A New Way to Shake Off the Pounds

In

a diet-obsessed world, we all have our own dream of the perfect weight-loss solution: a potato-chip diet, a pill that trims belly fat or, best of all, an exercise that builds lots of muscle with little work. The Power Plate, a new workout machine that looks like a doctor's office scale on steroids, claims to do just that.

According to Power Plate's manufacturers, if you stand on the machine's vibrating plates for 10 minutes a day three times a week, you will lose weight, increase bone density and improve your overall health. But is that really possible?

It might be. Unlike the old-fashioned belt exercisers that just shifted skin around, the Power Plate uses whole-body vibration, or WBV, to contract muscles 30 to 50 times per second. While you stand on the moving plates in the bent-knee position recommended for beginners, the continual vibration causes you to tense and relax your muscles to keep your balance. Even without the vibration, you would involuntarily tense and release just to hold the pose. But the WBV forces you to do so up to 50 times more. That's quite a workout for so little effort.

But to get the most out of the Power Plate, you can't just stand. The best approach is to perform the same exercises you would do on the floor—squats, tricep dips, push-ups and the like. Your muscles fatigue quicker, so the exercise routine will be shorter, but you're still not making the plates do all the work. "This is not a magic bullet that helps people lose weight without doing anything," says Cedric Bryant, chief exercise physiologist for the American Council on Exercise. "If you are a healthy individual, wbv training should be a supplement to a sensible diet and exercise program."

And a session of vibration may be not only good exercise but good therapy as well for people with physical ills like arthritis or osteoporosis. George Waylonis, a clinical professor emeritus of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Ohio State University, conducted a study on the effects of wbv on patients with fibromyalgia, a disease that causes constant full-body pain. Waylonis studied the Power Plate and the Galileo, another vibration exerciser, and was impressed by both. "WBV seems to be a way for people in pain to exercise their muscles and ultimately feel better," he says.

More such research is certainly needed, but Power Plates can already be found in select gyms, rehabilitation centers and private homes. The machines are expensive: $3,500 for the home unit and $9,250 for the gym model, so some of the private owners are people with names like Madonna. (Soloflex has a simpler version of the Power Plate that sells for just $395.) But if you can't afford the cost—or the space—for such a bulky bit of hardware, look for the units to show up at a gym near you soon.