Wearing a Weighted Vest & Maca The benefits of a weighed vest: Takes Cardio to a new level Just as weight vests have been proven effective in the resistance-training realm, they have also made their mark in the cardiovascular arena. As if running with your own bodyweight wasn't difficult enough, consider throwing on a 50 lb. weight vest and attempting to do the same. That is exactly what 12 distance athletes were asked to do in a study published in the "European Journal of Applied Physiology." One group performed exercise with vests weighing approximately 10 percent of their bodyweight, and another group performed the same exercise without the weight vests. The group wearing the weight vests emerged victorious with improvements in both their "VO2 max (a measure of the body's ability to consume oxygen) and lactate threshold (the exercise intensity at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood)," two crucial factors affecting endurance exercis