chapter 1

The Ten-Minute Workout

The Revolution of Whole Body Vibration (WBV)

We all know we should be exercising, right? The problem lies in actually doing it. There has been a hilarious ad on TV recently about a couple who has joined a health club, but they never go. Every day they have a new excuse: too busy, had to work late, too tired, forgot my sneakers, lost my hair band, my mother called! It gets more and more ridiculous, but we’re laughing in sympathy because we’ve all been there.

But what if exercising was so quick, enjoyable, relaxing, and conveniently located in your own home (or nearby) that it was the highlight of your day? If every day you could hardly wait to get to it, and you had to restrain yourself from doing too much? It is possible. Whole Body Vibration has arrived and just in time! We are a nation and world in desperate need of the many life-changing benefits of WBV.

Exercise: The Fountain of Youth

Our bodies are designed for physical activity, and they thrive on it. For example, exercise increases your circulation, bringing essential nutrients and oxygen to every part of your body, including your brain, and removing waste products. Amping up this process helps every cell and organ in your body to function at a higher level. And just by exercising, you increase your body’s ability to drive the circulatory system. Your heart, which pumps your blood through the arteries on its outgoing journey, becomes stronger. Exercising builds more muscle, which in turn massages the veins in the gentler but essential pumping action that moves the blood on its return trip to the heart. Exercise, whether in a more traditional form or now with WBV, is also critical to maintaining muscle tone, bone density, and a healthy weight.

Our bodies are designed for physical activity, and they thrive on it.

Exercise and Your Brain

Just as important, exercise helps your mood and brain. If you are so depressed and lethargic that you can barely get out of your chair and exercise, sometimes your whole life can seem like an insurmountable mountain. The good news is that the very act of exercising will increase the levels of natural chemicals in your brain called neurotransmitters; this will raise your spirits, energize you, and help your brain to function better. Plus, exercise has actually been shown to increase the number of neurons and neural connections in your brain. These are important components of intelligence, so you will actually be getting smarter as you exercise.

The Ten-Minute WBV Workout

Now that you’re raring to go and ready to start your new life as a fit, slim, and brilliant citizen of the world, what should you do first? WBV is a fantastic place to start, or use it as an addition to any fitness program already in place. Why? It is a quick, highly adaptable workout that can be tailored to any level of fitness: from the couch potato to the occasional jogger, the tennis player to the weekend warrior, the amateur athlete all the way up to the elite professional athlete. At the easiest beginner level, and on extra-lazy days, you simply stand on the gently vibrating plate, receiving a vibration that will feel like a massage. Through the involuntary automatic activation of your nervous system, and thus your muscles, you will still be experiencing a mild workout. At the other end of the spectrum: Ten minutes of WBV equals one hour of conventional weight lifting.

Ten minutes of WBV equals one hour of conventional weight lifting .

At first that may seem impossible, just too good to be true—but it is true. While the exact ratio does depend on which machine you use and how you use it (whether you work out or just stand on the plate), forty years of research and the devotion of thousands of professional athletes and elite users, including Shaquille O’Neil, Jane Fonda, Madonna, the Denver Broncos, and the Tennessee Titans, attest to WBV’s effectiveness.

How Whole Body Vibration Creates Intensive Exercise

• Holding weight against vibration increases the effects of gravity. Because of this physical reality (described mathematically as gravity equals mass times acceleration), when vibrating, your muscles must hold up to three times your actual weight, the exact amount depending on the amplitude and frequency of the vibration. If you have any doubt about this, consider the arm and shoulder muscle development of men who operate jackhammers.
• Every muscle fiber will automatically tense and relax at the same rate that the machine is vibrating, usually twenty to fifty times per second. That adds up to one thousand to three thousand little tiny “reps” per minute—much more work for your muscles than holding a position (isometric exercise) or typical repetition workouts.
• One hundred percent of your muscles will be working, while in traditional exercises, only some of your muscles are engaged. For example, in a nonvibrating squat, only about 40 percent of your leg muscles are working, but if you are vibrating, 100 percent of your leg muscles will be firing.

The combination of these three factors results in an intensive workout, in which, by the end of one minute, your muscles may be begging for relief. If it is still not hard enough, one can also carry weights, which will rapidly increase the effort as the gravitational increase from the vibration will double or triple any weight increase.

You can also vary the type of exercise position to change which muscle groups must work to hold your weight. For example, you can do push-ups for upper-body strength, or sit on the plate in a V shape (see page 10 to work the abdominal muscles. There are endless variations of positions to engage different muscle groups. A typical workout includes one-minute intervals in numerous different positions to achieve the effect of a full-body workout in ten minutes.

Holding weight against vibration increases the effects of gravity…. Every muscle fiber will automatically tense and relax at the same rate that the machine is vibrating, usually twenty to fifty times per second…. One hundred percent of your muscle will be working, while in traditional exercises, only some of your muscles are engaged.

While circulation does increase with WBV, this is partly due to the massaging action of the muscle fibers as they tense and relax. WBV does not provide intensive aerobic exercise, so you should also incorporate some type of aerobic exercise into your total fitness plan, such as walking, biking, running, swimming, etc. You will probably find it much easier to do this when you are using WBV because of the powerful energizing and mood-elevating effects.

Six Sample Exercise Positions, Massages, and Stretches

There are as many positions possible on the vibration plate as you can think of. Anything is fine; experiment and see what feels good. Even if you just stand on the vibrating plate, you will be getting enormous benefits, though the muscle-strengthening effect is greatest when holding exercise positions. Here are a few standard positions designed to target major muscle groups for strengthening, massaging, or stretching. For pictures of many more suggested exercise positions, check the WBV pages of my website at www.BCVibrantHealth.com. Or you can buy a chart with thirty suggested WBV positions at Amazon.com. Search for “Beginner’s Whole Body Vibration Exercise Chart.” For isometric exercises, you get into a position and hold it. For more intensive kinetic exercises, you can move slowly in and out of the position.

Caution: Because of the powerful detoxification effects of Whole Body Vibration (see chapter 7), you must start slowly, often doing no more than one minute per day, then build up your time slowly.