Taking a train to Parramatta, an hour trip out of Central Sydney I’d barely begun my degradation into sales mode when I saw a stand in the walkway with a guy selling exercise equipment.  My son, Brad, pointed out a vibration machine so I walked over to see what type it was.  The salesman asked me if I was interested and had I used one before.  He was a really nice guy so I wasn’t going to let him do a sales talk, I told him right away that I worked as an instructor with high energy lineal machines.  He actually seemed relieved and asked me to tell him about them as he’d only recently learnt that there were others than the type he was selling.

We talked for about an hour, a time really well spent as this salesman who could have insisted his machine did everything that anyone could want or need, instead wanted to be educated.  He even asked about the machine he was selling which was a home machine, quite expensive (but aren’t they all). It was a low speed pivotal (side to side motion) and definitely not the worst I’ve trialled.  The sales guy said he was using the machine at home and wanted to know how to use it effectively to get the best results possible. He could see the possibilities of Vibration Training for fitness and weight-loss but no one had even told him how to use the machines he was supposed to be selling.

The salesman was a bit overweight so I first pointed out that the machine was barely coping and he’d do better on a higher quality machine.  We then went on to talk about poses that can be used. (there was a poster on the wall with about 30 positions many of which were a bit like yoga and totally impossible and impractical for either me or the guy to attempt).  I went through the IVTRB Safety program with him, using the pivotal version and we discussed the speeds/frequencies to set the machine for each pose.  I was able to actively demonstrate most of them.

We then used my son’s large screen cellphone to watch the YouTube video of Lloyd Shaw’s work-out – again it’s the IVTRB Safety Program but with a few extra poses, using the Vibra-Train lineal machine with side vibrating handlebars. David, the sales guy, was getting excited and then watching the Full Body Triceps Dip position using side handlebars he realised there was no way to translate this to anything that could be done on his machine.  He now wants a Vibra-Train brand Lineal machine.  We even had a talk about how Vibra-Train now lease machines for commercial use.  I really felt a little sorry for him – he saw what was possible and now he wants it and I’m sure he went home that night to talk to his wife about a trip to Auckland to try out the whole program.

I continued with my shopping but I’d lost interest; instead I was “buzzing”, excited that I’d been able to help someone learn a little more about vibration machines and how to use them. And very happy to have met a salesman who, instead of pretending he already “knew it all” wanted to extend his knowledge.

Lloyd Shaw at the start of the Vibra-Train test

Picture 1: shows Lloyd Shaw in 2004. Back then he loved his gym workouts – 1 and 1/2 hour sessions six days a week.  Add in cardio sessions three times a week also, sprints and swimming.

He looks good but decidedly chubby. His muscle definition was better than the average gym goer but there’s no way he would take off his shirt and pose back then. And look at his arms; there’s muscle there but they have a covering of fat.

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Lloyd Shaw Vibra-Train

Picture 2: Two years into a self test, using only Vibra-Train brand machines and the Vibra-Train Safety Program for workouts; this picture shows a very cut look. It was taken on impulse and looked so good the background was added for use as a poster. Lloyd’s only gym visits were once every few months to check out his strength which was increasing.

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Picture 3: Fast forward to 2011. The picture below of Lloyd Shaw taken April 7th, 2011 – a slimmer profile showing amazing abs and a completely balanced look.

Lloyd Shaw Vibration Training Muscles April 2011

The picture is completely unedited and was taken on a whim. I thought it was so good I had to publish it.

It’s now 5 years since Lloyd Shaw began his “Vibra-Train as only exercise” test using himself as the test subject. This look was achieved solely using Vibra-Train brand Vibration Machines. I know Lloyd well and can attest that his diet isn’t always great (too much fastfood) although he has cleaned it up somewhat this year.

Individual results vary of course; some people are badly hampered by hormonal or overweight/fat issues, stress or injury.  Some people respond very quickly to this form of exercise while for others their body goes through other changes first but for everyone results begin to show after just a few weeks and are ongoing.

Here’s Lloyd Shaw’s  personal Vibration Training Workout: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PikfQv7uwwo

and the Vibra-Train Safety Program:

Vibration Training Safety Program for Lineal Machines

There’s been quite some debate this year about the technical side of the machines, what they’re made of and how they work and especially about fake specs, the issue that had dogged our industry for years.

Lloyd Shaw of Vibra-Train has written an informative article about this. It’s complete with the evidence of engineering reports.

Click here to read it:  Timeline of Fake Specs on Vibration Machines

Or perhaps you own or run a Vibration Training Studio or you’re interested in getting into this industry – You want your clients to get great results but there are so many choices of machine brands, type, price and quality, so what should you demand from the company you choose to supply your machines?

Watch this Video,

“What to look for in a Commercial Vibration Training Platform”

It was never my intention to isolate from other types of machines or brands but at the time of writing the article below I needed to pull away.  Now the industry has settled somewhat, I’m back to recommending the machine I believe is best for a person’s needs, depending on what they have access to, a studio or a machine for home use. There’s also times I have to say, sorry; there’s nothing available in your area.  And there’s, sadly, times where a specific machine might be useful but the brand owners are behaving in ways that, in my opinion, could not allow me to honestly recommend their product.

Article below written April, 2010

Over the past three years and more I’ve seen myself as a strong proponent for Vibration Training. I’ve become a “champion of the cause”, presenting this method of fitness training to everyone who would listen both in my regular life and on internet websites. I’ve engaged people into conversation merely because they sat next to me in a bus or aircraft. I’ve believed that Vibration Training is for almost everyone, either on it’s own or as part of a wider exercise program and while I know Vibra-Train is Number One, the Vibration Training Specialists, I also felt ties to some of the other companies, whose machines I had tried and found beneficial and who took part in the online community and education of consumers.

This identification with other brands has come to an end.

I’ve had to rethink my hopes for a vibration training industry of various brands involving like minded people whose first aim is to benefit the consumer and secondly, to make a reasonable return on their investment of money and their time. I’m an employee of Vibra-Train and as much as I love my present job I’ve dreamed of owning my own studio or managing one if I couldn’t finance my own. It was always unlikely that I would move away from the Vibra-Train brand but I’d remained open-minded to that possibility as long as the studio had good quality machines and followed the Vibra-Train Safety Program.   My boss, Lloyd Shaw had encouraged me at times to look at other businesses and assured me of help in being sucessful. This was before I began full employment with Vibra-Train but even since he’s talked of sending me to other branded studios to help them and teach them the Vibra-Train Safety Program so that consumers would get good results.

I’d believed that competition of brands within the industry was healthy and in some cases, for example, High Energy Lineal and Premium Speed Pivotal, that the way the machines work is completely different and so draws a different set of users. Now I’m feeling so disappointed at the other brands within the Vibration Training Industry that I’m forced to change my mind about supporting others.

This industry has been let down by many brand owners; by, in my opinion,  their unscrupulous behaviour; their greed and self-serving attitudes; the lack of support of the studios with their brand of machines, such as constant breakdowns of machines that should never have been supplied with inherent faults in design; same with home machines, so many break down or don’t perform as they should and this alone gives the industry a bad name.  Brand Loyalty (and snobbery)  has been such that people wont even admit when they have a problem and ask others for help.

Over the past two years I’ve seen a decline in the “as-seen-on-tv ” cheap and basically useless machines and was encouraged to see the owners of some of  the “better” brands and studio owners start to engage more in social media and in education of the consumer via internet websites and forums.  Those within the industry know that our previous consumer website and forum system had serious problems from within the industry and a new one www-vibration-training-advice was set up.  I hoped for lots of different brands involvement but there’s been very little.

The decisive factor in my pulling away from other brands is a feeling of such disappointment.  The ” final straw”, to use a local idiom, was discovering that the HyperVibe brand was engaging the services of Internet Search Engine Optimization developers contracted in Canada but working out of India, writing articles in poor English, some almost unintelligable, for one reason alone – to push that company, HyperVibe’s, Google ranking up to Page 1.  I know a lot about SEO as I have my own website and I do all I can to ethically increase the ranking of others that I am involved with.  I’ve also worked for a large U.S. online directory and still maintain some pages for them.  At times I’ve “cleaned up” articles that were ambiguous due to poor language skills.

The problem with engaging SEO developers that have poor English language skills and zero interest in your industry is that the resulting articles that pop up all over the internet can have very poor quality content.  In this case they have been written by one person using three (at least) different names on the same articles.  It’s clever and it does work to push the linked company, in this case, HyperVibe, up the Search Engine rankings but at what cost?  When I emailed Murray Seaton, the Australian owner/director of HyperVibe, his reply was, “Many of our distributors (ourselves included) use the services of Indian SEO developers”. He said that he was doing all he could to ensure his company ranked highly on the internet so people could read “decent” information rather than that put out by the cheap, low quality home vibration machine suppliers.  With that I agree but he also added, “It’s also my opinion the articles are both harmless and useless to anyone who reads them, its unlikely anyone would be influenced by them (if somehow they manage to find them). They serve no purpose but to help our rankings”.

I have a personal integrity that, if I had a brand, would not let me promote articles that are “harmless and useless”.  Actually I consider them quite harmful!  It really doesn’t take much more than a simple search using the words “Vibration Training” to find them and they present Vibration Training in a confusing, garbled manner. The articles do not differentiate machine types and present snippets of “facts and figures” taken from other places around the internet that don’t necessarily relate to the actual article or brand of machine they link to.  HyperVibe was a vibration system that I saw as valid, just very different to the Vibra-Train machines I work with.  It’s an excersise system using pivotal vibration for training and therapy.  I  have even suggested it to some people but no more.

The future of this industry is Vibra-Train.  Vibration Training is Vibra-Train and Vibra-Train is Vibration Training.

Once again I’m happy to say that I am privileged to work for this company, Vibra-Train -  The Vibration Training Specialists.

There’s a passion that some people have for the product they sell or work with and this comes through in what they write, especially on Twitter.  It’s so easy to see who really believes in what they are selling compared with those being paid to promote a product or service.

Even so, I missed seeing that the @powerplate girls were, in fact, P.R. people, simply doing a job, paid to promote a product, in this case the PowerPlate machine.

I really should have realised it earlier, watching their tweets about Cindy Crawford and other celebrities using the machines yet when I click over to the the various celebrities mentioned I find they have just trialed a machine or just mention it in passing.  Why it matters which celebrity uses your product I can’t understand but then many females and a smattering of males will follow blindly if they know an “important person” does something. The @powerplate girls also link to other social media sites with blogs and “exercise of then week” pictures and instructions.  I’ve got no problem with this, it just seemed that something was missing from their posts, some enthusiasm maybe, especially when posts were re-tweeted over and over by the other PowerPlate people.  Sometimes they post about their own experiences and they get excited; these tweets are more real.

The owners and instructors who work day by day with vibration machines and see their clients results are the ones whose posts I like to watch.  They show enthusiasm and that they enjoy what they are doing.

P.R people posting about a health and fitness product – well it says a lot doesn’t it!

As I look back, my personal joys of 2009 were many; working for Vibra-Train gave wings to my dreams and then brought me down to earth with a thud, the responsibility of being an effective Vibration Training Instructor is both exciting and seriously demanding.  It’s my job to ensure that customers get the benefits they are paying for.  I also had several articles published online on magazine websites.

My son and daughter both graduated from their respective universities;  my son completing a post-graduate year with high distinction in Computer Science and my daughter graduating with a Bachelor of Communication Studies degree.   My son will soon be moving to Sydney, Australia to begin his PhD research and other studies  involving robots and artificial intelligence.

2010 will be, I believe,  a year of consolidation for the Vibration Training, Vibration Therapy, and Vibration Machine companies.  Those who are solid and ethical will join forces to present a united group.  This will allow for better use of resources (informational, people, and maybe even machines) and even better than before, articles online and in print to inform and teach the public as well as keeping the current and new training instructors and proprietors well taught in safety program use and methodology.

Many new people will get to benefit from Vibration Training.

1. A cessation of normal operation
2. Stop operating or functioning
3. Separate (substances) into constituent elements or parts
4. Fall apart

PowerPlate Australia, on their website has a page dedicated to machine repair.  The impression I get from this is that they know their machines will breakdown; in fact they expect it, so they’ve set in place a way for you, the owner of one of their home machines or Vibration Studio, to get your machine fixed.

Should they be applauded for this foresight?

No Way!

PowerPlate – It’s my opinion that you should get your act together and provide the public with high quality machines that don’t break down!

Regular customers become “addicted” to the sessions; the rain doesn’t stop them. One of the best points about our fast, effective, 10-15 minute workout; it can be easily fitted into a busy routine.  Newer people sometimes take extra days off but then come back saying they missed their workout and felt sluggish through the day and, of course, rain sees more cars on the road, slows the traffic and people find themselves short on time before work.

This morning has been a little difficult for me as an instructor.  I’ve been very strict on one customer ensuring he gets into and remains in perfect position on the machines.  A discussion with another customer to clarify aspects of her special-needs program left her annoyed and feeling that I was being unhelpful.  She will talk with my boss and I have his full backing.

Good pre-workout food

A customer came in at 8am for her second session and I asked if she’d had breakfast.  She told me no but she’d had lots of water and taken tablets to enhance fat metabolism.  There’s a strict rule here -” no food = no workout” – and there’s good reason for this.  The short, sharp, 60-second positions on the machine uses up blood sugars very quickly with no time for the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose and send it into the blood.  I explained to her again the reasons she must eat before her workout then with rain pouring down and knowing she’d made the effort to come in I let her do just the first few positions and the anti-cellulite massage but not the whole program.  We have a cafe a few shops away but this customer needed to get to work whereas some people are very happy at my suggestion they go off for a coffee and muffin and then return for their workout session.

Add in regular instruction of customers and supervising those who know the program well; many phone calls with questions from people who want to come in for their first, free, trial visit, explaining to them that they MUST eat before their session; ensuring customers of neighbouring businesses don’t use our carparks (on a wet day customers need them rather than having to walk up from roadway parking spaces) and all the regular tasks that make up my job.

This is the sort of work day I enjoy; not the small difficulties although I have learnt to be very strict as customers are paying for a quality program and it’s my place to ensure they get it, but the happy busy-ness of a full studio and seeing customers getting amazing results.

Not at all!  The statement that a monkey could be taught to instruct reflects the simplicity of the 1-2-3-4 steps that are necessary to get into each position on the machine.

Push Up:

1. Kneel in front of unit.
2. Place hands on outside edge of mat.
3. Drop pelvis so a straight line is made between knees and shoulders.
4. When machine starts, drop body halfway towards plate.  Make sure hands are in line with chest, not shoulders.
5. Look down towards knees (very important) as looking up even for a second can cause stress to neck area.
6. Hold pose and relax for duration of exercise.

The Instructor’s job begins before the customer ever gets near the machine.  For a newcomer there’s the pre-training health screen to be filled in and discussed, then a quick introduction to vibration training before the customer begins their session.  Regular customers get a greeting and a quick catch up if they haven’t been in for a while.

It’s very important that customers tell the instructor of any injuries or health concerns they have so the instructor can be vigilant in watching over them in poses that might impact on those areas; if necessary correcting them or even moving them to an alternate version of the position, or to another machine.   An example of this is using a machine with side handle bars for support when a customer has a knee injury; when using the Safety Program the position, known as “Ski the Slopes” (the position resembles a skier going downhill) replaces the regular “Super Squat”.  Using side handle bars allows the customer with knee injury to maintain perfect position and get full benefit from training.  With a perfect 110° vibration training squat they are helping their knees to heal and their core to strengthen.

So could a trained monkey work as a vibration training instructor? Just to assist most customers into correct position, the answer would have to be, yes!

One big difference between a trained monkey and a good instructor is the ability to ensure customers with special needs get the attention they need and so get all the benefits of vibration training or therapy without risk.  I doubt a monkey is able to do this.  In the future will we see studios with just one human instructor and a staff of intelligent androids?