscles and massive tendonitis from overuse. Your body isn't designed to constantly swing more weight from your shoulders. When you lift weights, you do maybe four to eight sets of 10-15 reps of a few arm exercises. Even lifting a different body part each day, if I spend half an hour a week doing pure bicep exercises, that's a lot.

Contrast that with walking or doing an aerobics tape holding weights everyday for 30-60 minutes and you can see the kind of stress that you are putting on your shoulders.

IMO, you're better off doing the walking/aerobics and then some weight training. The two are different types of exercise and you really should incorporate both

Mel

[flipafart]

my view it is like showering and eating you do them both but never at the same time

[JuliaTN]

I have some ankle weights that I've been thinking of using while I'm on the treadmill or eliptical - would that make a difference to the recommendation (since you aren't holding the weights)?

One of my goals is to be able to hike uphill carrying a backpack without feeling like I'm going to bust a gut...and I don't want to use a pack at the gym.

[funniegrrl]

NEVER NEVER NEVER use ankle weights when you are on your feet. That is DEFINITELY a good way to screw up your back or cause other problems. Ankle weights are meant to be used as added resistance when you do things like leg lifts on the floor.

As for walking with hand weights, the Leslie Sansone weights are 2 lbs. Everything I've ever read says that using 1 or 2 pound hand weights or wrist weights while walking is safe; more is trouble. Just like using weights in any context, you DO want to be sure you're moving them with control and not flinging them around. I know when I walk or do WATP with hand weights, I FEEL like I'm working harder. In fact, if you'll notice, in WATP and her other videos, there is always someone doing half-arm motions with no weights, full arm motions with no weights, and full arms with weights. Those are progressively harder -- both in theory and in my personal experience. When I started WATP at well over 300 pounds, I did feet only, NO arms at all. Then added arms with no weights until I was too tired, and finished with no arms. When I got to where I could do all the arm motions comfortably, I added weights, but had to finish without them. Etc.

It could be that a person who is already relatively fit will not see a significant increase in cardio burn from adding small hand weights, but for me even now, at only 4 pounds "overweight" I feel a difference.

[RobertW]

I agree that putting weights on your extremities is a bad idea, unless you are doing a "farmer's walk" with heavy DB's, but that is not really an aerobic exercise.

Walking/running up an incline is probably a saner alternative to weighted walking. Or you could just go faster.