I don’t understand vests (or hybrid clothing that has greater insulation and/or wind protection in the chest than the arms). I’m curious to what extent this is just my own weird issue.
I’ve seen people say that a vest will keep your core warm, and that allows warmer blood to circulate to your arms. I just don’t find that to work in real life. What happens instead is that I sweat out the core and my arms freeze.
Granted, I run very hot almost everywhere except my hands, which run cold.
To balance that out, in the winter I’m often wearing a mesh baselayer with some kind of outer full-zip layer (wind shirt or insulation as needed), with the zip nearly all the way open. So my torso is basically open to the air to try to avoid overheating, and then my arms are covered (and hands in gloves) to keep them warm.
So to me, an effective top for active use in the winter would be extremely thin (or just mesh) through the torso and in the armpit area, and then have insulation / wind blocking on the rest of the arms all the way to the wrists.
But pretty much every hybrid design I’ve come across that’s marketed for active use has the opposite approach – extra insulation and/or wind protection in the torso.
I know I’m probably at the extreme end of the spectrum in terms of running hot, but I think from a biological perspective pretty much everyone’s torso is going to be warmer than their extremities. So the default approach to hybrid active tops just doesn’t make sense to me. But do others find them useful?
