I started doing yoga with a weighted vest - and found benefits for my strength, balance and mind in just 2 weeks

Everywhere I look, someone seems to be hiking, running, or in the gym in what looks like a bulletproof jacket. Weighted vests have caught on in a big way. Pull one on, and it instantly ramps up the intensity of any workout with very little effort, so it's easy to see why. Even wearing one as you carry on with your day is like a strength training session without lifting a single dumbbell.

As with any resistance workout, moving with a weighted vest delivers many of the benefits our bodies need as we age. It helps to protect bone health, increase muscle mass, and improve mobility. Typically, weighted vests are worn during strength training workouts, HIIT workouts, or hikes. You can also walk in a weighted vest. But I wanted to try one for something a bit different, doing yoga workouts in a weighted vest.

Devotees to the practice will know that yoga isn’t just stretching. It requires many different skills, including strength. Can strapping an extra few kilos to my body help me get stronger and hold some of the more demanding poses for longer? I wore a weighted vest for two weeks to find out.

Benefits of doing yoga with a weighted vest

1. More body awareness

I wasn’t quite prepared for how different I would feel in a weighted vest. I had to move slowly and with caution on my first few sessions, and I often found myself stumbling through familiar sequences, such as a simple sun salutation.

This is no surprise, says yoga teacher and founder of the Yoga Happy app, Hannah Barrett. “The first thing most people notice is heightened body awareness. The added weight increases the feedback your nervous system receives from your joints and muscles. It's called proprioception. You become more conscious of where you are in space, how you’re distributing your weight, and where you’re holding tension.”

But she warns, “While adding weight can sharpen proprioceptive awareness in some contexts, it can equally distort it if it changes the way you move or load your joints in ways your body isn’t used to.”

2. Balance improves

Balance is a key indicator of longevity and healthy ageing. A study found that those who can stand on one leg for 10 seconds or more over 50 have almost half the risk of dying within 10 years than those who can't.

To say I felt off-balance the first time I tried yoga in a weighted vest is an understatement. Hannah says that in balance poses, such as tree or warrior 3, your stabilising muscles have to work much harder to keep you steady, because of the extra load.

You also need to be conscious that your centre of gravity has shifted slightly, a fact brought home to me after I faceplanted in crow pose (an arm balance I’ve only just recently mastered). Not only is this experience good for building strength in the stabilising muscles, but wobbling is where our brains learn to improve our sense of balance over time.

3. Better stability in shoulders and core

Consistently doing yoga with a weighted vest means you're basically doing yoga as strength training. It can help build functional strength in the shoulders, suggests Hannah: “In poses like plank and downward dog, the vest places meaningful load through the shoulder girdle, which means the rotator cuff and the serratus anterior, the muscle that keeps the shoulder blade sitting properly against the ribcage, have to work much harder.

“Your core also has to work constantly to manage the added weight across every transition,” she adds, “so you’re building stability through the whole session, not just in specific poses.”

Yoga instructor Eloise Skinner says it's most noticeable in dynamic, flowing yoga sessions. “A weighted vest could help improve overall stability and control of the body while moving, including within transitions such as a vinyasa sequence. The wearer needs to engage the core and glutes effectively to support the additional load on the upper body while the spine is in motion.”

4. Better glute and hip stability

It’s not just the upper body that benefits - doing yoga with a weighted vest is one way to add intensity to your glute exercises. I certainly felt the extra bodyweight when sinking into a warrior 2, a high lunge, or chair pose, and my thighs and glutes tended to ache for longer than usual afterwards.

“Standing poses become significantly more demanding with a vest,” says Hannah. “[They often] require the glutes, hamstrings and deep hip stabilisers to fire harder to support the pelvis under load.

“If strengthening the backs of your legs and your hips is a goal, flowing through a standing sequence with a vest is a brilliant way to add resistance without changing the movement itself,” she suggests.

5. Deeper relaxation

After feeling the burn in my glutes and thighs, and wobbling through balance poses, lying down in savasana (corpse pose) at the end of every yoga session was a welcome relief. This was a pose where I didn’t feel like the weighted vest was punishing me.

The relaxation actually felt deeper with the extra kilos gently pressed down on my chest, much like a weighted blanket. I'm not sure how I’d feel with a vest at the heavier end of the range.

Using a weighted vest in restorative poses is an idea that interests Eloise, who says, “There’s quite a bit of research around weighted blankets and their impact on our wellbeing and sense of grounding.”

In fact, a 2024 review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research concluded that weighted blankets improved symptoms of anxiety and insomnia, and increased total sleep time.

Eloise adds, “Some research indicates that this type of weighted pressure can decrease our cortisol levels. A weighted vest in savasana could have a similar effect and result in an immersive, calming meditation at the end of a yoga practice.”

Can you use a weighted vest for yoga?

I certainly feel that I’ve built a bit more strength through wearing a vest in my yoga practice, and I hope I get stronger the more I use it. Balance was a challenge, but wobbles and stumbles are where the brain improves our sense of balance, so it was a good test.

However, I did miss having full body contact with the yoga mat in any supine or prone position. This is part of the mind-body connection and is sometimes crucial for cues for other poses. For example, transitions into bridge or shoulder stand benefit from slowly and consciously rolling up through the spine, vertebrae by vertebrae – with a weighted vest in the way, you lose the smoothness of the movement.

Hannah believes there are potential benefits - “it could be an effective way to deepen both the physical and sensory experience of the poses you already know" - but is also quick to warn that it's not a traditional way to do a weighted vest workout.

"The research specifically on weighted vests in yoga is still very limited, so most of what we can draw on is grounded in movement science more broadly rather than yoga-specific evidence," she says. "The compression of a weighted vest restricts diaphragmatic movement as well, meaning your breath may become shallower without you noticing. In yoga, where the breath is central to both the physical and the regulatory experience of practice, that matters."

She also warns that "restricted breathing can affect vagal tone", which is "essentially the activity of the vagus nerve, which plays a key role in how your nervous system shifts between states of effort and recovery". This makes a weighted vest an accessory exclusively for strength and power workouts, rather than calming yoga practices.

I also found that a weighted vest works better in some poses than others. Standing asanas, such as the warrior poses and lunges, are where it really comes into its own, and seated poses don’t present many problems. Luckily, my vest was slim enough not to get in the way of forward folds, but bulkier vests may be an issue here.

My verdict

I do prefer to feel light and fluid during yoga, and wearing a weighted vest didn’t just physically weigh me down, but I felt a mental heaviness too. I’ll pop it on for those yoga sessions where my intention is strength and power, and I’m keen to try it more often in something like a slow and restorative yin yoga routine.

It’s not a yoga essential for me, but certainly a worthy accessory for when I want to build strength, challenge my balance and mix things up a bit.

Tips for using a weighted vest

• Find the right weight for you: A general tip is to start with a weighted vest of around 5% of your body weight, increasing to 10% if you’re stronger or want more of a challenge. Hannah recommends starting at the lighter end and observing your breath to gauge it: “If your breathing changes or feels restricted at any point, the load is too much.”
• Ensure the fit is snug: This may take some experimenting, but you want to make sure it’s not so tight that it restricts the breath, but not too loose that it slips around, particularly in inversions (otherwise it will be up to your ears during downward dog!).
• Go slow at first: Even if you’ve been practising yoga for years, I recommend you go slower than usual, even in the most familiar poses and transitions. Once you become accustomed to the vest, you can gradually increase the pace or difficulty.
• Remove if it’s distracting: Yoga is about mind-body connection and being in the present moment, so if the vest feels uncomfortable in any way (not just the breath, but you may feel too warm with this extra layer), take it off, reminds Eloise.