03/14/2025
Good Morning My FIIT Family!!
If you have been to our gym in the last couple weeks, you probably have noticed a few new pieces of equipment. One of which is the Most Health Beneficial, the POWER PLATE!!
I have attached a Very Informative article from the Power Plate company explaining the MANY benefits of this AMazing machine!
Please take time to read it! It is quite a Long article; however, I’m certain that after you understand ALL that it can do for your overall health, you will want to come try it out!!
(Article from Power Plate, March 13,2025)
Over 20,000 research studies have been published on Whole Body Vibration.
In recent years most of the research is conducted on Power Plates. Studies are being conducted on Power Plates because we've become the global standard in Whole Body Vibration.
So there's a lot that can be written, literally a large book, on all the ins and outs of how Power Plate benefits people.
One of the primary ways that Power Plate helps people, is that it helps people experience the benefits of exercise, even intense exercise, especially when they are not able to move well.
Because each Power Plate vibrates on average 30 times a second (comfortably) this creates a reflex response in the muscles. 30 vibrations per second equal 30 muscle contractions. Each muscle contraction pulls on connected bone-- enough to generate new bone building cells and proteins!
For athletes and active people, Power Plate helps people warm up, perform and recover. Power Plate began as a tool to help elite athletes perform better than other elite athletes.
The 30 vibrations per second move through the muscles, through the tendons and ligaments. Into the central nervous system. Eye- hand coordination improves, flexibility improves, ability to perform without injury improves.
The same technology is now used to help people of all ages recover their ability to move, be flexible and regain their athletic nature.
The people who most need the health benefits of exercise are not able to exercise. There's no exercise pill.
Power Plate is the closest thing that exists to an exercise pill and it quite literally solves the problem of people who need exercise, but are unable to do it.
The unique power of Power Plate comes from the engine itself. There are cheaper whole body vibration machines out there that work with teeter totter technology.
How this works: two pistons move up and down and shake a board. This shakes a person.
This can be somewhat effective, but it's incredibly uncomfortable. It's the difference between riding in a motorboat on choppy water vs smooth early morning water.
What made Power Plate the gold global standard, was a unique and multi-patented engine that moves in three dimensions at once. The engine is advanced, and is expensive and time consuming to manufacture.
How this works: If you can visualize a machine that when in motion moves almost in a sphere, pushing out in all directions simultaneously at once. The key to this multi-dimensional movement is that it creates harmonic vibration.
These harmonic waves are very comfortable for people to absorb and use. The different wave intensities from a Power Plate are powerful and a person can only comfortably absorb this power if it's comfortable.
Power Plate became Power Plate because of this ability to deliver very consistent, harmonic vibration.
These waves are so consistent that when you measure them, they appear as sine waves that you can actually see on an ultrasound machine.
When you have somebody step on a Power Plate, and you turn it on at 30 Hz, 30 vibrations per second, that's going to trigger a reflex response in the body.
That's going to trigger the muscles to contract at 30 times per second. That energy is going to flow through the tendons, helping them to loosen up and muscle is connected to bone, so bones are going to get stimulated at the exact ratio that muscle is.
And this is the key to the whole thing, when muscle is activated 30 times a second, that starts to really work the muscle, and bring it to life. Even the best athlete can't do that themselves.
Then those 30 vibrations per second are going to flow through the tendons, which help to loosen them up. Remember that it's easy to massage a muscle, but you can't easily or comfortably massage a tendon.
1. So, there's an immediate metabolic benefit from using a Power Plate. Just by standing on it you stimulate the muscle and you open up the cells to absorb insulin for example.
When cells are able to use more sugar for energy, you almost instantly solve metabolic problems. Sugar gets used as energy instead of being stored as fat.
There is new research out from Japan, showing how even the simplest movements on a Power Plate, consistently used for six weeks, can almost permanently alter somebody's metabolic health.
The metabolic benefit is a huge motivating factor for people to start the Power Plate habit. With these really destructive alternatives out there, Power Plate becomes the most humane way of helping somebody lose weight, by meeting them where they are. Power Plate combined with resistance training and smart nutrition is likely the best long term metabolic fitness strategy for many people.
The key to behavior modification is that the modifications need to be doable.
Power Plate forms an almost essential component to any long-term behavior modification program that leads to lasting fat loss and metabolic health.
Power Plate is easy to use for almost everyone who can stand. This cannot be understated. As long as somebody can stand on a Power Plate for nine minutes at a time, and do some simple, up-and-down movement with their legs and body. they can start to experience the benefit.
2. The second big thing that Power Plate helps people with is whole body chronic pain. From a clinical standpoint, chronic pain is the number one problem in the healthcare system that there is no easily identifiable solution for.
With chronic pain, Power Plate helps to provide both immediate and long-term benefit. This makes people feel better quickly, which enables compliance, and make it easy to build the habit.
As we have mentioned, when somebody steps on a Power Plate those vibrations go through the body 30 times a second. The harmonic vibrations are going into the tendons, and helping to loosen them up.
Tendons are composed of intricate collagen strands. Vibration loosens these up and people can experience some relief quickly, because when the tendons relax, the muscles can often relax. Tendon and muscle work hand-in-hand.
The 30 vibrations every second also help to overwhelm the pain signals in the central nervous system, interrupting them for a period of time. Vibrations will help to interrupt the pain signals from the brain to the body.
Nearly everyone with long-term chronic pain can benefit from regular whole body vibration use, and one of the most basic ways of helping people is having them "put their pain on the plate."
3. The third major benefit of Power Plate is with bone. As muscle gets stronger, bone gets stronger at almost the exact ratio for many people.
The intense harmonic vibrations are enough to stimulate new bone growth. This has been well documented in research studies. Consistent Power Plate use increases bone density, especially over time.
This has been measured with DEXA scans. It's not uncommon for people who have used Power Plate for a couple years to have their bone density return to what it was decades earlier.
The other very powerful side benefit of standing on a Power Plate for nine minutes three to four times a week is that balance improves. If somebody has better balance and stronger bones, their odds of falling down, breaking something, and having a catastrophic outcome are much lower.
When it comes to osteoporosis prevention and recovery, generating impact is at the root of everything. If you look at the medical literature, things like running, jumping, dancing, tennis, these all help to stimulate the bone to stay strong and become stronger.
But what if you can't move your body that quickly to generate the necessary impact?
Again, that's where Power Plate provides a very unique value.
4. The fourth big area that Power Plate helps with is in the area of brain health. There is a lot of new research that keeps coming out that shows the direct link between Power Plate and brain health. (source) (source)
When somebody walks or runs, their foot strikes the ground. This helps to push blood through the arteries up through the body and into the brain.
This delivers oxygen and nutrients and all sorts of great stuff, which keeps our brains healthy and sharp. Additionally, when your muscles are activated, this helps to keep the brain active, helping prevent cognitive decline.
But again, what happens when you can't move so well as you get older, and you're not able to generate the impact to push the blood into your brain?
There's been some very interesting new research out of Japan, conducted on Power Plate Pro5 machines, which actually shows the impact of the brain when somebody is standing on a Power Plate.
Using MRI technology, the Japanese researchers were able to show an immediate increase in blood flow all the way to the prefrontal cortex.
And not only did the benefit happen immediately, but there was also long-term brain benefit with long-term use, because with the 30 vibrations every second, you're going to move a lot more blood throughout your body.
5. The benefits keep extending from there. There's also a lot of research that links whole body vibration use to significantly increased levels of natural growth hormone in the body.
Again, intense exercise and intense physical activity helps generate growth hormone, which in turn generates stem cell activation. This helps to turn on all the key longevity hormones, increases collagen, and tells your body to get back to work. Often the way it did decades esrlier.
Nitric oxide production increases, heart health can increase, skin tightness can increase with increased collagen production.
There is very clear literature linking increases in natural growth hormone to increased internal collagen production. (source)
The benefits of Power Plate are almost endless, because it's simply a delivery mechanism for therapeutic doses of exercise.
