I saw a TV commercial today that featured one of these. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, it’s one of these machines. You stood on a platform, put a belt around your middle, and then the machine shook you. It was supposed to be a form of exercise.
Obviously, this thing was bullshit. Being shook by a machine was not going to help you lose weight or build up your muscles. But was this 100% nonsense or is there any benefit to be gained from shaking on a machine?
I don’t have an answer. I just came to say that this Betty Boop cartoon is the only reason I know about these machines. I must have seen it a hundred times as a kid (but the machine makes no more sense to me now than it did then). I guess they were popular around 80 years ago?
I’m sure it was a pleasant massage. 
From what I have been reading about power plates, these machines basically do work. The question remains, though, if some of the claims are exaggerated.
The linked article points out that it’s the product’s maker who is disseminating the information about the product’s effectiveness. So a little grain of salt is applicable.
Someone in my mother’s family owned of those when I was a kid. (I haven’t been a kid for a long time.) My mother borrowed it for maybe a week or two. My recollection is that they were supposed to take inches off a woman’s hips.
I thought it was kind of silly then and still do.
I saw nothing in your cite that showed the vibrating plates had any effect that standard calisthenics did not have. And the conclusion of the only scientific cite in the Wiki article said -
As for the vibrating belt machines, it has essentially no effect besides possible skin irritation. The idea was that the vibration would break up the subcutaneous fat, which doesn’t happen and would be painful and dangerous if it did.
Regards,
Shodan
All I was trying to say is that power plates don’t seem to be outright bogus (unlike these belt machines).
No, they are bogus. They are the newest instantiation of the vibrating belt machines. Why do you think the belt machine is bogus, but not the plate machine? They do the same thing! Vibrating your body is not exercise, at best it is a massage.
I saw these things on TV and some very old movies. Hard to imagine anyone thought they were a form of exercise.
There are plenty of studies to be found on PubMed ( vibration training - Search Results - PubMed ) and I have read other articles over the years discussing the merits of this type of exercise.
Number 3 of your results:
“Analysis of the Seismic Performance of Isolated Buildings according to Life-Cycle Cost”?
Sigh Yes. Try this one:
I remember usng those at a health club in the 70s. I think the rationale was breaking up fat and losing inches, as Shodan said, not exercise in that I would build muscle or something like that.
I’m afraid it didn’t work.
Just glancing at the front page for the Power Plate website and the article headlines on the pubmed site, I get the feeling you’re supposed to be working out on the power plate thing. Working out on a vibrating platform is going to force your body to keep itself stable and keep all your other muscles active during your entire workout.
That has nothing to do with the machine in the OP. In that machine, you don’t even have to keep balance since you’re leaning into it. I can understand the idea of doing some kind of light workout on a Power Plate and getting some extra benefit out of it, but I would doubt that you’d get any benefit from just putting a chair on the platform and sitting there for a half hour.
Further solidifying my opinion that from “exercise scientists” all the way down to the layman, the fitness industry is 99.99% garbage.
Seriously, what possible mechanism is there for vibration to burn calories or to build either strength or cardiovascular capacity? Does a massage chair work? Can I just take a drive on a gravel road to lose weight and get strong?
There is no passive way to fitness. None. These plates are a scam, as are the “studies” which support them. Anyone can publish a paper. That doesn’t make it science, though, even if it’s on Pubmed.
I’m assuming then that you are not a big fan of Electrical muscle stimulation either?
What do you think a TENS machine can do? One of the links on that page claims it can do very little of what those commercials claims it says.
You’re not going to look like Terry Crews because you did some electrotherapy. You’re all so not going to win Biggest Loser. What you might do is speed along your physical therapy because it’ll help loosen some tight muscles or help you supplement your workout routine be keeping down your pain.
A single study isn’t meaningful in science. You need to see it replicated by others, who aren’t funded by the manufacturer.
That said, it’s likely that the machine does count as exercise from a very circumspect angle, since it’s asking you to maintain a stable, upright position while being shaken about. That’s probably slightly better “exercise” than standing in place for the same amount of time, and far better than sitting on the couch, eating M&Ms, but if you were to compare the effectiveness of walking to “whole body vibration” you’d probably find that the effectiveness of WBV for leg strength is 1/100th that of walking.
And if we say that there’s a rigorous definition of “exercise” which requires a certain minimum of active physical activity, then just because A is better than B, that still doesn’t mean that A falls under the heading of exercise.