By Michelle Kwon
Vibration Technology Helps Perfect Your Body and Your Performance
Celebrities around the globe are sharing a secret to their incredible body shapes and to their overall health and performance.
Celebrities around the globe are sharing a secret to their incredible body shapes and to their overall health and performance. It is a state of the art piece of "exercise" equipment that actually does the work for you to build muscle, burn calories, increase circulation, improve flexibility, strengthen bones, and even help heal injuries.
It is a resistance machine with a vibrating platform that provides results similar to working out with weights, and its rather simple technology is enthusiastically supported by everyone from Madonna and Claudia Schiffer to Lance Armstrong. Music icon Sting reportedly said, "Body vibration is a key component in helping the band feel and look our best. Taking it on the road made a big difference." Director Clint Eastwood uses it, and stated, "Body vibration is a fast and effective strength workout, and I like it before a round of golf because it helps me be loose and flexible." Model Elle MacPherson said, "After two weeks on it, I can already see a difference in my legs and stomach. Everything seems so much firmer. I love the fact that I can see results in such as short time with such little effort!"
How does it work? A vibration platform uses the principles of acceleration training to stimulate the body’s natural response to vibration. What’s the response? Your skeletal muscles enable you to move, and are all connected to your central nervous system. Vibrating these muscles causes each one to respond. When your body is moved suddenly and quickly, it naturally tenses the muscles.
The machine’s vibrations transmit waves of energy throughout the body, activating muscle contractions between 25 and 50 times per second, helping them to stretch, tone and strengthen, but with very low impact. If the vibrating plate on the machine is set so that muscles contract 30 times per second (1,800 times per minute), for example, these very rapid movements will cause your body to burn a lot of energy. Burning large amounts of energy in a short training programme will strengthen and define muscles, and increase athletic ability and weight loss. Various positions are used for different muscles groups, depending on whether you work on your legs, arms or abdomen, like you use on a gym’s fitness machine. The difference is that you do very little work, other than standing on the machine!
Vibration training isn’t really new; it dates back to the 1960s. The technology was first embraced by scientists investigating cures for osteoporosis. This led to Soviet aerospace scientists adopting vibration training for cosmonauts to combat the weakening effects of living in zero gravity. It helped to counteract the huge loss of muscle strength and bone density experienced during space missions, allowing them to remain in space four times longer than their counterparts.
But even for those of us spending time on Earth, vibration training has shown impressive benefits. Not only does muscle strength and tone increase as a result of the muscle contraction response, it also helps to develop ”explosive muscle power” that’s essential if you play sports like hockey and basketball. It increases range of motion, balance and coordination used in sports such as golf and tennis. This is said to stimulate 95 to 100 percent of your muscle fibres, whereas in conventional training you only use 30 to 40 percent of them. There is little to no lactic acid build up in this type of muscle toning, which means after working on the machine’s platform there is no residual muscle soreness.
During vibration training the tissues are warmed up and blood circulation (and oxygen in your blood) increases, ensuring that the muscle becomes more flexible. Due to this increased oxygen, waste products are removed from the body more efficiently through increased lymphatic drainage, and substances that cause pain are also more easily removed. Bone structure responds to exercise; bones will grow stronger and denser when the muscles around them grow. This exercise is said to raise growth hormone levels which are essential to repairing and regenerating tissue. It is also reported to lower cortisol levels which help minimize the effects of stress.
Professionals working in sports rehabilitation also use vibration training within injury treatment. This technology is used by athletes, trainers and coaches as part of their training and for rehab. It has been adopted by sports teams including the Toronto Blue Jays, Calgary Flames, New York Giants, Toronto Maple Leafs, San Diego Chargers, Miami Dolphins, Dallas Mavericks, New York Mets, Pittsburgh Pirates, Anaheim Ducks, Atlanta Braves, and Philadelphia Flyers. In 1998, Dutch Olympic trainer Guus van der Meer adopted vibration technology for Olympic athletes, and developed a vastly improved version for the whole body. Since then it has been used by dozens of Olympic athletes including some Canadians.
Medical researchers are exploring the possible health benefits of vibration training for stroke victims and people with spinal cord injuries. Medical and rehabilitation clinics and other practitioners have endorsed vibrational technology, and universities including Stanford University, University of Southern California, University of California-Berkley, Ohio State University and Texas Christian University now feature the therapy.
In the late 1990s several fitness gurus claimed that it only took 10 minutes a day to achieve a total body workout on one of these machines. After over a decade of further research (and more than 15 published papers examining its performance enhancement potential) those who use the vibrating platforms today agree with the 10 minute calculation.
There have been no negative side effects reported by users for fitness, weight reduction or therapy. Though it doesn’t replace healthy exercise that’s vital to increase your cardiovascular strength, to trim, tone, and treat injuries, this advanced equipment may be the next "must-have" for a home gym.
To find out more about vibration therapy machines see:
