Several decades ago, running with ankle weights was all the rage.
From recreational joggers to serious, competitive runners, many runners could be seen sporting ankle weights for all of their daily training runs.
The thought was that running with ankle weights would make your legs stronger and allow you to run faster when the weights were removed.
However, for the most part, wearing ankle weights while running has fallen out of vogue, and more often you see runners running in a weighted vest or simply forgoing external weights altogether.
Is this because there are risks associated with running wearing ankle weights or is it just not that effective? Or, is running with ankle weights a trend that we should bring back?
In this article, we will discuss the pros and cons of running with ankle weights.
We will look at:
- What Are Ankle Weights for Runners?
- Why Do People Wear Ankle Weights Running?
- Risks Associated With Running With Ankle Weights
- Safer Alternatives to Running With Ankle Weights
Let’s get started!
What Are Ankle Weights for Runners?
Ankle weights designed for exercise are generally weighted cuffs that wrap around your ankles and are secured using Velcro or buckles.
Most ankle weights for runners weigh 1-5 pounds (0.5-2 kg), although some weigh as much as 10 pounds or more.
The weights are usually filled with sand, iron filings, or small iron plates, and the cuff design is generally flexible so the ankle weight can be adjusted to fit your body.
Why Do People Wear Ankle Weights Running?
At the most basic level, running with ankle weights forces your muscles and connective tissues to work harder because they are contending with an additional load.
This can trigger musculoskeletal adaptations such as an increase in the size of your muscle fibers (hypertrophy), the strength of your muscles and tendons, the number of muscle fibers recruited when your neurons signal your muscles to contract, and the number of capillaries and small blood vessels supplying your muscles.
Additionally, your cardiovascular system has to work harder to keep up with the increased oxygen needs of your muscles caused by the added workload.
As a result, you may burn more calories running with ankle weights and experience improvements in your aerobic fitness.
The thought is that by consistently running in ankle weights, your heart, lungs, blood vessels, muscles, and connective tissues will adapt so that you are fitter and stronger.
Then, when you run without ankle weights, running will feel easier, and you will be able to run faster or longer distances.
Risks Associated With Running With Ankle Weights
The primary concern associated with running with ankle weights is that the weights can cause undue strain on your joints.
Running with ankle weights changes the load distribution on your lower limbs, which in turn, alters your gait while simultaneously increasing the torque on your ankles, knees, hips, and spine.
It’s nearly impossible to not change your stride somewhat when running with ankle weights because the weight is located at the end of a long lever (your leg), which means the effective weight is magnified up at your hips.
This throws off your center of mass and changes the angles and magnitude of the forces going through your joints.
Tissues such as your hip flexors, IT band, and small muscles controlling the movement in your feet can all be strained by the added stress of running wearing ankle weights.
The added weight can also increase the risk of stress fractures in the feet.
Safer Alternatives to Running With Ankle Weights
In general, the risk of potentially straining your joints by wearing ankle weights while running isn’t really worth it.
The benefits don’t usually outweigh the risks of running with ankle weights, and there are safer alternatives that can give you similar—if not better—results.
#1: Alternatives to Ankle Weights for Building Muscle
If your primary goal with wearing ankle weights while running is to build muscle in your legs, it’s important to remember that the minimal weight of most ankle weights isn’t really sufficient to cause hypertrophy, or muscle growth.
A safer and more effective alternative is to perform dedicated strength training exercises in the gym or at home using heavier weights.
Loaded squats, lunges, step-ups, calf raises, deadlifts, and hamstring curls are examples of excellent strengthening exercises for the lower body.
So long as you use an appropriately-heavy resistance (usually cited to be at least 60-80% of your 1RM for 8-12 reps), you should see an increase in the size of your muscles.
Similarly, if you are looking to increase the strength of your muscles, you’ll want to work with even heavier loads, typically cited to be 80-100% of your 1RM for 1-5 reps.
Note that some research is now showing these ranges aren’t as fixed as we once assumed them to be, but even if you can experience muscle hypertrophy and increases in strength with lower weights, the relatively insignificant heft of an ankle weight is unlikely to be anywhere close to the necessary percentage of your 1RM to induce appreciable gains.
In short, running with ankle weights isn’t actually an effective way to really increase the strength and size of your muscles.
#2: Alternatives to Ankle Weights for Burning More Calories Running
If your primary motive for wearing ankle weights while running is to burn more calories and lose weight, there are also safer and more effective alternatives.
First and foremost, your diet, particularly referring to how many calories you are consuming, plays a significant role in your energy balance and ability to lose weight.
Weight loss is ultimately a product of burning more calories than you are consuming. Creating a caloric deficit of 3,500 calories yields one pound of fat loss.
This caloric deficit can be generated through physical activity, reducing your caloric intake, or a combination of both.
Although running with ankle weights will increase the metabolic cost of running somewhat, it’s likely not all that significant.
Ankle weights don’t add that much more mass to your body, which means that it doesn’t require that much more energy from a caloric standpoint to run with ankle weights.
Therefore, it’s probably quite easy to make a few minor adjustments to your nutrition plan to cut the relatively few number or additional calories you would burn running with ankle weights versus running without added weights.
According to ACE Fitness, exercising with ankle weights that weigh from 1 to 3 pounds (450 to 1350 g) can increase your heart rate by about 3-5 of three to five beats per minute, increase your oxygen uptake and number of calories burned by 5 to 10% compared to unweighted conditions.
This is fairly insignificant.
For example, imagine someone normally burns 400 calories running for 30 minutes. Even if we take the top end, which is a potential 10% increase in energy expenditure when running with ankle weights, the same runner will only burn 440 calories when wearing ankle weights while running.
It’s not all that hard to cut 40 calories from your diet.
Plus, if you don’t want to tweak your diet, there are other ways to increase the number of calories you burn running, and again, a difference of 40-100 calories or so is very minor.
Most runners burn at least 100 calories for every mile they run, so increasing the distance of your runs is an easy option to burn more calories running.
Another approach would be to increase the intensity of your workouts.
This is probably a better strategy for anyone looking for an alternative to wearing ankle weights to run based on the assumption that in addition to trying to burn more calories, you may also be hoping that running in the ankle weights will make you faster.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts have been shown to increase energy expenditure and elevate your metabolic rate for up to 14 hours after exercise, enabling you to burn more calories.
Speed workouts, such as Fartlek runs or VO2 max intervals on the track, are HIIT workouts for runners that not only torch a lot of calories but also go a long way towards improving your performance and helping you run faster.
#3: Alternatives to Ankle Weights for Running Faster
Finally, if you do burn more calories by running specifically through the use of running with weights, running with a weighted vest is a safer alternative to running with ankle weights.
A weighted vest centralizes the external resistance on your core, so the weight is much closer to your center of mass.
This greatly reduces the stress, strength, and torque on your ankles, knees, and hips, and only minimally alters your gait and biomechanics.
Finally, although just touched upon briefly above, if the primary reason you want to run with ankle weights is to make you a faster runner, there are safer alternatives that are more effective means of speed training.
In addition to speed workouts which can develop your speed with endurance (meaning you can run faster for longer), hill repeats, running strides, and various resisted sprint training modalities are fantastic ways to increase your cadence and maximum running speed.
For instance, sprinting against the resistance of a parachute and while pulling a weighted sled, sprinting in sand or in deep water, and running maximum-effort accelerations increase your neuromuscular firing rates and help you sprint or run faster.
Overall, running with ankle weights is generally contraindicated due to the associated risks and minimal benefits.
The aforementioned alternatives are much safer, and effective routes to strengthening your muscles, boosting your caloric expenditure, and becoming a faster and fitter runner.
If you are going to run wearing ankle weights, start small (1-2 pounds at most) and build up very gradually.
Just as you would gradually increase the intensity and duration of your runs when you were just starting out as a beginner, so too do you need to build up to running with ankle weights.
For some example HIIT workouts for runners, check out out HIIT running guide.
