Weight Vest Training

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

I train for Olympic Lifting and the Highland Games and try to do both at a high level. During the summer 'off-season' for HG I have experimented with wearing a weight vest while I throw to increase my throwing strength and explosiveness. The vest I used is the X Vest (you can do a google search on it) and I used no more than 12 pounds in the vest at any time (about 5% of my body weight). When I first used it I noticed that I was really slow but if I took a few throws while wearing the vest and then took it off and threw, I would get distances about 2-5% further. I wore the vest for 8 weeks of throwing and then took one week of practice without the vest in preparation for my most recent HG. Bert had expressed concerns about timing and technique issues that the vest might create and I did notice that I ran into some of those problems. It was almost as if my feet were going too fast; I wasn't patient with the weight. During my game this past weekend (Appalachian) I did not hit any measurable PRs that would indicate the vest gave me an advantage but despite my technique issues I had a very consistent day, perhaps my most consistent games to date. I have games from now until the first weekend in November and after that I plan to use the vest again during the next off-season from November to March. My regular training usually takes about 6 months to actualize and I would expect similar results from the vest. I will update with posts and/or answer questions if others are interested.

[Bert Sorin]

Roger, thanks for posting, I am really interested to see what happens in the next few weeks, as your body gets accustomed to no vest, and the timing takes hold. Should be cool. Good luck.

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

I did not practice with the vest in the two weeks before the Charleston games and I had a game the weekend before the C-Town games as I noted before. This time I performed much better, staying very consistent all day again and hitting two PRs; I went almost a foot further in the HWFD and over 2 feet further in the Hammer. What I'm noticing at this stage is that my core seems to be stronger and able to hold up better to an entire day of Highland Games competition.

Next I will test another claim of the vest, that it can help immediately by making your body think it has that extra weight on it. My next game is October 6 and between now and then I will train with the vest thusly: I will wear it while I take my 'warm-up' throws and then I will take it off for my 'competition' throws. On game day I plan to do the same thing, wear the vest while I warm up and then take it off for my competition throws. If the claims are true then I should see some increases in the Stone, LWFD, HWFD and WOB without having to worry about the timing issues that could arise while wearing the vest for the entirety of practice.

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

After one week, I have noticed a difference. My throws without the vest are nearly 10% further than my throws with the vest except in the LWFD which is about 7% further. All of my non-vest throws are at or over my game PRs and consistently so.

An example of my past three training sessions is as follows:

17 lb. Stone, vested: 5 warm-ups all between 34 and 36 feet.
17 lb. Stone, unvested: 38, 40+, 40+ (there were some over-rotation issues)

HWFD, vested: 2 warm-ups; 30, 31
HWFD, unvested: 33, 34+, 34+

LWFD, vested: 3 warm-ups; 65, 66, 66
LWFD, unvested: 70+, 71+, 72+

WOB: I can't really tell since I do not practice with standards. Everything felt good tho.

Like I said, I plan on doing the same procedure on game day and I hope it translates well.

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

This week was pretty much the same as last week. I missed yesterday's O Lifting work out which helped my throws today and I find that encouraging. That allowed me to hit some big throws today in the Stone and HWFD but the one of the benefits I see from the vest is that it is really helping my LWFD technique. I have a tendency to rotate too fast in the LWFD and leave the weight behind me too much, a bad habit I started when I learned how to throw the discus. The vest slows me down enough that I keep the weight closer to where it needs to be. Once I take the vest off I have already trained my body to keep the weight in line and I don't have to think about it too much. Also, there are times when my throws don't feel right and they aren't going as far as they usually do and it's hard to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Training with the vest has shown me that when things don't feel right in the LWFD it usually means I'm way out in front of it.

One more day of light throwing on Wednesday and then Hartwell on Saturday. If I PR in the Stone, HWFD, LWFD and WOB then I will consider the Vest a great success. If all of those events go to hell then I will have a weight vest for sale, cheap.

[goergen1]

Have fun in Hartwell Roger. I hope you are successful. I am interested to see how the vest training turns out in competition. :cool:

[Bert Sorin]

cool insights Roger. Let us know how it works, we may see a lot of Pros wearing vests this season if it pans out!
Good luck!!!!

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

After weighing how I performed at Hartwell yesterday against the mitigating circumstances I am going to classify using the weight vest for warm-ups a success. I imagine that an athlete who is more technically sound and experienced than I am will experience greater success.

The Stone: My first attempt felt great and I felt that it went far, maybe 40+ or so. But I could not stay in the box and stepped over the trig. The next two attempts were right at 40 feet (39-11.5 and the last one at 39+). I put this in the category of success because usually my throws in the stone will have a 2-3 foot range in distance and my marked throws were very close together. Plus, that first throw felt really good.

The HWFD: All three throws were 30 feet or over, the first time I have ever done that at a game. I ended up at 32-7, which is the same distance I threw at Charleston and the first time I have hit 30+ in two consecutive games.

The LWFD: I won the LWFD with something like 62-6 or 63-6 and ended up hitting 64-5 in extras. I have now been 64-65 feet in four of the past five games, which is the consistency I'm looking for. On one of my extra throws I had a lot of power going in to my release and I lost grip on the weight a little early … I have not done that in the LWFD since my first year throwing. I need more time with the vest on the LWFD to figure out how to use it properly to extend my throws.

The WOB: This was the event that cemented my opinion that warming up with the weight vest helped. I cleared 12, then my first attempt at 13 I missed because I had so much power going into my release that I couldn't hold on to it (I'm a spinner in WOB). I always hook grip and I have never had this problem before in the WOB, or any event for that matter. Even though I missed my first attempt at 13 I felt euphoric at how much power I put in to my pull. I cleared 13 by backing off my pull a bit, cleared 13-6 in the same fashion (there were only two of us left after 13) and cleared my first attempt at 14. This is only the second time I have ever cleared 14 and this is the first time I did it on my first attempt and I did it cleanly; no part of the weight even came close to touching the bar. I then went to 14-6 and cranked on the weight with the same amount of force that I used on my first attempt at 13 and the same thing happened, the weight went flying out of my hand toward the crowd while I went ass over tea kettle for the second time. On my second attempt I situated the ring a little deeper in my hand and I didn't feel that I put the same amount of force on it, probably backing off instinctively. My hand paid a price too; I have a blood blister the size of a dime right below my first digit. The third attempt I cranked it up again and hit the bar flush with the weight. I don't think the weight was high enough to go over but I wasn't under the bar at 14-6, I was hitting it.

The mitigating circumstances: In all the events I am judging my success based on distances and comparing them to what I have done in previous games. The problem with this is, as anyone who competes at highland games knows, no two fields are the same some my 'constants' are not really constant.
1) The fields at Hartwell are uneven to say the least. In fact the field is much like the field at Culloden, they both happen to be a cow pasture. There were big chinks of crab grass, some sort of briar that had gone to fruit (these fruits looked like unripe cherry tomatoes and at times it sounded like I was walking on bubble wrap) interspersed with bare patches of ground. These conditions may not affect some throwers but I tend to have my problems on fields like this.
2) The box for LWFD was uphill to the trig and it was a fairly significant slope. But not only was it uphill to the trig, it was slanted downhill to the thrower's right. I wasn't the only one who had problems with this and my first throw was a foul because I couldn't stay in the box ON THE RIGHT SIDE (I'm a right handed thrower and have never fouled out to the right).
3) I performed a demo for one of the high school physics classes I am teaching on Friday before the games. I did a few throws with the HWFD, LWFD and the sheaf and then drove an hour home. This did not have a good effect on my back and after another two and a half hours in the car to Hartwell that same night I could feel the spasm coming on in my back. I spent about an hour stretching before going to bed, another hour stretching when I got up and I was stretching throughout the day while I was throwing. I tried to keep up on taking ibuprofen to keep the swelling down but forgot to take any right after lunch. This had a big affect on my sheaf and I knew it so I took some Advil right after the sheaf and things loosened up for the WOB.
4) There were some 'volunteers' doing the marking out in the field and they had never done it before. By the time we had gotten to the hammer, it had been found out that they weren't entirely accurate in where they marked things. One of the B athletes was watching us throw the hammer and he came up to me after we were nearly done and told me he watched the 'volunteers' mark nearly ever hammer throw short. I thought I had seen them mark a few of the throws in the other events short but it was hard to tell from where I was sitting where the weights fell amongst the clumps of grass. This B athlete said he saw them mark one of my hammer throws one or two feet short and I brought this up to the judge and he confirmed it. The judge did try to rectify the situation in the third round of the hammer. I am basing the success of using the weight vest on distances and I am initially thinking that the vest didn't help that much but what if on all the throws with the HFWD and LWFD they 'volunteers' marked where the ring landed instead of where the weight landed? This could add up to a foot on the throws and if my HWFD was 33-7 and my LWFD was 65-5, I would call that a definite success. The only event that I tested the vest in which did not rely on the judgment of others for the distance was the WOB and as I stated above, I felt I performed absolutely fantastic in the WOB compared to what I have done in the past.

Note: Do not take anything I have mentioned in the mitigating circumstance to mean that I have a poor opinion of Hartwell because I do not. I had a great time at the games as I do at nearly every game and I am not complaining about the circumstances we threw under because every athlete had to throw under them. I am merely stating from an experimenter’s point of view the different things that could factor in to the determination of the success or failure of using the weight vest.

[DavinportESQ]

Roger ,

I have a question for you. I read your post and everything was very scientific, and well thought out. It was really enjoyable and you seem to have a keen love for the "physics' of the event. I only have one question? When you say stretching do you mean static? I find my throws to be worse when I static stretch before games. I will run through a quick little circuit of stretches that mayhbe takes me 2 minutes. The rest is a dynamic work out. My thought is that while I want to be loose, and warm I dont want to be too losse where I get no stretch reflex out of the body. Flexibility isn't my strong suit either, but the only days when I actually take more then 2 minutes to stretch would be after Heavy lifting days, (which is everyday I lift) I will stretch and cool down but do no means I stretch out before the game.

Just my humble opinion

DZ

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

Dave; (Skip to the bottom for the summary if you don't want to read the reasoning)

I usually don't stretch too much on game day but yesterday I had to because of my pars defect in my L5 vertebrae but I didn't want to bore everyone with my problems in my post about the results with the vest.

Every once in a while I will do something that will upset my back and I never know what it is. One day it's doing heavy front squats, another day it will be throwing and still another it will be lifting the laundry basket. Luckily it doesn't happen too often but when it does I usually get a painful spasm/knot in my lower back that will last a week or so. Once the spasm is finished my back feels like someone worked it over with a meat tenderizer and I am no good athletically for about a week and a half. Over the years of trying to deal with this problem I have found a few things that either head the problem off at the pass or decreases the pain. I usually get a warning before my back gets too painful and that is fatigue and an odd soreness in my lower back. This is a little hard to describe but also when I start to lose technique in lifting/throwing and I can't force myself to keep a rigid core, that is also a cue that the spasm is coming. When that starts to happen I have found that stretching my hamstrings, hips and quads helps to reduce the pain. I also try to keep the swelling down with ibuprofen, naproxen sodium, aspirin or whatever happens to work that day.

I had felt the symptoms starting on Friday after I did the throwing demo and I knew the car ride to Hartwell would make it worse. I loaded up on anti-inflams on Saturday morning before competition started and I was good until about half-way through the caber (about 1:15-1:30). In the sheaf my technique was breaking down and I couldn't force myself into the correct position. I knew if I had taken more anti-inflams after lunch I would have been good for the rest of day but I had forgotten. I had a chance to take some advil right after I was done with the sheaf and there was enough time for the advil to work before the WOB started (that's what happens when you go out a little early). That along with the stretching of the hamstrings and hips allowed me to keep it together while throwing. Normally I just go through a muscle warm-up routine and don't try to stretch too much because I throw a little better when I take advantage of the stretch reflex.

So my motivation for static stretching wasn't because I thought it would help my throws, it was to try and keep the back spasm to a minimum so I could continue to throw the best that I could. When the back is good, I try to use the stretch reflex to help my throws.

[DavinportESQ]

WARNING SEVERE TANGENT!

That sucks about your back. Luckily (as I knock on wood) I have never had back "problems" I have tweaked it here and there. I would get a massage and a little work done but they said that the reason was because my hips weren't aligned. This was interesting to me and as I talked to more knowledgable people they said that my Hip flexors were so tight that were pulling my hips out of alignment. That is when I Started my stretching after heavy swuat workouts. I also started doing some range of motion stuff. aka Firehydrants, hip extensions donkey kicks stuff like that. Something I noticed when I changed training this summer is that I had these hugely powerful ginormous quads, but relatively little hamstrings, (and a ginormous DonkaDonk) I worked on doing a lot more hamstring exercise starting working from the floor in my olympics lifts. cough *back attack* cough. I found that these really helped my flexabily because I wasn't so quadzilla dominated....I digress....
I also found that I had a little bit of imbalance in my arms because of my teeny biceps. No I did not start doing curls for gurls like a mad man, but I did do some Bicep pullups and worked the range of motion a lot too.. An interesting after thought about imbalance. Someone smarter than me once told me that these imbalances restrict you by soo much more than you actually know. Meaning that if your biceps cant keep up with your triceps it forces you slow down your triceps. Example your bicep is what causes your arm not to rip off in a throw. Your tricep is the engine of the throw and your biceps are your breaks. If you can't go 200 miles an hour because your brakes aren't able to stop the car you are never maximizing your engine, therefore you can only go 150 miles an hour because thats what your breaks can handle. That means all those Push downs you do aren't good for anything, (well maybe the 8th event)

I know this got confusing but its some food for thought. Maybe the Gilroy could further explain this phenominon. I know that was a tangent but hey thats what this is here for

You are only as strong as your weakest link

DVD

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

This was not a game where I could experiment with the vest ... my back problem showed up on Friday and peaked on Sunday but enough about that. I'm really looking forward to training with the vest in the off season as I think I will get more out of it if I use it more during my plyo and sprint training and not so much for my throws training. I plan to go up from the recommended 5% of total body weight to about 8%. I already use 8% when I have the chance to do my sprints but I back it down to 5% for the throws ... I'm going to keep it at 8% for everything in the off season. I will detail more about the workouts in the future as to what plyos I do, how far I sprint and so on. If I notice any changes in my throws or O Lifting I will note that as well.

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

3 weeks, 3 games and it took its toll. At the Waxhaw games I tried using the vest with more weight than usual, 20 pounds. This was an absolute mistake. I understand why the instructions recommend that you don't use more than 5%-8% of your body weight. The extra 20 pounds just made me slow. This experiment pointed me in some directions for my off-season training. I'm going to cut back to a total of 10 pounds to train with while I'm throwing, but I'll use more weight when doing drills and plyos. I haven't decided how I'm going to break up my training over the weeks but I'll keep everyone updated. I hope that regular training with the vest will increase my performance on the field next season.

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

After playing with the weight vest during games towards the end of the season I think I have come up with a decent way to use it in the off season for throws. Adding more weight (20 pounds) while warming up for the throws just made me slower and I think I outlined that using 12 pounds in the vest during training threw my timing off in events like the stone and the LWFD. Considering those bits of information I have decided to cycle my use of the weight vest while throwing. Cycle one will be a strength building phase using 12 pounds in the vest. Cycle two will be a power building phase using 10 pounds in the vest and cycle three will be a speed phase using 8 pounds in the vest. I have yet to decide if I will keep the cycles in order or change it up but I will always move to the speed cycle if I am close to a game regardless of what cycle I am currently in. Those weights correspond to about 5.2%, 4.3% and 3.5% of my body weight, respectively. To get some sort of quantitative result on this I'm going to drop by Bert's House of Glory and Pain and Bert is going to help me with some testing.

On days when I'm not throwing and have a little time for some drills I plan to use the vest at 12 pounds to run through my drills, mostly shot put drills because I am horrible at the stone; I will use the same weight for doing some plyos. If and when I do any running/sprinting I will use 20 pounds in the vest for this.

The key here might be consistency. During the last four or five weeks of my throwing season I did not have a chance to workout as much as I had been previously; that includes vest training, O-lifting and throwing. I won't get started again in a serious nature until the second week in December.

Any input or thoughts would be appreciated, everything that I have outlined is not set in stone. If someone has a better idea of what I should do I'd be willing to give it a shot ... as long as it's backed up by reason. I'm not going to strap the vest on with 20 pounds and go swimming just because someone says I should. 'Hey, it'll build your desire to survive, right?'

[Roger Crazy Wolf]

The results I'm about to report aren't as scientific as I'd like, but it's what I have.

I used the vest like I outlined in previous posts, cycling the amount of weight in the vest. I did not have a chance to use it consistently like I would have preferred due to some issues beyond my control. Bert's fear that adding extra weight to the body might throw the timing off was correct. Even when I cycled the weight down my timing was off, especially in the LWFD and Stone. I'm not a technical master in the throws and it has taken me about four weeks to get my timing back. In analyzing video of my Shot technique the vest turned me into a 'strength' thrower and not a technique thrower. I couldn't get my body into the correct power positions (without knowing it) and this technique cemented in after I took the vest off. As an example, when I started my throw in the full spin I didn't have to sit back as far because I had more counter weight on my front side. In essence it changed my center of mass enough to significantly alter my technique.

Recommendations: If you want to make yourself stronger in the throws, use a heavier throwing weight and not a weight vest. There are some benefits to taking some warm-up throws with the vest, but there is a big downside to training the actual throws with the added weight. The best use of the weight vest is when I'm sprint training, doing plyos or just taking the dogs for a walk. It strengthens my core, keeps my legs strong and aids in conditioning but using it for throws training messes with my timing.

The weight vest was a good investment because of its versatility in use for things like running, plyos or even doing push-ups and pull-ups at higher intensities. For the near future, I'm going to leave it at home when I go to practice my throws.

[Bert Sorin]

Hey man, Not to worry, ya gotta break some eggs if you are going to make an omelet. That makes since that the upper body wouls stay back , creating seperation (artificially)when wearing the vest. I agree, stick to throwing overweight impliments for specific strength and positions, and light impliments for speed and timing.

Good luck this season, see you on the 28th.
Bert