Our Whole Body Vibration Training Story

A few years ago friends of ours gave us a piece of exercise machinery called the Vibrogym – a whole body vibration training machine that is made in Holland. It’s rather large, very heavy and worth about 7000 euros brand new. We used it on and off for a while then it spend quite some time holding storage boxes in our garage. I tried to sell it once in an attempt to create space but no one was interested, so it stayed with us.

Fast forward to 2020 and that white elephant has become one of our favorite pieces of equipment. 

Clients love our vibration training machine for a variety of reasons:

Doing very slow push-ups on it completely fatigues pecs and triceps and causes a nice soreness the next day.

Putting one foot on it while it’s vibrating increases circulation in the lower leg and helps with lymph drainage – it feels a lot like the foot massagers at the LA County Fair so when the vibrations stop you feel all tingly and relaxed in the feet and calves.

Clients with plantar fasciitis love it (see why above).

Doing squat holds on the whole body vibration training machine totally burns out the legs and is a challenging way to get leg and core stability and strength.

We love our whole body vibration training machine for those reasons and more:

When muscles are subjected to vibration they contract. The greater the vibration frequency, the more the muscles will contract, which in turn helps improve bone density in much the same way as resistance training does.

Muscle contractions triggered by whole body vibration require a surge in energy expenditure and oxygen uptake so it can be used by people with physical conditions who otherwise can’t tolerate high levels of exercise. 

For people who experience arthritic joint pain and lack of contitioning, it’s a really good solution for improving strength and balance because it doesn’t require a lot of joint movement to get good results.

We can incorporate the whole body vibration training machine into regular stability strength exercises such as planks to add variety and greater challenge for our clients.

Using the whole body vibration training machine after a heavy resistance training workout acts much like a massage and can help with postworkout recovery by decreasing delayed onset muscle soreness.

With Rudi’s genius for engineering off-the-charts strength and conditioning exercises, there’s really no end to the things we can do with our Vibrogym whole body training machine. It plays well with all the other strength training pieces we have put together in our little indoor-outdoor fitness gym.

Thank goodness we kept it!