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Using Euro coins as weights (2004)

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180 points Tomte | 1 comments | 20 Oct 24 10:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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modulovalue ◴[20 Oct 24 12:53 UTC] No.41895049[source]▶
I'm using euro cents as weights in my weighted vest.

When I started doing this I didn't want to afford dedicated weights as it seemed like a waste of money, but I had many cents saved up from my childhood, which I started to use instead.

I have roughly 15kg in euro cents in my vest and I'm regularly talking walks with it.

To get one kilo you need 435 cents and it turns out that in Germany you can also "buy" coins "for free" at the "Bundesbank", that is, you can exchange actual money for weights without any fees. You give 4 euros and 35 cents and you get a kilo. Once you need the money back, you can also sell those coins back to them for free.

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rwmj ◴[20 Oct 24 12:57 UTC] No.41895065[source]▶
What's a weighted vest? Something for diving?
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modulovalue ◴[20 Oct 24 13:10 UTC] No.41895143[source]▶
It's a vest that you can fill with stuff to increase the intensity of a workout.

There was a time in my life when my legs started hurting and shaking from muscle atrophy because I was programming too much and moving too little.

I was looking for a way to fix that issue and I didn't want to waste time going to a gym, so I started talking walks with a weighted vest. Walking is nice because you can think while walking and with a weighted vest you don't have to walk for hours for it to have a useful effect on your body.

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xandrius ◴[20 Oct 24 14:20 UTC] No.41895533[source]▶
For information, the current research shows that the intensity of the exercise is much less important than the duration. So if you did so little exercise that you get muscle atrophy, a weighted vest isn't going to do much for you.
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1. Kirby64 ◴[20 Oct 24 19:14 UTC] No.41897768{3}[source]▶
You’re gonna need to provide a source to that. For caloric burning? Sure, I’d agree. For cardiovascular health? Eh, the answer lies in the middle. For strength and muscle building? No, quite the opposite really. At some point the intensity of an exercise is so low it provides no meaningful muscle stimulus.