Whole Body Vibrating Platforms

Wobble to wellbeing
The makers of whole-body vibration machines claim they tone your muscles and hone your thighs. Scientists say they may have some remedial effects but the jury is still out.Being shaken vigorously, pneumatic-drill style, is something of a departure from the holistic road to health that we have been guided along in recent years. But the latest fitness machine to take the sporting and celebrity world by storm is the Power Plate - the makers of the device claim it gets you trim in sessions of just 12 to 15 minutes by vibrating your body so intensely that you can feel your tonsils buzz.Madonna reportedly used the device to hone her 48-year-old body into looking half its age for her last tour. The material girl is now said to take all her telephone calls while standing on one.
Celebrities such as Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Claudia Schiffer have declared vibrational devices to be part of their fitness regimes. It is also a favourite of the German football team, which used it extensively throughout the World Cup, and Collingwood Football Club is said to have adopted the treatment.A Power Plate fitness studio recently opened in Harrods department store in London, where groups of four can book 25-minute sessions with a qualified trainer. An estimated 10,000 of these or similar vibration exercise machines - the VibroGym and the Soloflex Platform, which cost about $5000 - were sold for private use across Europe during the past year. In Australia, the Personal Power Plate costs $6100, with the deluxe model, the Next Generation, a whopping $17,000. Despite the price, HF Industries, which supplies the Power Plate in Australia, claims most sales have been to private homes.According to information on the powerplateusa.com website, the machines vibrate at between 30 and 50 times a second, which transfers energy to the body and triggers rapid muscle contractions. The upshot is that you work harder all over when you're on it. In a 12-minute workout, the makers of the Power Plate claim that it trains every muscle in your body and contracts them to the same degree each time.If the machine is set to its lowest level - 30 hertz - it means your muscles are doing 30 contractions a second. This means it is a more regulated and more intense form of exercise, says Casey Bawden, from HF Industries.It can also work if you are standing still. This way the device can be used to improve the conditions of those who are unable to exercise rigorously due to age or infirmity."It helps reverse the effects of conditions such as osteoporosis and has been used to benefit people who cannot exercise regularly or who are in rehabilitation," Bawden says."We don't believe it should be used as an alternative to regular exercise - this is not an excuse to give up walking your dog - but it can enhance your existing training and give relief to some medical conditions."The osteoporosis claim is backed by research from Leuven University in Belgium, which compared the results of three groups of healthy post-menopausal women over six months to assess the effects of body vibration training on bone mineral density compared with conventional resistance training.The vibration group used the Power Plate and its body vibration technology as its training method three times a week for sessions lasting up to 20 minutes. The resistance group carried out conventional resistance training also three times a week but with sessions lasting up to one hour, while the control group did not engage in any training regimen.The study measured bone-mineral-density effects on the hip and revealed a net increase of 1.51 per cent in the vibration group compared with no increases in bone mineral density in the resistance group.Whole-body vibration, the term for the Power Plate effect, is not a new concept. Exercise scientists have been studying the effects of intense vibrations for four decades. Russian scientists discovered its benefits in the '70s when trying to find a workout that could be done in space. Until then, the weightless atmosphere had predisposed astronauts to osteoporosis but scientists found that standing on a vibrating platform stimulated muscle and bone development.