Could This Vest Help You Recover From Low Back Pain?

Weighted vests are tools that become popular from time to time in the fitness world but could they be helpful for your lower back pain recovery, or are they harmful? Like with anything it depends on how they are used, so today we’ll be covering weighted vests in detail, particularly from the standpoint of someone recovering from back pain. We’ll find that there are a certain group of people who could actually really benefit from using them responsibly and it’s probably not who you thought!

What is a weighted vest?

Perhaps with their backgrounds in the military weighted vests are just that, a large durable vest that one can wear to add weight to their body. Often with pockets for additional weight, the vest is designed to be modifiable, usually in smaller increments so you can adjust the weights to your needs. For example, small 1kg iron blocks that can be added to the vest’s many pockets to add weight.

Benefits of a weight vest

One of the clear benefits of using a weighted vest is that it allows you to add weight to your exercises, for example, in 1kg increments mentioned above. This allows for fine tuning of the load you’re adding to an exercise. You also have the weight held close to the core of the body, making it more balanced and ergonomic, helpful for exercises like squats, split squats and hip hinges, exercises we talk about a lot when it comes to rebuilding your lower back health. The final benefit is that you don’t need to hold the weight, this is really important for ladies and those that are a little older, more on this later.

Warnings if you’re using a weighted vest

Although popular to use and the benefits are many, there are some things you should consider if you’re thinking about using a weighted vest to improve your health, lose weight or recover from back pain.

Using the weights vest for too long

Any tool can be overused, and while the vest will make you heavier, and therefore increase the demand on your body for simple daily tasks, wearing it for hours every day would be unadvisable in our opinion. For such a long duration adding weight to activities where you’re not particularly mindful of your form and movement technique could lead to exacerbating issues such as knee, hip, ankle, low back pain and neck pain. Groups of the population, such as police officers who regularly have to wear “weighted vests” for their job often find that the these focus strain to the neck and lower back as the thorax – the part of the spine that your rib cage is in, doesn’t move very well as it is braced by the vest. 

Building up the duration too quickly

One of the benefits of the vest is that it will help develop strength in the bones, discs and joints when employed correctly, but these tissues will develop very slowly, often people will ramp up the duration of use a little too quickly and this could be problematic. For example, going for a 5k walk with the vest on. Start with sets and reps of a shorter duration if you’re going to use it for this purpose instead and build up over months not days. 

Using too much weight for exercises

Another issue with the weighted vest is that it is more difficult to “abort” the exercise, if you lose your form or become too fatigued, therefore you should be careful not to use a weight that could challenge you so much that you might fail to correctly perform an exercise or movement.

How you can use a weighted vest to recover from low back pain

Ultimately the weighted vest is a tool that could really provide a great benefit to a certain group of people and we’ll explain why this is and how to use it in the safest way for maximum benefit. When it comes to recovering from lower back pain, building strength in the legs and back is of vital importance. The steady addition of load to your exercises and rehabilitation is a vital part of the process of strengthening injured lower back discs and the spine in general. This can be a challenge for some as holding the weights necessary can become a challenge for the upper body and prevent you from being able to continue to strengthen the lower back, which brings us to the first point.

Who should consider using a weighted vest most

In our experience, ladies tend to run into issues with holding the weight in their upper body sooner than men. So while this could be a helpful tool for both men and women, I would suggest that women would benefit sooner from incorporating a weighted vest to their rehabilitation. 

A second group of people would be those working out at home. This is because often people working out at home will be limited on the space or sorts of equipment they have and so will find that they need to come up with creative ways to progress their resistance or load, without needing to turn the entire house into a gym!

With this in mind, the fact that a weighted vest could give you a base line of up to 30kg or more of ergonomic weight that you do not need to hold, this could be a really good tool to help you build your back strength and resilience, slowly over time of course!

How should you use the weighted vest as part of your back rehab

Remembering our earlier point about not using only the weighted vest, a sensible approach is as follows, we’ll take the “goblet squat” as a great example, but the “hip hinge” is another great example too. Both of these exercises require you to hold the weight, which requires good grip and arm strength. With everyone, you will find that the upper body simply cannot hold a heavy enough weight to challenge the legs, sooner or later. 

This is where you can combine the weight and the weighted vest for best results. But this should be done with care. Let us suppose you want to use 20kg total but you just cannot hold more than a 15kg weight. A good idea would be to use the weighted vest with 10kg, and hold a 10kg weight, this way we are progressing but if we get tired we can immediately drop the 10kg handheld weight and feel confident that we can manage the remaining 10kg weight on the vest. With this combined strategy, you’ll always be able to drop a significant amount of weight more or less instantly in the event you find your technique failing. 

Granted the more weight you are able to “hold” the greater the margin for safety will be, for example, if you were able to hold a 30kg kettlebell and use a 30kg vest, simply dropping the kettlebell gives you a large decrease in load, to something much more manageable, you can then proceed to compose yourself and take the vest off to eliminate the remaining load. This works at all levels. 

Controversy around weighted vests for your joint health

Like anything, these vests are a tool and there is of course controversy around the peculiar use of such vests that raises eyebrows. Wearing them all the time for daily life could understandably create issues. When so many do not move well, simply down to an absence of experience working out properly or an absence of education around how to safely perform certain exercises, the daily wearing of a weighted vest could be a really bad idea. Adding load to movements that are so frequently done poorly will only serve to make a lower back injury worse, or aggravate a dodgy knee. In spite of any perceived weight loss that might be possible, you’re just as capable of using this tool to aid fat loss and increase back strength building if you use it sensibly. 

Recommendations for weight vests if you want to strengthen your lower spine

Ultimately this tool can be a great one to help build strength in the spine and improve your strength and skill in key “life movements”, such as the squat, hip hinge and split squat. These movements feature heavily in the Back In Shape Program as core movements for a healthy back, regardless of the diagnosis. You will not get away with avoiding these movements, so learning to do them better is your number one priority.

Weighted vests will allow you a means of progressing your resistances safely, by combining them with the weights you might be using, particularly valuable for home gym users and those with a less strong upper body. Like with anything, you must observe good form when working out with a weighted vest, just like you do when working out with a resistance band, kettlebell or dumbbell.

If you’re thinking of incorporating a weighted vest, then make sure you start light, combine it with a weight where you’re happy with the total weight and that you can abort the handheld weight to safely compose yourself with the weighted vest that remains. So long as you observe this and use the weighted vest as part of your workouts, it can be a great tool to help you rebuild strength in the lower back!

If you want a more structured approach to recovering from your lower back pain then check out the full Back Health Masterclass for a free 80 minute step-by-step guide to fixing lower back pain. If you want more help with  your lower back pain or sciatica then check  out the membership to Back In Shape, the most robust program to help you fix your low back pain from home. Trusted by members all over the world and supported by our expert team you’ll find it has everything you need to get your Back In Shape for good.

Some quick-fire weighted vest questions we’ve had:

Q: Studies found that participants who wore a weighted vest eight hours a day, for three weeks, all lost weight. But what are the potential risks in terms of back health?

I would suggest for reasons mentioned above that this would simply be unadvisable for daily use in this manner, there are plenty of ways that you can lose weight over 6 weeks and a short bout of exercise using the weighted vest in ways we’ve described above would also get similar results without the risks of injury with a higher “bodyweight”.

Q: What are the key points to consider before buying/using a weighted vest?

Make sure that you choose one that has small increments, such as 1kg. This allows you to dial in your weighted vest and slowly increase its load over time. Also check for reviews on comfort and snugness of fit. You want to be able to have it close to your body, rather than dangling about when working out. Finally you want to ensure that there are weight pockets on the front and back for balance.

Q: Can it actually help strengthen the back muscles which, in turn, will help prevent back pain in later life?

Yes, when used correctly, it will strengthen the back muscles, the leg and hip muscles and your core muscles, but more importantly, your spine itself, and will also help with improvements and maintenance of good bone density – just as resistance training is known to do.

Q: Are there any cases you would not recommend someone wear a weighted vest?

Not really, life has loads and the only case to avoid is if you haven’t progressed to a simple 1kg handheld weight, so it would be a “not right now” rather than a “not ever”. Use handheld weights to begin because you can easily drop them when you feel your technique is beginning to lapse, then as your upper body strength becomes a limiting factor, you can start using a weighted vest as discussed earlier.

Q: Could wearing one actually help improve your posture (for example, is it more painful to ‘slouch’ wearing one, whether standing up or sitting down?)

Not really, they will only help your posture if you are working to maintain good posture, however, i would suggest that weighted vests are not designed to improve posture, they help with their application of load to the spine, and joints of the body, as well as the muscles, mostly BELOW the weighted vest. While some of the exercises, such as a hip hinge will help good strong posture, it’s not the weighted vest that makes it so but the exercise with resistance. 

Q: How long would you recommend someone wear one for and is there a limit? (i.e should you not wear one for longer than 3 hours a day?)

I don’t particularly think they are a good tool for wearing in this manner for reasons previously mentioned, use your weighted vest during your workout. If you’re dead set on using it for walking etc, then build up slowly and use it to enhance the challenge of your walking duration, rather than just wearing it around the house. 

Q: Are there any activities where you would strongly recommend a weighted vest be avoided?

I think if you’re a healthy person who works out regularly and has experience doing so with good form, and no injuries, you could do more or less anything with a weighted vest, it’s not so much “what” you do, but “how” you get into the activity and giving your body time to adapt. For example running with a weighted vest. If you’re someone who’s got a back injury, or knee/hip/ankle issues, then follow the advice above and use the weighted vest as a tool to help you progress your workouts specifically, and only use it then within your workouts.