I’ll probably come down as snotty or old-fashioned about that, but it needs to be said: I don’t like nor do I trust these things.
You know what they are, I’m sure. Tons of ads pop in our faces on the web, in magazines and on TV about the “new revolutionary machine that will give you the Abs of Death with only 2 minutes of exercising twice a week”. There are countless variations on that theme, hinting that if you haven’t the body of Arnold yet, it’s not because you don’t exercise, but because until now you didn’t had the miracle-machine to allow you to do so.
I’ve come into close-contact in the past with two of these little wonders: the Power Plate and a device that supposedly develops your abs without effort through electric shock. The Power Plate was my sister’s–she wanted to develop muscles in the hopes that it’d give her a round butt, or something like this. The second contraption was in a gym, because I was offered a full week of trials for massages and other well-being sessions.
Well, I didn’t like the Power Plate. Somehow, I still wonder: if I had gone on using it, would my ovaries have ended up falling down all by themselves in my panties? Sure, it vibrates. Sure, you ‘feel it in your muscles’. But I would also ‘feel it in my muscles’ when I was driving my crappy old car which kept on vibrating like mad all the time, and my butt remained as squishy and flabby as before. Not to mention the risk of death by irate neighbours, because that thing would also make the whole story vibrate. Maybe they should market it as ‘get your own earthquake at home NOW’?
Via another blog, I found Grisaffi’s article (see link below) about that. Albeit being not sold on such devices, he considers more than one way of seeing it–for instance, for aged people with osteoporosis, this could indeed help. However:
According to Hofmekler, to achieve the fitness and fat loss claims being made for this device, you have to eliminate poor food choices, decrease estrogen-based food products, and get your butt up and move. Human beings were designed to move. Sitting on a plate “vibrating” goes against every human evolutionary development, not to mention it goes against simple common sense.
I tend to quite agree with that.
As I said, another of those devices I had tried a few years ago was that little machine sending electric shocks through electrodes placed on your thighs, abs, etc. I can’t remember what its name was, but it’s been around for ten years and more, and everybody has probably heard of it. Using that thing was torture; the electrodes would literally hurt me, and I’d keep itchy red patches for hours where they had been placed. Can I get my good old soreness back, please?
So, in the end, when it comes to my own training, I’m still a fierce proponent of good old weight-lifting, in which my limits are those of my body, not those of a machine. And my body, thanks goodness for that, is not a wimpy thing. I don’t care about vibrations or being able to read a magazine while some machine is pumping whatever into my abs–which never were as strong as when I really started lifting, by the way.
I won’t even tap in the endless source of gloating regarding the ropeless jump rope. My French cartesian mind is definitely not adapted to envisioning and understanding that kind of things. (Incidentally, I do own a jumping rope. With an actual rope on it. It rocks.)
Yes, I’m old-school. It’s just that old-school works for me better than ‘revolutionary’ exercise gizmos.
- Kery, not really convinced
February 4th, 2008 at 21:41
Ha! I’ve seen so many of those gizmos. You know someone has a patent for a fork that senses when you’ve put it near your mouth too many times, and flashes a red warning light at you when it thinks you’ve had enough?
These things are like diet pills. If they worked, no one would have a weight problem. If it was that easy, everyone would have them. They’re just out to prey on the weaknesses and insecurities of the general population–those who haven’t been told they can do it themselves. So silly.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:55
…I didn’t know about that fork patent, and now I wish I had never heard about it, because some of my neurons might just have committed suicide.
That’s exactly it: “if it was that easy”. Sure, these machines can be quite expensive, but then wouldn’t every gym have them anyway, and people could use them at will? It always sounds too good to be true.