WEIGHT VESTS · 8 MIN READ

We Found The Exact Weight Vest Wiz Khalifa Used To Get Shredded

Wiz Khalifa in a scrapyard holding a tire in each hand, wearing a black two-strap chest rig with one 5.5 pound Weider plate

Wiz Khalifa owns a '62 Impala, a '69 Chevelle and a Rolls-Royce. His training is an hour of lifting and 30 minutes on the bag, and in a 2022 shoot the weight on his chest hung from two straps and one plate. I copied that setup in my own garage for 60 days.

By Tyler Brandt

Senior writer · Oct 5, 2026 · 8 min read

A Garage Full Of Cars, And One Plate

My gym is half of a two-car garage. The other half belongs to a car I don't drive in winter, under a grey cover.

A man swinging a black kettlebell in a home garage gym, with an old car under a grey dust cover behind him

So when a clip of Wiz Khalifa training in his own garage turned up on my phone in February, I watched it twice. He captioned one of those Snapchat clips: "If you haven't put in the work don't expect the results. Keep your space and your mind clean."

His cars are not like mine. In a 2022 Esquire video he walks through a 1956 Bel Air, a '61 and a '62 Impala, a '69 Chevelle SS, a '72 El Camino, two Dodge Challengers and a Rolls-Royce Cullinan. "I'm a classic car collector so the older the better," he says at the start.

A man sitting on a weight bench in his garage gym, looking at his phone with raised eyebrows

In January 2022 he posted "New gym at the crib. More pounds than ever." Five months later he did a shoot for a Google campaign that PAPER produced about small brands behind the summer's search trends. That is the photo at the top of this page: a tire in each hand, and strapped to his chest a black rig with one iron plate on it.

That is the part that stuck with me. A man who could buy any weight vest on the market wore two straps and a plate. Meanwhile I had three vests in a bin in the corner of my garage, and I had stopped putting on all of them.

How A 140 Pound Rapper Got To 175

Wiz did not grow up lifting. He told Bleacher Report in 2018 why he started fighting: "My cousins train jiu-jitsu and stand-up as well. I just got tired of getting my ass whooped, so I figured I would learn how to fight."

He started jiu-jitsu under Rigan Machado in Beverly Hills, as Vice reported in 2017, then added muay thai and Jay Glazer's Unbreakable gym in Los Angeles. By that 2018 interview he was in the gym five days a week, two to three hours a visit, and Bleacher Report put him at 175 pounds, up from 140. "I was cool with being skinny before," he said. "But as a 30-year-old man, I like myself with more weight."

A man in hand wraps throwing a straight right into a free-standing heavy bag in a garage

The sessions got tighter once the habit stuck. In a 2022 Men's Health video he sums it up: "I work out for an hour, and the kick boxing lasts about 30 minutes." In the same video he says that by 50 he plans to be "built like a house."

An hour of lifting, then the bag. That is a routine a garage can hold, and it is the one I copied. It also changes what a vest has to do. A walker needs a vest that stays comfortable for an hour on a sidewalk. A guy doing pull-ups, kettlebell swings and bag rounds needs one that stays put while he hangs, hinges and punches.

The Vests In My Bin, And What They Cost

Here is the bin. Each of these is a good product, and each one wins something outright. None of them was built around the iron already sitting on my garage floor.

Hyperwear Hyper Vest PRO, $239.95 with 10 lb. Skin-tight stretch fabric and thin steel inserts, so nothing bounces when you run or jump. It wins on fit. The catch is the ceiling: the Large I could buy today tops out at 30 pounds, and getting it there costs $429.85.
GORUCK Ruck Plate Carrier 3.0, $115. One flat plate rides high and tight on the back, which is why rucking people love it. It wins for long walks. But it takes GORUCK's own ruck plates, so the carrier plus a 30 lb plate came to $204, and the heaviest setup on sale today is the $135 Long with a $125 45 lb plate, $260 for 45 pounds.
ZFOsports 40 lb vest, $69.52 on Amazon. The cheapest way to put on 40 pounds with nothing to load. It wins on price. The weight is the weight, though, and the 80 pound version is $233.99.

That bin cost me $513.47. Before I stopped buying, I also priced two more. The Titan Elite Series 60 lb at $156.97 is the best value of the padded vests and goes up in 2.5 pound ingots, but you are buying 60 pounds of iron you may already own. The 5.11 TacTec Trainer at $140 is built like duty gear, and with its heaviest plate pair it reaches about 30 pounds for $320. A $40 DMoose dip belt is the cheapest road to heavy pull-ups, but the plate hangs from your hips, so it is useless for swings or the bag.

Kettlebells, a short stack of iron plates, a jump rope, hand wraps, a towel and a band laid out on a garage floor mat

Then I laid out everything else I own on the mat. Two kettlebells, a stack of plates, a rope, wraps and a band. The weight was never the problem. I had plenty. What I was missing was a way to wear it.

Four Things A Garage Vest Has To Do

Every vest in that bin failed at least one of these. They are the test I held the rig from the photos to.

Use the plates already on the floor. Most garage gyms already own iron. A vest that needs its own bricks makes you buy weight twice.
Go heavier than month one. Weighted pull-ups move up fast. A vest that tops out at 20 pounds is a vest you replace.
Sit high and tight. On a pull-up or a swing, anything that hangs low or bounces pulls you off line.
Come off in seconds and live in a drawer. If it takes a minute to get out of, it ends up in the bin.

The Two Straps He Wore

The strap rig in the photos is the Kensui EZ-VEST. Kensui posted one of the shots on June 2, 2022, captioned "@wizkhalifa features the EZ-Vest in @papermagazine with Google." The Google page that ran the shoot listed the EZ-Vest Lite and the EZ-Vest Pro beside it, and PAPER put a video from the day on its YouTube channel.

To be straight about it, the plate on his chest is a Weider marked 5.5 pounds, and he is holding a tire in each hand for a camera. Nobody is calling that his heaviest set. What caught my eye was the design. It is a flat shield on two straps with a short post, and the post takes whatever plate you slide onto it.

The Pick

Kensui EZ-VEST Lite

A man in a grey t-shirt wearing the EZ-VEST Lite strap vest with one black plate on his chest in a garage gym

4.76 from 1,524 reviews of the EZ-VEST V2

$99 · holds up to 80 lb

Takes the standard 2-inch Olympic plates you already own
The plate sits high on the chest, not on your hips
100-day risk-free trial

An owner doing a pull-up in his home gym with a black plate on his chest

An owner in a red shirt wearing the vest with an iron plate on his chest outside his garage

The Lite is the version closest to what he wore: two flat shields on straps, one on the chest and one between the shoulder blades, with a short post on the chest shield that takes a standard 2-inch Olympic plate. It holds up to 80 pounds and costs $99. If you outgrow that, the Pro holds 150 pounds for $179 and the Max holds 300 pounds for $299. Plates are not included, which in a garage gym is the point.

Against my four tests it went four for four. It used the plates on my floor. Eighty pounds is more than I will ever hang off a pull-up bar. The plate sits high on the sternum and did not swing on the bar. And it comes off in a few seconds and fits in the drawer under my bench.

60 Days Of Training His Way

I ran the routine from that Men's Health video for 60 days: about an hour of lifting, then three-minute rounds on the bag. The vest went on for the pull-ups and the kettlebell work. I started with a 5-pound plate on the chest, close to what he wore for the camera, and moved up two and a half pounds at a time.

A man at the top of a pull-up on a squat rack, wearing the strap vest with one plate on his chest

The best thing about it is the dull part. Changing the weight takes as long as spinning off one collar, so I changed it between sets instead of picking a number and living with it. Buyers say the same. "My old 80 pound vest really cut into my skin and was a nightmare on my shoulders to take on and off. This is so easy," one owner wrote. Another switched from free weights to bodyweight work: "The main benefit I've found from using the V2 max is the sheer volume I can pump out in a short period."

A sweaty man lying on a rubber floor mat in a garage after a workout, a kettlebell and water bottle beside him

One honest catch. The Lite has no padding at all. Over a t-shirt for an hour of pull-ups and swings, I never noticed. If you want a vest for long walks, the Pro adds 6 mm of padding for $80 more, and that is the one I would buy for the sidewalk.

Get the EZ-VEST

The Side-By-Side

	Kensui EZ-VEST Lite	Titan Elite 60 LB	GORUCK Plate Carrier	Hyperwear PRO
Price	$99	$156.97	$115	$239.95
Heaviest you can buy today	80 lb	60 lb	45 lb ($260)	30 lb ($429.85)
Uses plates you already own	Yes, 2-inch Olympic	No, its own ingots	No, its own ruck plates	No, its own inserts
Where the weight sits	High on the chest	Around the torso	Back only	Around the torso
	Learn More

Prices from each maker's own site on October 5, 2026.

Before You Buy

Do plates come with it? No. It takes any standard 2-inch Olympic plate, new or used. Kensui sells an adapter for the older 1-inch plates.

Will it fit me? The shoulder and waist straps adjust, and Kensui sizes it from XS to 3XL.

Lite, Pro or Max? The Lite at $99 covers 80 pounds, more than most people will ever wear for pull-ups. Step up to the $179 Pro for padding or 150 pounds.

An owner flexing in the padded EZ-VEST with a black plate on the chest post

The 100-Day Trial

Kensui gives you 100 days to try it. Sixty days was enough for me to know the bin in the corner of my garage is going to the curb.

The Only Thing I Had To Buy

Wiz Khalifa's garage has a Rolls-Royce in it. The weight on his chest was two straps and a plate. If your garage already has the plates, the straps start at $99.