[t-3]

The risk of injury while walking in a weighted vest is not much higher than walking normally. A very high weight of vest is probably ill advised, but walking on a very flat/regular surface for long periods is far more damaging than walking with a little extra weight. Weighted bracelets/limb weights are dangerous though, and shouldn't be used unless you know what you're doing and take care not to move too quickly and put excess strain on joints.

[dotancohen]

How much weight on a weighted arm band is considered dangerous? I'm considering 500 gram bands for my arms, that's just about twice the weight of a cellular phone today.

[t-3]

It depends on what you're doing, but 500g shouldn't be dangerous as long as you wear the weights tightly bound so they don't bounce or slide. What you want to watch out for are anything that overextends or puts pressure on the joints - those movements can cause damage even unweighted and having weights just makes the danger worse.

[hakfoo]

I'd be worried about blisters/rashes/rubbing if the weights slide around. I use an exercise-bike like device and realised I was getting a blister on my hands from the constant motion of the grip.

[dotancohen]

Thank you.

[ffsm8]

Ehh, I've been doing fitness boxing and knockout home fitness (Nintendo switch) with 1.5 kg wrist/hand weights for ages now, no issues to speak off. I think he's taking about the 2-5kg weights, these are way more dangerous then you'd expect from wearing them. (I did that for a while, after getting slightly In shape - at least until I read up on it)

Strong recommendation for Nintendo switch for baseline fitness btw, these games are great for a 1-2 day 20 minutes workout/week for unfit office workers. Way better experience then the equivalent VR games.

[archi42]

What are the equivalent VR games? Just curious.

I don't play too much VR these days, but enjoyed Beat Saber for "stationary movement", Gorn for beating up stuff and the VR ports of the original Serious Sam games for "run and shoot like a maniac".

[ffsm8]

These can be pretty physically challenging too! my issue with arcade style games for fitness is that they stop whenever you fuck up. That's not really great when your goal is to get moving for ~20 minutes or so.

The one's I've currently got installed on my quest 3 are

Supernatural Fitness (I need a VPN to play because they're geolocking it to USA). I find the way they try to "get personal" with the trainer super awkward.

FitXR (only one with decent passthrough gameplay) I dislike how most exercises are centered around "gyms", whenever you enter a session, there are others around you doing the same exercise as you and you get a scoreboard. It really doesn't vibe with me whatsoever. I also don't believe that I almost always get first or second place - I'm pretty sure this is showing you numbers to make you feel good about yourself.

XR workout It's the most "indie" of these and with the highest difficulty ceiling. It's biggest downfall is that it doesn't really give you a generated "I wanna exercise for 20 minutes" button. At least I couldn't find it.

There are also others, but I don't have them installed. I.e. Les milles etc

But as I said before: purely from a workout perspective, the Nintendo games work way better in my experience.

It's just so awkward in VR compared to Knockout Home Fitness, worse signalling what you need to do next - you're wearing a headset while getting sweaty - no center stage youre watching, instead youre just trying to guess which movement you're supposed to do while things randomly float around.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ctLdgFf5GCQ

[Yodel0914]

Your body weight varies by more than that during the course of a normal day. Carrying 1kg should not increase any sort of risk of injury unless you exceptionally weak (as in, have trouble walking at all).

For the same reason, you probably won't see much benefit from such light weight over just walking a little faster or a little further.

[Eisenstein]

The problem is that when you put weight on your limbs you are creating levers and inertia which get transferred to joints in ways those joints are not good at dealing with.

[Yodel0914]

How to you carry groceries (or, basically, function at all) if you can't handle a 500g weight attached to your arm?

[t-3]

One usually doesn't do much with their arms while carrying groceries, they just hang at the side or move the bag around when putting it down or picking it up. When performing other movements, especially when they are fast or forceful, the extra weight can add momentum that is potentially hazardous, especially if it bounces or moves around (makes it very hard to compensate for reflexively). If present during repetitive tasks, extra weight can increase the risk of repetitive stress injuries occurring.