Submitted 11 hours ago by Mighty@lemmy.world to [deleted]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Steve@communick.news 11 hours ago
Cheaper. More flexable.
Apepollo11@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
This. Dirt cheap material cost, no additional machining costs.
Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
dirt
cheapmaterialslazer2au@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
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.
AmidFuror@fedia.io 8 hours ago
Exploiting natural resources.