Muscles do not get immediately stronger the moment you finish a workout – it takes up to a week or more of consistent rest and nutrition for the body to fully recover and rebuild itself to be stronger.
What can happen immediately is an increase in power – the ability to generate force quickly.2 Sprint faster, hit a golf ball further, jump higher or prevent a fall if something puts you off balance.
It is believed that in addition to warming up the muscles and joints,10 the high speed vibration stimulates various neurological11 and possibly hormonal systems.12 As a result, the production of muscle power becomes more efficient.2 In other words – the muscles produce more power from the same amount of effort.
The long term effects are similar to other forms of weight-bearing exercise ie. increase in muscle strength.1 The difference is that the high speed vibration gets you to a growth-stimulating level of muscle activation more quickly and with much less conscious effort.1 It is therefore less taxing on your energy reserves. So you require less recovery and have more time to recover.
Vibration intensity is measured in G-force
The key to achieving significant benefits to power and strength is the intensity of muscle stimulus.
A vibration machine produces a force on your body named G-force where ‘G’ stands for ‘Gravity’. For example “10G” means “ten times Earth’s Gravity”. You would agree that doing squats with 220lb (100kg) produces benefits that aren’t possible with 22lb (10kg). Similarly, Vibration Training with 10G of G-force produces benefits that research shows are not possible with 1G of G-force.13
The more G-force the machine produces, the greater the stimulus on your muscles, nerves and bones. Anything less than 5G is really more of a massage – the research shows that strength, power and hormone related benefits from low G-force vibration are very limited at best.13,14,15,16,17
Low intensity vibration does NOT produce the same benefits
According to research,19 exercise causes increases in Growth Hormone only when the exercise intensity exceeds a certain threshold. In similar experiments,13,15 when the intensity of vibration was reduced to 5G or less, no change in Growth Hormone, Testosterone or Cortisol occurred even when the duration of exercise was doubled.
See the Whole Body Vibration Buyers Guide to learn which vibration machines are capable of producing 10G or more. You will be surprised how many cannot even go past 5G.