It’s just not working anymore! This is what a regular customer told me last week when she came in for her vibration training session.
Starting six months ago, soon after I began working for Vibra-Train, this customer initially had exciting results. She had a specific goal; fat-loss and toning, with increased overall strength and she found that vibration training, specifically using Vibra-Train lineal machines, really worked for her. I looked forward to her studio visits and helping her train hard.
We’d chat about nutrition somedays and I often had to encourage her to eat more, not less, and help her understand that weightloss would not occur in a starvation situation, there being a huge difference in how the human body copes with calorie deficit compared with real calorie deficiency which was what she was doing and so causing her body to protect itself by laying down fat stores rather than releasing fat to be used as part of her workout energy source. All too often her energy “batteries” were empty. But as we progressed this customer, who I’ll call Sue, gained strength, lost fat and a few dress sizes. She told me how she was wearing designer jeans that she’d kept due to their cost but hadn’t been able to fit for three years.
A vacation with lots of eating-out and the long, hard winter in New Zealand bumped up Sue’s weight a little and she was expecting vibration training, which she’d kept on with three times a week except during her vacation time, to deal with it and get her back on-track and slimmed down for summer. She wanted a body that would look amazing on the beach and she’d was working well toward it, restricting her calorie intake and occaisionally taking a walk.
So what was going wrong ???
Sue had progressed so well in her ability to do the program that she did it alone while I instructed less able or newer customers. She was supervised though, as are all our customers, and I corrected her positions occaisionally. I also noticed that she’d dropped down to the level 2 machines whereas
she’d been using a higher level, and she was doing only the basic program, which is enough for most people, but as she’d pushed herself harder earlier in the year and was holding perfect positions we’d advanced to a higher force machine and also added in a few repeat positions to give her an edge on faster fitness and toning. Sue had told me the highest level machine (Level 5 Sports model) gave her some pain in an old injury so she prefered the lesser force, levels 2 or 3.
Sue was adamant that vibration training was not working anymore for her. I talked with Lloyd about her concerns and he reminded me that, for women, hormones play a part in setting our body shape and also asked if Sue was “mixing up” her training by varying the level of machines she was using rather than the same all the time.
I got Sue to do a Body Composition Analysis on our studio BCA machine and, while most results were acceptable, her body fat percentage was high and her resting metabolic rate was low. Somehow we needed to give her metabolism a “kick-start”.
Sue is now pushing herself very much harder in her training sessions. She’s using a level 5 Sports machine, not the one that aggravated her old shoulder injury but one that has a very smooth feel, high force with low amplitude. She’s doubled up on the time spent on some positions, from 60 seconds to 120 seconds. She’s looking at her diet, and I still advise her to eat more not less as I’m sure that’s the biggest factor in her lack of progress; it’s not how much she eats but learning to eat foods that will give muscle growth and burn calories. Sue has also started doing water aerobics and so added cardio exercise to her fitness routine.
For Sue, vibration training is definitely playing a part in improving her strength and fitness, she readily says this. It’s giving her the stamina to take on other activities and now that she’s increased the effort she’s putting into her training I’m confident she will see the results she wants.
It’s important to note that while results are individual I can guarantee muscle growth if a person makes the effort to seriously train three times a week (it can’t work for lazy people!). Strong muscles support the bones and give great shape to the body, while also increasing the rate of calorie use. Unless sabotaged by an inadequate diet or overindulgence the body shape changes; slim people gain a healthy look while larger people slim down. The only other variable is the quality of the vibration machine and with the ones at the studio where I work, there’s no question as they’re the best!
