Heavyhands for Running

If you’re old enough, you may be able to remember when Heavyhands was an honest to god craze. About twenty five or thirty years ago, people started showing up to run with these little hand weights that had handles attached to them so that were easier to hold than, say, dumbbells.

The idea was that you would swing the weights while you walked or run, and you would get twice the workout in the same amount of time. The idea was developed and popularized by Leonard Schwartz, a middle aged doctor who was looking for something other than running to get his cardio in, and it was a good idea.

Of course, it didn’t work. The craze came and went, and for the most part, the little Heavyhands weight found a resting place in closets, never to be used again. This was not actually Dr.Schwartz’s fault, to be fair, and there is a lot of merit in what he had to say.

The problem was is that Heavyhands were supposed to give you a vigorous arm workout, but this required actually swing the weights while you ran or walked, keeping a steady pace. This is what you were supposed to do, but it isn’t what most people actually did. Instead, they just carried the weights as they ran.

Now, if the Heavyhands weight were fifty-pound beasts, this might have worked, but since they only weighed a pound or two, the effect was negligible and people soon quit using them. Much like the Atkins diet, most of the people doing Heavyhands had never actually read the book.

This is a shame, because Schwartz was on to something. He did meticulous research into how pumping hand weight affected oxygen uptake and energy burn, and his personal results were impressive.

The highest VO2 maxes in the world tend to be held by rowers and cross-country skiers, both of whom use all their limbs for their sport. This led Schwartz to reason, correctly, that using the arms would allow you to build your cardio system in a whole new way.

This is good stuff for the serious runner. This allows you to continue to build your cardiovascular endurance without endless speed work or infinitely increasing mileage. Instead, with the hand weights correctly used, you can radically improve your ability to get oxygen into your system, which will in turn radically improve your running.

What you probably shouldn’t do is run with the Heavyhands weights. If you do, and you’re a competitive runner, you’re going to mess up your biomechanics for the actual races, which is not something that anyone wants.

Instead, replace some of your mileage for at least six weeks or so with Heavyhands walking at as brisk a pace as you can manage, while swinging the weights to forehead height or so. This is going to be a lot harder than it sounds, but it can add a lot wind to your lungs and a lot of speed to your runs faster than you can say Heavyhands.