You Might As Well Skip This Overhyped Hiking Trend That (Probably) Doesn't Do What It Claims

For every fitness influencer that's out there yelling into a camera about discipline and touting the next new trend to boost your training progress, there's another decrying them as pseudoscientific heretics. Sifting through the chaff to find the wheat is an unenviable task that the average netizen simply doesn't have the bandwidth for. This leaves ample space for hucksters, misinformation, and conflicting versions of fact. In the hiking community, one of the latest get-gains-quick trends is "rucking" — which means weighted exercise or walking. And, now, it's being subjected to sufficient levels of scrutiny.

For most people, that's already what hiking is: weighted walking. You fight the forces of gravity on your upward ascents, and will probably carry a pack of some description with food and supplies that will have a combined weight. However, companies are now selling weighted vests, specifically for rucking, marketed to people who want to churn through the calories on their hike, or during a workout or trail run. And they are popular: the global weighted vest market could be worth more than $300 million by 2031.

These vests, which have their roots in military training drills, can be useful for people training for long-distance hiking expeditions, as they help simulate the weight of a multi-day pack. They can also contribute to a greater calorie burn, although this will be dependent on your age, the intensity of the exercise, your metabolism, and more. However, manufacturers and enthusiasts tend to make several other bold claims about the benefits that aren't always supported by scientific evidence.

Weighted vests are marketed as having postural, weight-loss, and cardiovascular benefits, as well as for strengthening muscles and encouraging bone growth. However, Lauren Colenso-Semple, a student of exercise science at McMaster University, told NPR that there aren't enough available weighted vest studies to glean that information from. "When we actually look at the data," she added, "it really doesn't support the [claims]."

A 2011 study published in the Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand compared the effects of walking with and without weighted vests on bone health in women. The results? There was no difference between the two study groups. Beyond that, smaller studies have shown that exercising with weighted vests yields minimal strength benefits, though it's unclear if these benefits result from the exercise itself or the rucking. Additionally, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Fragility and Aging, it's also unclear if wearing a weighted vest can mitigate muscle loss during a weight-loss regimen.

The problem, according to Colenso-Semple, is that walking or running doesn't conduct enough of a stress test on your bones or muscles to encourage meaningful growth — and adding a weighted vest isn't going to change that. It's also fairly well-established in exercise physiology that consistent muscle growth is achieved through resistance training, progressive overload, good weightlifting technique, and putting your muscles through full ranges of motion. Plus, there are also minor risks associated with rucking, like exacerbating underlying bone or back muscle issues, or using weighted vests as a substitute for more effective, tried-and-tested training methods. Which begs the question: Of all the useful gear to bring on your hiking trip, is a weighted vest really one of them? Or just another badge of performative grit?