Take a moment right now and picture the most gimmicky piece of fitness equipment you could think of. Is your brain now playing a mental video of those ridiculous shake weight infomercials from the early 2000s?
Or maybe you’re imagining a housewife in full makeup and classic ’50s hair smiling emphatically while a gigantic rubber band attached to a whole-body vibration machine vigorously shakes her from the waist?
Well, it turns out that there may be more to these types of exercise modalities than you might think.
I’m not saying shaking a dumbbell is going to give you bulging biceps or standing in place while being violently jiggled is going to shed oodles of fat from your body, but the concept of using vibration for everything from muscle gain to fat loss has actually been widely studied, and I think you’d be surprised by the results.
Even when I was a student studying exercise physiology and biomechanics, and later when I worked as a personal trainer and manager of various health clubs throughout the years, I would see these vibration platforms off in a distant corner of the gym and smirk to myself while the poor folks standing, kneeling, and doing all sorts of poses on them thought they were going to see results from simply being “vibrated”. Granted, I literally saw folks sucking down giant 24 ounce Jamba Juices while standing on said platforms, so I was somewhat justified in my judgement.
But as I would later find out after diving into the research myself, I couldn’t have been more wrong about the actual science of shaking.
In today’s article, you’ll discover what top physical therapists, doctors, and chiropractors around the world who use whole body vibration machines in their practice already know—that they provide a safe, proven, and quite literally effortless way to burn fat, build muscle, improve circulation, and beyond. You’ll also learn why all vibration plates are not created equal and what to look for when shopping for one.
Whole Body Vibration (WBV) For Fat Loss
From visceral belly fat to the cellulite you may have been misled to believe there’s nothing you can do about, WBV has been proven to help with these more stubborn types of fat and has also been shown to have a positive effect on overall body composition.
Aside from giving you a Homer Simpson gut, visceral fat is a particularly dangerous type of fat that can be found in your arteries as well as your abdominal cavity.
Wrapped around vital organs such as your liver, stomach, and intestines, visceral fat, has been associated with an increased risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, stroke, high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, and high blood pressure, just to name a few. Visceral fat also causes your body to make more of the proteins that inflame your body’s tissues and organs and narrow your blood vessels.
