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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s Wellnesse with an E on the end, my new personal care line. And this episode is all about whole body weight vibration, what that is, and how to use it to your advantage. I am here with Jason Conviser, I’m hoping I’m pronouncing his last name correctly, who is an expert on this topic. And we go deep on this, how basically his stance is that everyone can be an athlete and that this new technology allows us all to be healthier and more fit in less time and with less things like, for instance, joint strength.
He’s an expert in sports medicine, metabolic syndrome, and fitness and wellness. And he is one of the developers on a product called Power Plate, which I’ve been using in my own home and with my kids for the last several weeks and I’m excited to continue using. We go deep on how to use it or any similar device today and how to use this for recovery, for strength and athleticism, also for bone health, endocrine health, lymphatic drainage. It has a lot of implications in the research. It is a little bit niche of a topic, but a really fascinating one. And like I said, we have one of these in our house and it’s been really fun to learn and play with. So, without further ado, let’s jump in. Jason, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Jason: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Katie: Well, I’m excited to learn from you today because as I mentioned before we started recording, this is a topic I know a little bit about, but not much, and I feel like it’s probably gonna be really helpful for me and some athletics stuff I’m attempting right now, but I think we’ll have crossover into pretty much everybody listening. So, to start broad, can you explain to us what whole-body vibration therapy is?
Jason: Sure. Muscles want to fire, they wanna contract. And we can do those in a couple of different ways. We can use our brains to say bend your elbow, to bend your hip or your knees, and your brain tells your muscles to fire. But with whole-body vibration, what we’re able to do is use an external modality, the vibration platform. And by the stimulus of the vibration forces the muscles to contract and contract very efficiently so you can train your muscles in a variety of different scenarios based upon what your individual needs are. So, if we were to set a vibration platform at let’s say 30 hertz, that number doesn’t really mean a lot to most people.
But if I say that your muscles are contracting 30 times a second, they go, “Oh, well, that’s kind of cool.” And then I say, if you are doing a simple bench press, or a leg press, or a simple movement of any kind, you only fire a certain number of muscles, but with whole-body vibration, you’re firing more muscles. So it’s a more efficient approach to training. It doesn’t take away the other kinds of things that you would do but it clearly enhances how you prepare or warm-up, how you perform, do your thing, and how you recover after you workout. And that’s why I’ve used it for almost 20 years now with our patients.
Katie: Gotcha. Okay. So, explain…You mentioned before we started recording, and I loved this phrase, that this is a way that everybody can become an athlete because it can be used so versatilely. So, explain how training with something like this, it differs from just traditional types of training people might be used to, whether it’s cardio or strength training.
Jason: So as a philosophy, I like to take every client that we have and consider them an athlete. But athletes have different needs, depending on where they are in their stage of life. If I take a 70, 80, or 90-year-old, their focus might be walking speed, walking distance, more comfort, taking stairs, being in better balance, making your legs more comfortable that they don’t tighten up so that you have peripheral circulation. Those are athletic needs. And if we can get them more comfortable with their bodies, they love to be on the vibration platform because it’s simple. It’s almost impossible to get hurt. And the response is almost immediate. When they come off the plateau, that feels good.
But the exact same piece of equipment could be used for a 30, 40, or 50-year-old, who might be lacking flexibility or their lower back is sore, or they want to be able to warm up a little bit more efficiently before they go out and play with their kids in the backyard or play softball on the weekend. And the exact same technology can be used for the high school kid who’s in sport and they wanna be able to get a little bit stronger, a little bit more efficient. And we get more creative in how we help them train successfully and safely as their bodies are developing. So, I like to make an analogy that the whole-body vibration is like a hammer. You can use a hammer in dozens and dozens of ways, depending on what the need is. And vibration allows you the exact same benefit.
Katie: Before we go deeper on the athletic side, what about the lymphatic side? Because certainly, definitely, I’ve seen whole-body vibration referenced as being beneficial for the lymphatic system and also potentially for the vestibular system. Do you guys find that in your research?
Jason: Yeah, that’s not my particular part of research, but there are hundreds of articles that I’ve found of benefits. One of the issues though is the duration of the vibration experience. So, if somebody is using vibration for just 30 seconds or a minute, which might be superior for warming up, they may not get a response in other particular areas. If somebody is using vibration for 15, 20 minutes of off and on of vibration or a specific protocol, then it can affect other parts of the bodies in very beneficial ways. So, it’s more specific to what the individual needs. If you want to have a certain training…If you want a certain part of your body trained or a certain system of the body trained, you create the protocol to allow that to happen. And there are some articles that are equivocal because the actual research is questionable. They had five subjects or the study went on for a week or two weeks. And it’s hard to show change over time with those kinds of numbers. But the strong scientific studies that have large numbers have gone on for a number of weeks and are very strictly controlled. The literature is pretty clear of potential benefits.
Katie: Got it. Okay. So, I’d love to go through and start, like, walking through specifics for different case scenarios. I have your device in my house. I’ve been experimenting with it, just mainly for fun. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. So I’m gonna learn for you today. But let’s start with maybe someone who’s more, like, my type of situation, someone who’s maybe a mom and who works out regularly but isn’t necessarily an athlete level, how can someone jump in and start using this?
Jason: So, Katie, there’s a variety of ways that you could use this. The first is, it’s easy, take it out of the box, and it’s plug and play. You don’t have to download anything. You just have to turn it on. Depending on what your needs are, let’s say you have just 20 minutes before you have to do the next activity from going to the office or getting ready to go out or going to a kid’s event, that vibration allows you a shorter period of time in order to work out because you’re firing so many more muscle fibers, that what you used to do in 30 or 45 minutes, you might be able to shorten that time period. I actually have a plate in my bedroom, and after a long day, sometimes I like to just sit on the couch and put my calves on the plate or my feet. And it’s the most wonderful massage tool that you can have. And where I am in the life cycle, I take a little bit longer to warm up. It’s harder for me to warm up.
So, if you have a whole-body vibration Power Plate at your house, instead of taking the 10, 15, 20 minutes to warm up, I’m able to warm up in 5 minutes and I’m ready to go outside or do whatever activities I want. But if your interests are not the things that I just described, there’s an app that you can download that has hundreds and hundreds of different ways of using whole-body vibration depending on what your needs are. If you’re gonna take the family skiing, you might want to start warming up your ab and adductors, the muscles that allow your legs to go in and out because your legs are gonna tire on the slope. If you’re dealing with kids who always are trying to get to every possible activity that you can imagine and you have much, much less time, the kids can be warming up before you put them in the car and get them to an activity. There’s all different ways that you can use it at home.
For you, if it’s performance-based, we know that firing more muscles that you can be stronger without getting more bulk. We know that you can have more endurance so that you can do the activity longer and more efficiently. And we say ADLs, or activities of daily living, that most people are not looking for personal records. They just wanna be able to do what they did five years ago. And it can’t stop the aging process but it can definitely enhance the fitness process, which fights the aging process all along the way.
Katie: That makes sense. And I know you already touched on it, but walk us through, kind of, that explanation for how the body is better able to handle a workout after using a vibration plate because I know, for instance, like, often in conventional models, like, stretching is recommended. I know this is much better but, kind of, explain what’s happening there.
Jason: So, I’m gonna do a little bit of anatomy and science, and you stop me if I go too far. All your muscles in your body do not attach to bone. Tendons attach to bone. Muscles attach to tendons, tendons attach to bone. So, one of the things you wanna do, when we warm up, we wanna get the muscles loose and pliable. So if you went to the cupboard and got a box of spaghetti out of the cupboard and you held the spaghetti in your hand, that’s exactly what a muscle looks like in a cross-section. If you try to bend the spaghetti, it becomes very brittle. In the same way, if you don’t warm up your muscles, the chance of allowing them to be brittle or having small micro-injuries or larger injuries is great. But if I put warm water over the spaghetti, the spaghetti becomes loose and pliable. If I put warm blood over the muscles, they also become loose and pliable. So, I’m warming up the muscles faster.
In addition, in that tendon that is attached to the bone, there’s something called a Golgi, G-O-L-G-I, a Golgi tendon organ. It’s as big as a hair on the top of your head. And it’s a stretch receptor. It monitors how much stretch or how tight a particular muscle is. And vibration has been shown very, very clearly to stimulate the Golgi tendon organ to relax. So, the warmer or the more that you use vibration, the Golgi tendon organ gives and allows the muscle to stretch. Now you might say, “Who cares? So what?” Now comes I think the thing that’s the most important is how does a muscle contract? Why is that important to having this in your home for you or your kids or your parents? If you take a rubber band and pull it 3 inches apart and let go, it snaps and you have a certain amount of power or force that’s created by letting go of that rubber band. But if you can take that same rubber band and stretch it 5 or 6 or 7 inches and let go, it has a much bigger snap.
And that’s exactly what muscles do. If you can stretch them more and get the muscles stronger, you have more capability of creating force in a safe environment, more flexibility, more muscle contraction, more ability to do things. And that’s why it’s so valuable. And it’s used by professional athletes. We do some work with Olympians, and they’re as flexible and as powerful as you can imagine. They use it for warm-up and they use it for force production and training. So, everyone has the same needs. Getting the muscles ready to perform in vibration makes it a faster, more complete, efficient way of doing that and safe.
Katie: That makes sense. And definitely, I have some overlap as well. I have some Olympians locally where I am that are in training. And I’ve been working with them on the nutrition and supplement side. And they’ve been working with me on learning the fitness side. And so, that’s really good to know. Are these just general movements or are there specific targeted movements people need to be aware of doing in the warm-up phase?
Jason: You’re asking very good questions. There’s something called specificity of training. If you wanna be a good swimmer, you have to swim. If you wanna be a good cyclist, you have to cycle. But all activities that you would wanna do require a certain amount of warm-up. So you try to identify the movements, either spinning with your legs or making sure your shoulders are relaxed for swimming. Whatever the activity is, you try to find those movements that best reflect the sport or activity that you want to do. Now, if you have me, I’ll come up with 5 or 10 for you, that’s my job. But if you have a unit in your house and you don’t have Jason or someone like Jason to tell you, there is the website, which is free to go to, has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stretches and exercises that you can do for all kinds of activities from jumping, running, swimming, for those with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s, everything across the healthcare and sport continuum, you’ll find recommended exercises.
And that’s why you don’t have to have a Jason in order to figure out how to use it. You just go to the site and say, “Here’s what I wanna be able to do.” A lot of people want to be more flexible. They want their feet not to throb at the end of the day. They want their lower back to feel more comfortable. They wanna be able to cross their legs to be able to put on socks. They wanna have better balance so that if they step on some ice or if they miss a step, that they’re able to move faster, contract their muscles to catch themselves, and to be able to keep themselves healthy and safe. It’s not a panacea but it’s the fastest way that I’m aware where you can take someone of any age and get them ready to prepare them to exercise, perform while they’re exercising, and recovery after the exercise, which is universal for everyone.
Katie: Got it. Okay. Before we move on from this, I still have a lot of directions I wanna go with you. But what about with kids? Most of the people listening have kids. And my kids instinctively love the weight vibration plate and they’ll just naturally get on it and start moving. But are there ways we can, like, kind of, encourage them to move in specific ways? Are there limits of how much they should or shouldn’t use the machine?
Jason: With kids, the American College of Sports Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control, and the various committees of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, all of the major groups say kids should play. Play is the most important part. And creating an environment where they can use vibration safely is absolutely part of play. But I wouldn’t create a program where they’re on a vibration platform for 45 minutes or an hour but I certainly would use it to get them to warm up or to create all kinds of play games and play activities that includes vibration but also includes other things. We don’t want them to just do one thing. We want them to be well-versed in a lot of different activities.
Now, as kids mature and develop, and they do, let’s say, more baseball, or more soccer, or more whatever the activity might be, then there might be specific uses. For example, soccer players might want their Achilles tendon and their calf muscles more flexible or someone who’s throwing a ball might want their shoulder warmed up or be able to do more shoulder exercises. Again, you go to the website and all these exercises already exist but for kids, there’s nothing wrong with kids participating but I wouldn’t allow them to be solely focused on vibration. I want them to play and do as many things as possible. That is a really a healthier approach. But as they get older and we’re focused on an activity, then we use vibration to keep them safe and to help them prepare for that activity.
Katie: Got it. Okay. So to switch gears a little bit, you touched on this briefly, but I know that there are some studies, at least some that I’ve seen, on how a vibration plate, the wave vibration can lead to potential increased fat burning. And I think this is really intriguing for a lot of people. So, can you walk us through what’s happening there?
Jason: Yeah, the simple answer is, if more muscles fire, the metabolism increases and you have a bigger engine that’s burning calories. You can’t fire a muscle unless you’re burning calories because you need the gasoline for the engine to work. So, would I have someone stand on a Power Plate for two hours and just use the vibration for weight management program? No, I wouldn’t do that. However, most of my weight management clients have a higher risk of getting injured. So, instead of having chairs in our waiting room, we might have Power Plates to stand on so they can warm up because I don’t want them to have joint injuries. I want them to feel more comfortable with movement. And so, as a weight-loss device, for sure adding vibration equates to burning more calories. That’s the given. I have done that research and I have published that research.
But I wouldn’t use a whole-body vibration for two hours of exposure. I want people to be able to do all kinds of activities safely and Power Plate helps them get there safer and allows them to do more things. It helps them walk. In weight management, we have a lot of people who say, “I love to walk, except my back always hurts.” It helps them warm up. “I love to walk but my calves start to cramp. I love to swim, but my shoulders are tight.” So, it is a part of a workout routine, not the only part of the routine.
Katie: Okay. That makes sense. What about for, like, the endocrine responses because I know you said, like, lymphatic is not specifically your area of expertise. But I know, like, any workout obviously has endocrine effects. And this intensifies the impact of workouts. So, what kind of endocrine effects do you guys see from whole-body vibration?
Jason: What would you like to know? What are the areas that you’re interested in?
Katie: Well, for instance, actually, like, synergistically I had another podcast recording today, someone talking a lot about, like, restrictive clothing and inhibiting lymphatic function and leading to hormone changes. But he also mentioned that they did an anthropological study on people who either didn’t use their voice enough or yelled all the time and the thyroid changes they saw in this and basically the realization that the vibration of the vocal cords and the thyroid is this really intricate thing and that that is important for the release of thyroid hormone. And so, like, the vibration has a place in maintaining a healthy thyroid from his research, and it lined up, interestingly, in my own life with taking voice lessons and doing different types of therapy, even ones that included, like, rage therapy because I hadn’t raised my voice literally in 16 years, and my thyroid hormone levels improving. So I know that’s a very niche example. But it seems like that vibration can be a really powerful signaling mechanism for certain hormones within the body.
Jason: You’re asking a very good question there. And I don’t know that specific set of literature, but I’m gonna tell you a story that equates to what you just asked. I have a daughter who’s an opera singer, and she uses vibration to prepare her whole body to relax and to prepare to sing or to go out on stage when vibration is available. So, does it change her voice? I don’t know. I’m not familiar with that set of literature. But now I’m gonna put my exercise physiologist hat on. It makes physiological sense that it has an endocrine response. But I can’t honestly tell you I know exactly the response unless I know how long they’re using it for, what the particular need is. But I can tell you that, will it hurt? The answer’s no. And does everyone respond the exact same way? No. But if you think that any exercise that you do on a treadmill or outside walking, or playing, or using a racquet sport, or anything that would have an endocrine response with vibration, you put that response in a safe healthy way on steroids allowing you to perform.
But I don’t have knowledge of vocal cords and in dealing with rage. Intellectually, I would think that when people are stressed, if they’re on a platform and they exercise, it helps release endorphins, and an endorphin release, the endorphins stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain and allows people to relax. That’s the “ah” feeling after I’ve had a good exercise, run, or swim, or whatever the activity. But it’s a little bit different for each individual.
Katie: Okay. Got it. You also mentioned recovery potential, which is especially intriguing to me right now. I’ve just started a whole new athletic level of training protocol where I’m trying to rapidly put on strength. So I’m sore than I usually would be. So I’m really curious, kind of, any specifics you can provide on how to use whole-body vibration for improving recovery, decreasing that length of recovery time. Any suggestions there?
Jason: This is really important. I believe in the next five years, there is going to be a whole body of literature that shows whole-body vibration may be the difference between recovering and how fast you can come back to perform the next time and how quickly you can recover. Here’s the deal. The body has to recover from activity. There’s no way of getting around it. You can either do it by cooling down or you wait 48 to 72 hours later and eventually, your body will relax. But nobody likes that feeling of lactic acid still being in the muscles, your muscles being sore. Everyone wants to cool down and then get on with the rest of their life. What the vibration allows you to do is that the vibration allows the muscles to start calming down. And there’s a flushing of the lactic acid out of the muscles. So when you actually stop your activity, instead of having lactic acid being in the muscle and you’re gonna have to flush it out later, it’s allowing that lactic acid to be flushed out of the muscles much more efficiently and much faster.
I think one of the best parts of exercise is the good feeling after you’ve pushed yourself and you’re calming down, but you wanna temperature regulate. You wanna make sure that the muscles are not vasodilating so that you get lightheaded. And with vibration, it’s a cooling down, it’s a slowing down after being on a roller coaster before you have to come to a stop. I think that there will be an enormous amount of studies. There’s one thing that, you know, we have the Olympics coming up in Tokyo in a few months. And for a lot of athletes, they have to have multiple trials, multiple events, or heats. So, how do you perform at a high level, a world-class level, and then come back an hour later or three hours later? And it’s not just the United States athletes, but athletes from around the world, I think are going to be using whole-body vibration more and more to help to increase the speed of recovery so that they can then go back and perform again at a high level.
Most of us, I would assume that most of your listeners are not gonna be competing in Tokyo. They’ve got a full schedule, a schedule all day that’s filled with family, with jobs, with keeping a house together, with all the things that we want to be able to do to have a full life. And time is of the essence. And I recommend vibration to enhance the time so when you are exercising, you’re getting more bang for your buck. And when you’re ready to stop exercising, you’re able to do it much more efficiently. When you exercise, there is a rapid increase in the amount of blood that goes to the muscles because blood carries oxygen. That’s a good thing. But you also wanna recover so that that blood gets shunted back to the trunk and doesn’t pull in the periphery. That’s part of the recovery itself. And that’s why moms, and dads, kids, weekend warriors, and the most elite of elite athletes can use vibration to help them enhance that cooldown process.
Katie: Yeah, I agree. Most people are not gonna be competing in Tokyo, although I’ve got a few here that hopefully will be. But that’s great to know for them and not on the same level at all but just for me for feeling a little better a little faster. I know that another area that there’s a conversation about weight vibration, and certainly, I’ve seen some studies come through in my alerts on PubMed, is about the bone impact. And I’d love to go a little deeper on this part as well because basically, from my understanding, in general, people are moving less than they have in the past, and especially, like, any kind of walking, weight-bearing exercise. And from what I know, it’s that movement is important to keep bones strong. There’s a reaction that happens with any of those kind of movements and strength training that helps maintain bone strength. So we’re seeing a decline in bone health, especially as people age. So, walk us through how whole-body vibration can fit into this.
Jason: In my opinion, Katie, that’s one of the most important benefits of whole-body vibration. And it’s near and dear to my heart. When you look at a bone, there’s two parts of bone. There’s the outside covering and that’s called the cortical bone. That’s like filling potholes in the road of your typical street outside your house. Nothing wrong with that. But then there’s also the lattice structure, the inside part of the bone that’s called the trabecular bone. That’s the bone that allows the bone to have its integrity, not just when you’re 30 and 40 years old, but when you’re 60, 70, 80 years old. And bone, if it’s in a weightless or a non-stressed position, becomes weaker and weaker. You put an astronaut in the International Space Station for six months, and he or she comes back with significantly less bone unless we put the bone under these forceful conditions. And forceful condition is not a negative here. Vibration forces the muscles to contract. The muscles pull or shorten on that tendon because remember a few minutes ago, we said that the tendon is attached to the bone. When the muscles contract, it pulls on the tendon and puts force on the bone. And the more force, the more pull that we can put on the bone, there is a response to the bone to build up not just the cortical outside, but the inside, the trabecular bone as well.
Now, can you just do this when you have one or two minutes of exposure? The answer’s no. No. But if you have a unit in your house, it becomes part of your day-to-day routine where you’re using vibration for 15, 20, 30 minutes a day, but it doesn’t have to be continuous. So you do it for three or four minutes, and then you go on and do something else, and you come back and do three or four minutes and do something else, that the pulling of that bone enhances the strength of the bone. Now, you can also do it if you go lift heavyweights in a gym and pull on that bone. But most people aren’t strong enough to lift the amount of weight that’s necessary to force the bone to get stronger. So the vibration, there’s a number of really wonderful studies that have shown that bone mineral density improves after a 12 to 16-week period.
And if you go to the Power Plate website or if you just google osteoporosis and whole-body vibration, there’s a number of articles that show the relationship between whole-body vibration and bone. There is one difference, and I wanna stress…I’m not trying to promote one brand over another. That’s not my job. I have Power Plates in my clinics because I like one thing about them that’s really important. It’s called tri-planar vibration. Tri-planar vibration, it goes up, down, side to side, forward, back. So you could barely see the plate moving when it’s on. But once you are standing or you have some…your foot’s on it, your hands are on it, you can feel the vibration is a much more comfortable approach. It’s not so violent on the body.
So, you get the training effect but you wanna come back the next day and do it again, where sometimes the teeter-totter approach, there is literature that shows it works. But most people don’t come back to it because it’s so violent. It doesn’t feel comfortable. Also, with the tri-planar platform, you can sit on it. You can put your hands on it. You can put your feet on it. You can lay on the ground and rest your legs on it. There are thousands of ways of using it that allow me to work with my clients of all different ages, as opposed to the teeter-totter philosophy, you have to stand exactly in balance and if you’re 1 or 2 inches off-center, you’re not gonna come back and use it again.
Katie: Make sense. Okay.
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I’m also really curious, so like I mentioned, I’m trying to rapidly increase strength right now. What other modalities can be used in conjunction with whole-body vibration of the Power Plate? And are they used together, like, on the Power Plate or in some kind of system of lifting weights off of the Power Plate, spending time on the Power Plate? How would you optimize that for time and strength?
Jason: So, this is really cool. On some of the larger units, you can see professional football players, professional athletes, big men and women who are very large, very strong, very agile, that they’re actually doing weightlifting or doing their other kinds of training programs on the vibration platform to enhance or to make it a bigger challenge. That’s a wonderful way to use it. But now take the average guy or gal, if you’re doing a push-up on vibration, you don’t have to do 50, 60 push-ups. You can do 5 to 10 push-ups and at the end of the 10th pushup, your arms are exhausted. So it’s a much more efficient way of building strength and training because remember I said that the vibration stimulates the Golgi tendon organ and stimulates the muscles to fire. So if it’s 30 hertz, you’re firing 30 times a second. It’s more training. It’s more efficient, but it’s a safe way of boosting the muscle contraction.
Some of our athletes who…we have some athletes that you warm-up and then you might have to sit for 30 minutes before you perform. And they use vibration to stay warmed up so that they’re able to jump onto the ice or onto the mat or whatever it is that they have to do so their muscles stay prepared to fire. The only limitation I see with vibration is the creativity of the trainer or the coach. We’re always adding more pictures and more routines to the website. But I’ve seen creative things like triple jumpers using the plate to step off of so that it forces the more muscles to fire and to be more efficient. I’ve seen it used for gymnasts who are already some of the most flexible people in the world to help get another little bit out of flexibility. I’ve seen it for all kinds of individuals. Again, this long…this spectrum of what it is that you need and what do you need to do to get better? We can adapt vibration to help.
One of the things I always find about my clients is they really don’t care about anybody else, except what does it do for me? And they come to us to say, “My calves hurt. I have repeat injuries of my ankles. My lower back hurts. I wanna be able to have better flexibility in my shoulders.” They come with something very specific. And I’m able to use vibration and other modalities to help them exercise so they get most bang for their time dollar when they’re in our facility. And many of the people that come to our clinics have units in their home so they can continue their routine using vibration.
Katie: Very cool. So now to, kind of, dig into a few questions that I love to either weave into the episode or ask toward the end. The first being that this is, I know, a very specific kind of niche area that you’ve done a lot of research on, what are some common misconceptions, if we haven’t already covered them, related to whole-body vibration?
Jason: If you stand on a vibrating platform, and your legs are straight, and you’re rigid, the vibration will be felt in your head, and people don’t like that. So, we always ask, bend your knees. But I ask people to bend their knees when they’re playing tennis or when they’re doing any sport, but I remind them, bend your knees so the vibration is absorbed through the body and it doesn’t get to the head. The second is, it is not the perfect panacea. It is an incredible tool. It can be used in so many different ways but you still have to go out for a walk. You still have to practice a sport. You still have to do all the other things that you’re probably doing already or want to do. It just helps you do it safer, faster, and more efficiently. There are people that go, “All it is a big vibrating platform. How can it work? I have to lift a weight.” And if I tell them, “With vibration, you can actually fire more muscles and you can fire them more efficiently,” they can’t see it unless they’re physically on it. And then they go, “Oh, I get it now.” So, I always like to put someone on, just do one push-up, just one, on the floor and on the Power Plate. I don’t have to tell them anything more because the vibration is forcing more muscles to fire.
The last thing, and this is where I take my business, is that everyone is an athlete. And you can be an athlete if you’re 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years of age. What vibration allows me to do is be creative and take what their individual needs are and create an exercise program that allows for the amount of time that they have, the physical limitations they might present with and the creativity so that it’s fun. Because if it’s not fun, they won’t come back. And if they don’t feel good, they won’t come back. And the misconception is that this big, huge vibrating machine is going to be hurtful. It’s anything but that if you use it properly. And the properly means bend your knees. Everything else, we have all the different examples of how to use it, where to use it, how to use it to prepare, to perform, and to recover.
I think we’re in a tough situation where we are now. Our days, for everyone, for you, for my family, for everyone within your circle, time is tough. We don’t have time to exercise. We don’t have enough time to do all kinds of things. And we don’t take as good care of ourselves as we should, myself included. What vibration has allowed me to do is feel better in a shorter period of time. And I like that. It allows my daughter who’s an opera singer to warm up. And she has completely different needs. I like that. When I’ve had an injury, having done a sport or been clumsy and tripped over something, after a certain amount of recovery from whatever that injury is, it allows me to massage and to prepare the muscle and the joint to start moving again. I like that.
So, the misconception is, you know, it’s a new technology. It’s just a vibrating platform but it’s a technology that has been used by NASA, professional sports, it’s been around for 25 years. There are a couple of thousand studies using vibration with all different populations, all different environments. So it’s something that everyone can find a place for it. One of the things I’m proud of, last year, the American College of Sports Medicine published their fifth edition of the Fitness Facility Guidelines. And in the guidelines, what should you have in a fitness center. And for the first time, the American College of Sports Medicine adds whole-body vibration to cardiovascular equipment, flexibility programs, weightlifting for muscular power and muscular endurance. Now whole-body vibration is added to the array of modalities that are in a fitness center. And I think that’s a big step forward for our industry and all the people who want to try it to see if it can add to their fitness and their wellness levels.
Katie: Fascinating. Well, I’ll put a link…I know that you guys have resources on a lot of these topics. And, of course, a link to the Power Plate itself, which I have in my house and have just started using. Another question I love to ask for the end of interviews is if there is a book or a number of books that have had a dramatic impact on your life and if so, what they are and why?
Jason: Oh, I love that question. There’s a book that it’s been out for a long, long time, but it’s called “Tuesdays with Morrie.” I’ve probably given away 150 or 200 copies. And Mitch Albom is a sports writer. And many years ago, he went back to start talking to one of his college professors. And this was, like, you know, 30 years after he had left college. And the college professor was ill with ALS. And the story is about the 14 visits over I think it’s a 6-month period, where he went back and he just started to talk to his professor, and it was a life-changing experience.
Now, how do I weave “Tuesdays with Morrie” into whole-body vibration? What it taught me was that I never stopped learning. And the author of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” 30 years later, goes back in the stories that the professor was talking about, the way that presented what you would think were new ideas but were always there right in front of him all the time. Vibration has been around for a long time, 25 years, but some people have never heard of it, never experienced it. And so, I’d like to make the analogy that with “Tuesdays with Morrie,” you could go back in, find something that has always been there, but you just never experienced it. And with whole-body vibration, even if you haven’t experienced it over the last 20, 25 years, it’s right there, and it may make a big difference in how you feel, how you move, how you experience your body through life.
Katie: That’s a new suggestion. I’ll have to check it out. I had not heard of that one. And then lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today? Could be related to whole-body weight vibration or not.
Jason: Yeah, I say this almost every day. It’s not over. It doesn’t matter to me how you present. If you come and your body is really beaten up, well, I’m really glad you’re here. Let’s start. Let’s help you feel better. And if you’re a young teenager and you’re not as strong or fast or training is a little bit difficult, it’s not over. What vibration has allowed me to do with my clients is that whoever presents, and for whatever reason that they present, I’m able to use this modality with other modalities to help them get to a better place. And it’s not always personal records. For some people, it’s moving without pain. With others, it’s moving and not feeling like they’re gonna fall. With others, they wanna be able to climb Kilimanjaro. There’s all kinds of things that people wanna be able to do, and vibration allows me to help them train safely and more efficiently. So, it’s not over until it’s over, and don’t give up. We can try to help you.
Katie: Awesome. Jason, this has been so much fun. I’m excited to keep getting to play with the Power Plate and be able to report results to you guys over time. And I know that you guys have resources. I mentioned I will put those links in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm so that you guys can find the Power Plate and check it out for yourselves. But thank you so much for your time.
Jason: It’s a pleasure. And please feel free to reach out. If there are specific questions for your listeners, I’d be happy to make sure that you get the resources to share with them.
Katie: Wonderful. And thank you, guys, as always for listening, for sharing your most valuable resources, your time, and your energy with us today. We’re so grateful that you were here, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.
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