52 Exercises: Rushing onto the Power Plate for no.35

Power Plate seemed like a good idea at the time for someone who’s feeling over-worked, time poor and just plain old lazy. It happens and this week has been a big one.

New opportunities have been coming my way and as usual I’ve been saying yes. So Rich and I now have a new business partner and a new service which we’ll be launching soon. But before we get to the exciting bit where we tell our clients all about it there’s shed loads of work to be done training, planning, setting up new websites,writing copy and generally plotting world domination. No wonder I’m feeling the strain.

So I figured Power Plate would be a super fast ‘no exercise’ exercise for the 52 Exercises quest this week. Alas it did not prove to be so.

In my naivety I thought exercising on a Power Plate machine meant I could stand there doing nothing while the machine vibrated and jiggled and my subcutaneous fat was magically turned into muscle without me doing anything. Wrong.

When I got to the Tone Zone Kasey, my delightful personal trainer for the morning and Power Plate pro, got me to fill in the usual forms including all the usual questions about medical health and history as well as my favorite foods. I wrote down chocolate as my second favorite food and countered that by listing payapa, nectarines, tofu, quinoa and cucumber as my other favourite foods. All lies of course because chocolate is definitely number one and while I eat chocolate daily, no quinoa has passed my lips for months.

Luckily Kasey didn’t notice any of that because she was too busy telling me all the good things about exercising on a Power Plate machine. I was particularity sold on the fact that the Power Plate is a highly efficient method of exercise and equivalent to three times as long spent in the gym. So the 30 minutes of exercise Kasey had planned for me on the Power Plate would be like doing 90 minutes of normal exercise.

Now it was time for me to try it out. First Kasey told me to stand on the Power Plate machine and do some squats. That sounded easy enough for a fit chick like me but as soon as Kasey turned the Power Plate on I broke out in a sweat.

Kaesy set a timer to run so when the Power Plate stopped I could too. It was probably only a minute but I was hanging in there.

We continued thus with me doing squats, lunges, planks and various other weight bearing exercises while the Power Plates shook the living day lights out of me. At times it felt as if the tip of my nose and my ears were shaking 1000 times per second. Although Kasey said she couldn’t see them moving I swear they must have been.

All the time I was sweating like crazy while Kasey ran back and forth to the water fountain bearing more and more ice cold water for me. The Power Plate is thirsty work and definitely not the ‘no exercise’ exercise I imagined it would be.

Kasey was delightful but I was still utterly relived when my Power Point session was over and ready to chalk that one up to experience.

That night I had the sleep of my life and the next day I felt great. Better than I have felt in months. Right now I’m as happy as a pig in mud and full of beans too.

Before going I thought Power Plates were just a gimmick but now I think these Power Plate people might be on to something and it’s definitely a work out I’d like to do again. I discovered there are no short cuts if you want to have a tight, toned tush.

As exercise goes the Power Plate is still hard work. But I like that you can do it in in a third of the time and I love how being shaken to the core makes you feel the next day.

Power Plate Review

Cost: $22.50 per one hour session at Tone Zone in Noosa with Kasey telling you what to do, what not to do and how to get maximum benefits. Or you can buy a Power Plate machine on Amazon for $5,000!

Benefits of Power Plate exercise:

– Get the same work out in a third of the time because it makes your body’s muscles contract between 25 and 50 times a second as you make gentle body movements. It’s this constant muscle tensioning that increases muscle strength fast;

– Increases your metabolism;

– Shifts stubborn fat and reduces cellulite because of all the vibrations;

– Stimulates the lymphatic system;

– Increases bone density.

Time Exercising: 30 minutes for me as a newbie although normally you do a one hour session at the Tone Zone.

Calories Burned: Not sure, forgot to wear heart rate monitor.

Average Heart Rate: See above

Fun Factor: 5/10 It was more of a weird factor.

Fear Factor: 2/10 No fear because I thought it was going to be easy and Kasey was super friendly and reassuring.

Post-exercise Glow: 9/10. Definitely the best post exercise glow ever.

Does the Power Plate sound good to you?