My Physician Doesn’t Know About WBV – Should I Use It?

Despite the increasing popularity of whole body vibration machines, there are still health and fitness professionals who haven’t tried this form of physical activity and therapy, and are unfamiliar with the numerous benefits of vibration.

If your physician doesn’t know about WBV platforms and how they can benefit your body, here’s what you should do:

• show them the available studies
• start slowly and increase progressively, observing the effects
• create a personalized routine based on your needs

Let’s take each of these steps separately. First, the fact that your physician doesn’t know about whole body vibration doesn’t mean that this training method is unsafe or not suitable for your health and fitness goals.

Research supports the use of WBV plates for many purposes, so you could tell your physician that you would like to start using a vibration platform to strengthen your muscles through a diverse training routine, to help keep your bones strong and healthy, to improve your circulation or to enhance your flexibility and balance.

WBV is more than a fitness machine, it’s a powerful device that can help in reducing discomfort in conditions like arthritis and back pain, and can help in regulating the levels of blood sugar and in increasing energy and enhancing mood. It can support an active lifestyle and replace weight lifting in frail seniors and can serve as a rehabilitation tool, speeding up recovery and helping the muscles relax. Also, it can be used for warming up before a workout and for cooling down post-training and can be used by professional athletes for more efficient, less time-consuming workouts.

Women who recently gave birth can rely on whole body vibration for strengthening their pelvic muscles, relaxing the painful back muscles, and encouraging lymphatic drainage, to get rid of foot swelling. Vibrating plates are great for stretching exercises as well, so even if you’re not interested in putting on lean mass, you can still achieve a more toned appearance and improve your posture by training on a WBV platform.

To sum it up, whole body vibration is great for:

• strengthening your muscles and bones
• reducing your body fat percentage and losing weight
• improving circulation and lymphatic drainage
• staying active as you age
• improve muscle tone and energy levels
• reduce fatigue and speed up recovery
• massage and relax your body

If you want to help your physician learn about whole body vibration faster, we encourage you to show him the exercise videos in our Support Site and to direct him to our website, to see all the studies that support the use of vibration training.

Now, regarding the intensity of workouts, if your physician can’t help with any piece of advice, as he’s not familiar with this form of training, we recommend to start at lower intensities and to increase progressively, as you feel you’re getting used to this type of activity and you’re no longer experiencing tingling in your feet. This is quite common and is the result of increased circulation. Some people also experience dizziness at the beginning, if training at too high intensities or for too long, so it’s better to be patient and take it slow.

Start with simpler exercises that don’t require too much effort from your part, just to allow your body to adjust to WBV, and stay at a frequency for a couple of days or weeks, until you feel your muscles are stronger and ready for the next level. Don’t forget to drink water 30 minutes before the workout – WBV is an intense form of training and stimulates circulation and lymphatic drainage, so it encourages the elimination of toxins and extra fluids from the body. If you don’t hydrate yourself properly, you may experience headaches post workout.

Finally, for personalized routines, get in touch with us! We post new workouts regularly on this blog, in the Fitness and Exercise, respectively WBV Training sections, but if you’re interested in talking to our WBV experts and receiving a personalized training plan for a specific purpose, let us know and we’ll do our best to help you!

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