It’s a question I sometimes remember, when doing fitness. I always wanted to wear weights on my arms or legs. But they are always filled with sand and are very bulky and weird. I am wondering, why we’re not using more dense materials? Why not metal? The weights at the gym aren’t sand.
sand is cheap. steel is not.
Note that it’s usually not fresh sand. It’s whatever the cheapest sand-like material they can get their hands on. Which is likely mining waste. Which might not be great for your health.
Cheaper. More flexable.
This. Dirt cheap material cost, no additional machining costs.
dirt
cheapmaterial
Pretty much it. When we made some we drove to the beach and filled a bucket full of sand, took it home, ran it through a sieve.
Exploiting natural resources.
They do make weighted vests and dumbbells with other materials but they generally cost more. So if you dont like bulky sand then try spending a bit more to get something with steel/lead/tungsten.
Are they commonly out there with elad and tungsten? Lead is cheap and super heavy so it makes sense for a sales perspective, but I guess I’d naively believe they’d be a toxic tangle companies wouldn’t want to be part of given how stele is good enough. Tungsten, on the other hand, is certainly heavy, but I’d guess the value of the material and the difficulty of machining it would preclude it from a sales sense.
Dive weights and belts are generally Lead and I have seen them used in other applications too. if you search for steel ones they come up on Amazon and other sites.
This guy made some out of drill bits if you want to DIY.
I’ve had several cuff weights over the years and a lot of them used what I assume is bird shot. So some do use metal, it’s probably based on weight and quality.
One of my friends was doing a lot of Kung Fu and he used to have bands he could strap to his ankles and wrists with lots of little pockets for rectangular steel bars so he could adjust the weight as required.
