By Natalie Carter www.newoutlookfitness.com.au
With all festivities of the holiday season you’ll most likely be looking for new ways to get fit and healthy in the New Year… Rescu. Fitness expert, Natalie Carter, introduces a new piece of exercise equipment along with some helpful tips and tricks to assist your work out:
This piece of gym equipment is a vibration device catering to many different ages, lifestyles and abilities. It uses the principles of 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, enhancing overall performance in sessions as short as 15 minutes a day, 3 times a week. The Power Plate platform moves multi-directionally which targets muscles in various planes of motion. Thanks to the platform contracting at such high rate, a person can have a shorter workout due to the increased intensity on the muscles. Great for time pressed indivduals and people who aren’t big fans of exercise (come on fess up, I know some of you exist!)
– Immediate improvement in blood circulation
– Increased muscle strength and flexibility
– Improved range of motion
– Decreased cellulite
– Increased bone mineral density
– Faster recovery from exercise
Power Plate is fast becoming a popular mode of exercise within gyms and small fitness studios.
Acceleration Training with Power Plate machines creates instability in the human body, as with each vibration the body is forced to perform reflexive muscle actions, multiple times per second. The Power Plate follows the law of motion, made famous by Sir Issac Netown (f = m x a). Put simply, this means that a person can improve functional force by adding more mass or more acceleration to the body. This leads to increased strength, power and speed. When using the Power Plate your body is under constant acceleration and load that it forces your muscles to contract at a higher rate than when off the plate.
New Mums:
The Power Plate is great for post natal mothers who don’t have time and/or high fitness levels to deal with the demands of a high intensity workout. New mums are generally sleep deprived but are always keen to get exercising after their bub comes along, therefore Power Plate is a great option.
Eldery:
The eldery benefit from using the power plate as it virtually means they can stand on the platform and move slowly through their specified program without the need to be overly mobile.
Injured Athletes/indivduals:
Another group to benfit from the Power Plate are injured indivduals. It was instrutmental in my recovery following a stress fracture on my foot. I found it to be of benefit and actually felt stronger whilst going through my exercises. For me personally, the biggest benefit was more bang for my buck whilst using it. My exercise plan was very limited because my whole foot was in a boot (very sexy!) so it meant I could remove the boot and still perform selected exercises on the platform. The vibration definitely reduced the pain I would have usually felt if not exercising on the Power Plate. Another added bonus was because of the vibration, when you perform say a squat with shoulder press (2 big movements together, great for burning lots of calories and increasing your general workout load) on the Power Plate you are working much harder than just standing on the floor. A 30 minute workout can target all muscle groups and your core as well.
Regular exercisers or gym users:
The general gym goer would feel the Power Plate adds a new element to their training. If you participate in a lot of cardio based activites, intergrating some basic Power Plate moves (suchs a squat, lunge or hip extension) would mean you are working towards building lean muscle and this in turn would help your strength levels.
Those with pace makers and pregnant women need to steer clear of the Power Plate. The great news is even the most unco-ordinated person can master this piece of machinery. It has adjustable settings and handles to hold onto.
I don’t believe the Power Plate should be your only form of training. Whilst it can benefit you in many areas nothing can replace the need to lift weights and perform resistance based exercises. I still think this is hands down the most effective way of conditioning your body into a powerhouse. Like all the different types of fitness equipment out there nothing can replace a clean, health diet combined with high intensit cardio and a solid all round weights program.
Stay awesome until next time,
Nat x
