Power Plate my3 Vibration Training Machine
Power Plate my3 Vibration Training Machine
The Powerplate my3 Vibration Training Machine combines the award-winning whole body vibration technology from Powerplate with a stylish compact design and an equally compact price tag. The Power Plate my3 is the trimmest, most economical way to bring Acceleration Training exercise into any sized home or apartment, enabling you to make room for three 15-minute full-body workouts a week. The re-designed my3 model for 2008 combines form and function, displaying a distinctly stylish edge. The newly designed face plate will allow you to fully interact with the machine, making it more user-friendly than ever before.
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It uses whole-body vibration to increase muscle strength, blood circulation, bone density, and uses whole-body vibration. Originating in Europe, vibration exercise training is backed by dozens of medical research reports and is being integrated into daily routines by top universities, NFL teams, medical centers, gyms and celebrities alike.
How It Works
The my3 employs a technology called Acceleration Training to stimulate the body’s natural response to vibration. These vibrations transmit waves of energy throughout the body, activating muscle contractions between 25 and 50 times per second, thereby enhancing your overall fitness in sessions as short as 15 minutes a day, three times per week. Acceleration Training offers a host of benefits, ranging from an immediate improvement in blood circulation to a variety of other measurable outcomes, including increased muscle strength and flexibility, improved range of motion, decreased cellulite, increased bone mineral density, reduced pain and soreness, and faster recovery from injury.
Acceleration Training works by creating instability in the human body, as with each vibration the body is forced to perform reflexive muscle actions. Furthermore, these contractions must work in multiple dimensions, as the Power Plate machines actually oscillate in all three directions, exactly as the human body is designed to do. This means that one can improve functional force (stability, strength, or power) by either applying more mass or more acceleration to the body.
Many forms of training and conditioning use mass–as seen in methods with weight machines and free weights. Power Plate machines, by contrast, use the second half of the law of motion equation: they apply acceleration to the body while keeping mass (i.e., your body weight) the same. The result is that you work against a far greater influence, or “load,” of gravity in every movement you perform. Power Plate machines are a great alternative for people who enjoy an active lifestyle but don’t have the time to perform lengthy workouts three or more times a week.
Sports Performance Benefits
For serious athletes, workouts on the Power Plate machines enhance the results of conventional training and explosive strength training, as well as serve athletes and trainers alike to speed recovery and regeneration times. In just minutes, range of motion and stability can increase, providing a perfect warm-up before training or competing. In addition to being an ideal pre-event tool, Power Plate machines are an excellent means of continuously maximizing performance. As the vibrations stimulate fast-twitch muscle fibers, athletes who use Power Plate machines over time experience a dramatic increase in explosive strength, motor learning, muscular endurance and overall agility.
Specifications:
- Frequency range: 35 Hz
- Frequency adjust: 3 mats / varying thickness
- Dimensions: 25 x 32 x 62 inches
- Surface plate dimensions: 25 x 15 inches
- Time settings: 30 or 60 seconds
- Vibration energy: Low and High
- Machine weight: 126 pounds
- Maximum user weight: 250 pounds
Manufacturer’s Warranty
Two-year warranty for parts, one year for labor
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars love it! really easy to use…..anytime…
the whole family loves to use it…It needs no more space than expected so it is really easy to put it almost everywhere….
5 Stars Power Plate Training Machine
Excellent product. The machine is exactly as advertised, and the company packaged it very responsibly. And the delivery was timely.
5 Stars too good to be true!
Recently heard about this type of exercise for the first time. I was not very familiar with vibration training, but when traveling through England about a month ago, I saw the Power Plate being sold in Harrods, the enormous London superstore. Actually found out it is as big in Europe as pilates and spinning is in the United States…there are Power Plate studios all over!
It sounded like a gimmick…a vibrating platform that can give you a better workout than lifting weights? But this is totally a product you have to see and try out to believe. The vibrating platform makes your muscles tense up and react to the movement, so you get a more intense workout than you could directly on the ground. It’s a weird feeling at first, but you can really tell you muscles are contracting to “right” itself (like if you were pushed and all your muscles tensed) very quickly, like over 50 times a second. There is a lot of science behind it, too…a little confusing, but basically it uses the principles of F=MxA and so with the greater frequency you add, the greater the force on your body. But instead of having to add on heavy weights to see results, you can build up your exercise on this by frequency and time. Since it is an internal force, coming up through your legs, it is super easy on your joints. I did research on the company’s website, and there are over 100 studies on how the plate increases circulation, helps with bone density (so could help with the effects of osteoporosis), and how it can decrease cellulite (the vibrations help drain lymphatic fluid)…and I was hooked!
I have had it for a short amount of time, but completely love the product and can use it as an all in one: stretching, warm-up, massage, strength training, etc. I am really happy to decided to purchase this, and it’s a blast showing it off to family and friends and explaining the technology.
2 Stars Hokum or mumbo jumbo? Take your pick
OK, you have about $2,000 you want to get rid of. Your choices are: (a) buy this machine, (b) flush the cash down the crapper, or (c) send the cash to me. I vote for C! But if you are deciding between buying this and throwing your money away, I’d flush the cash instead. That way you won’t have to look at this hideous reminder of your bad decision, and you’ll avoid the discomfort and possible safety concerns of all those vibrations.
Remember back to the 1960s? (unfortunately I do) Those machines that were all the rage, where you put the strap around your butt and the thing vibrated like crazy? Eventually those were pulled from the market when hundreds of people had their kidneys vibrated loose from the rest of their organs, resulting in serious complications and even death in a few cases. This machine has basically brought back that idea in a different, hi-tech package.
Save your money. There really are no shortcuts when it comes to fitness and health. Read a good fitness or diet book (like Getting Fit & Staying Fit In Your 40s, 50s and Beyond), watch what you eat and get plenty of good, vibration-free exercise.
4 Stars Good Machine for Strength Training and Flexibility
After reading all the dumb/irrelevant reviews here on this product, I decided to chime in with a real one since I know it would have helped me before I bought this…
I’d been doing research on all of the health benefits and claims of PowerPlate (vibration) training for the last couple months and decided to finally buy one, despite the hefty $2000 price tag. For that kind of money, I convinced myself that this would be a worthwhile investment in my long term health and wellness. My goals in buying this were to lose weight (about 30 lbs), improve my core conditioning, and slim down around my abs and upper body and build some lean muscle there. The PowerPlate claim is that you can get a full workout in “just 15 minutes a day, 3 days a week.” Since I don’t have the time or enthusiasm to go workout in a gym, this seemed like a good choice for an early morning workout before heading to work. The sample PowerPlate exercises on the official web site gave me a good idea of what kind of workout I wanted with the machine. The machine also comes with a huge poster with all of the exercises listed for reference.
So the main questions on my mind were about the machine itself: how does it work, how does it feel, does it do what it’s supposed to do. The machine comes with 3 different mats to use on the plate – a thin, medium and thick mat. The thinner size mat you use, the more vibration you will feel and supposedly the more intense the workout. The booklet recommends that everyone start off with the thickest mat and slowly progress towards the thinner one as you advance. The size of the plate itself where you stand is about 20 inches wide, which was fine for me and the exercises I do. There’s also a series of “Adjustment and Adaptation” exercises they recommend you do for the first 3 weeks so your body can adjust to the vibrations – which are mostly quad/calves/hamstring stretches with some push ups.
All of the exercise sessions in the manual have 3 phases -”WARMING UP,” “WORK OUT,” and “COOLING DOWN” with different recommended time intervals and intensity (amplitude) you set on the machine. The workout sessions are split up into different areas you might want to focus on: WEIGHT LOSS, UPPER BODY STRENGTH, LOWER BODY STRENGTH, ANTI-STRESS CONDITIONING, STRETCHING AND FLEXIBILITY, BONE MINERAL DENSITY, ENDURANCE, RECOVERY, and CIRCULATION. For example, in the “Weight Loss” track that I’m doing, the workout consists of Pelvic Bridge, Lower Ab, squats, lunges, and push ups. To do the squat exercises, you get into a normal squat position on top of the mat without hanging on the bars, set the Timer for 60 seconds and amplitude on HIGH, hit the “Play” button and do 1 rep of squats. The machine then starts vibrating (very little noise) and works your muscles until the timer is up. The control panel on the My3 is pretty simple and straightforward, and there’s also a little button down towards the middle of the PowerPlate if you are down on the mat and can’t reach up to hit the Play button. The book gives you instructions on the proper form for your body, some tips on how to flex, and where you should feel the burn (ie, glutes, hamstrings, shoulders, chest, etc.). Some exercises have a 30 or 60 second rest period between them, so you basically just cycle through each one until you’re finished with a session. When you’re ready to advance on over time, you can swap out the mat for a thinner size and increase the time or amplitude in their “Phase 2″ track of exercises.
How does it feel? Some of the exercises like quad stretch and abdominal sit ups feel very uncomfortable for me. For one, your entire upper body is vibrating really hard and fast, and your head is just shaking uncontrollably. This made my teeth chatter and made me slightly dizzy afterwards for a while, which makes me nervous about possible long term side effects. While doing the push ups, I find myself losing strength after about 10-15 seconds and unable to maintain neutral spine alignment because there’s so much pressure exerted on my back during the vibrations. I can do the push ups just fine, but sometimes it gets hard to keep perfect form. Overall the other exercises feel like a deep massage on your body, whether it’s on the torso or down in the hamstrings or quads – kind of like sitting in a massage chair. With others, you definitely feel your muscles burning and firing, which is a good sign that something is working right. I’m not out of breath after each exercise and it’s not a full body workout – but you do feel really loose and flexible, as if you’ve done plenty of reps on a normal strength machine and your muscles are worn out. The machine gives you a strength workout, not a cardio workout.
So does it do what it’s supposed to? Have I lost any weight, gained muscle, flexibility, etc.? The answer is: I don’t know. I’m not relying on this machine alone to reach all of my goals, so it’s hard to determine how (if at all) it’s contributing towards my overall progress. I have started doing some other cardio training and other regular exercise to help get more balanced workouts in my daily routines. The correct way to approach the PowerPlate is to look at it like a supplement to all of the other lifestyle changes you need to make to lose weight, be fitter, leaner, healthier, and more active. So changing what you eat, in addition to cutting portions, cutting calories, cutting out all the junk and getting regular exercise, changing from a sedentary lifestyle to a more active lifestyle – are still the tried and true ways to success. I do feel much more flexible and stronger, and have definitely noticed some muscle toning in my arms, shoulders and chest – but whether this is due to the PowerPlate or the other regular exercise I’m doing is unknown. So I don’t know if I can give this a solid recommendation for all its claims. It will take some time to see if the cost and investment will really pay off.
