Body Togs Wearable Weights Product Review

It’s product review time!

A couple years back, for Christmas, I asked for a set (arms and legs) of Body Togs wearable weights. The idea behind Body Togs is that you can wear them all day long and the added resistance from being weighted down makes you burn some extra calories. I’m not going to give you all the information that their website already provides, I will be keeping tradition with the rest of my website and just relate my experiences using them.

Just out of the box, I put them on, and thought immediately, “Cool! I have dragon scale armor!!” The tiny little metal plates really did have an armoring effect – I banged my shin pretty badly on the coffee table and barely even felt it. Having worn them on and off for the past two or three years, I have some pretty solid opinions about my Body Togs.

Pros:

-They are fairly comfortable to wear. Some slippage / sweating issues which I will cover in the cons section, but overall, they are really not that obtrusive or annoying.

-As advertised, they do fit comfortably under long sleeves and pants without being terribly noticeable, unless you wear tight clothing (I tend not to, in an attempt to disguise my fatness.) This means that you can wear the weights anywhere (I have worn them to school a few times, for example) and not look like a tool, as you would with bulky, regular wrist and ankle weights.

-Even if you choose to wear shorts and a short sleeved shirt with the weights on, it doesn’t look too horrible, unless you are highly concerned with fashion. From a distance, they look like black arm and leg warmers, just slightly bulky sleeves.

-The weight is noticeable. I was a bit concerned about this because the listed weight on the website is only a few pounds for each weight, so I did not think it would make much of a difference. But let me tell you, walking up staircases and folding laundry can actually get you to feel a little muscle burn.

-They claim that the ergonomic design helps prevent strain on the joints from the added weight. This might be true. I, for one, have worn plenty of different kinds of wrist and ankle weights and I have never had a problem with joint pain. Then again, I’m 21 years old, so this point may have some merit that I have yet to discover.

Cons:

-The weights can slip a little bit from the position I want them to be in. For the arms, that means sliding down to my wrists instead of being closer to the elbow. That also means that when I move my arms the weight flaps around a little bit, which gets kind of annoying. The legs have little rubber strips at the top end, similar to the stuff that keeps a strapless bra from slipping down. For the most part, that and the velcro do the job just fine, but if I step heavily or jog the slippage can make my skin a little bit raw. It really isn’t a big deal, it is sort of akin to the imprint that tight jeans can leave on your tummy after a long day of sitting.

-On nice days, the metal plates in the Body Togs feel cool at first and never really warm up past skin temperature. On hot days, or when I exercise wearing the weights, they can get hot. That would not be a big deal either, but for the fact that the weights are in no way machine washable, so every time I sweat wearing them I have to wash them by hand in the sink.

-The plates are magnetic. Every time I wave my arm near my laptop when I am wearing one of the arm weights, my computer goes all crazy. Sometimes it crashes. Needless to say, I didn’t test this further to avoid damaging my laptop, but I did toss a hard drive magnet onto one of the leg weights, and it stuck so strongly that it took me a full two minutes to pry it back off again. I tend not to use the Body Togs as often because of this, since I have both school work and job work to do on my laptop, every single day. Sometimes it is worth the hassle to put them on and take them off repeatedly, but usually not.

My Conclusion:
For their intended purposes, Body Togs are pretty cool. They do add a little extra oomph to your day, even if you don’t have the time or energy for a full workout. I wouldn’t say it’s a heart-pounding, drenched-in-sweat kind of experience, but you can definitely tell the extra weight is making your muscles work harder.

If you plan on using them on your arms at your computer-intensive job, I would advise against them (unless you are gunning for a new company computer). The price, hovering somewhere around $40-60 USD depending on the source and whether you are looking at the arm set or the leg set (legs will be more expensive), is not too bad, considering the cheaper competition is mostly composed of huge, bulky, uncomfortable, and non-ergonomic weights, but you will want to make sure you are willing to put up with some of the minor hassles for long enough to get your money’s worth. I am glad I have them to wear when the mood strikes.

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