Social media has a new fitness obsession: vibration plates, or scale-sized platforms that vibrate at a range of frequencies and claim to boost fitness and improve body composition. And a whole lot of lifestyle and fitness influencers are buying into it.
Brands and influencers claim vibration plates promote lymphatic drainage, help with weight loss, improve muscle tone and strength, and reduce bloating.
And medical professionals have many thoughts about these claims.
There’s a saying by astronomer Carl Sagan that goes, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and this couldn’t be more true when it comes to many social media fads, said Matthew Welch, an exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.
“We do have a lot of really knowledgeable people and some great information that’s out there, but this information exists on a spectrum. So, we get really qualified people putting out high-quality information and really good tidbits, but then we also get people that are really just looking for clicks, engagement and basically just trying to gain traction on their pages,” Welch said.
There is often no research to support the claims of this latter group, which is (sorry) the case with vibration plates, Welch noted.
This can be confusing for the average social media user who is looking for simple ways to improve their health and boost their fitness, especially when these plates can cost $200, $500 and even upward of $1,000.
Simply standing on a vibration plate isn’t going to do much of anything for your health.
According to Welch, most vibration plate studies have been conducted when the plates were used as an exercise accompaniment, such as when someone does push-ups or squats on a vibration plate.
Many social media users have posted videos of themselves just standing or sitting on the platform to get benefits, but Welch warns against that.
“Standing on it isn’t just going to improve your body composition,” Welch said. “You’re not going to lose fat just by standing on it. You need to be doing other things,” whether that’s using it as you do crunches, resistance band training, squats or some other form of movement.
If you think that just standing on a platform for 10 to 15 minutes a day is going to improve your body composition, “that’s just not true,” Welch said.
Standing on a vibration plate as it moves can burn some calories, but not many, and certainly less than you’d burn on a walk or run, said Dr. Charles Chatman, a family medicine and sports medicine physician at the University of California at Davis.
“It’s not something you want to just do by itself,” Chatman added.
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They can help improve balance in older folks who are prone to falls.
One benefit? When standing on a vibration plate, your muscles do activate and contract to keep you from falling over, Chatman said.
“So, you are going to have an increase in your strength in those muscles, especially the lower extremity and also the core. And then what that allows you to do is have an increase in balance,” Chatman noted.
For older adults who have balance issues, a vibration platform can potentially be beneficial, Chatman said.
“Sedentary and elderly folks, they’re going to get pretty good results from doing this because it’s such a novel stimulus to them,” Welch added.
It’ll challenge their balance and get their muscles contracting in a different way than they’re used to.
“I think you can check off a lot of boxes in terms of balance, stability, coordination, and also just giving your muscles and joints a different type of exercise,” Welch said, so long as it’s done in conjunction with other movement.
Exercising on a vibration plate is fine, but research doesn’t show it’s any more effective than exercising without one.
For someone with a regular exercise regimen who chooses to do certain workouts on a vibration plate, the benefits aren’t clear.
Working out is beneficial whether you do it on a vibration plate or off of one, Welch said. It’s not any better to exercise on the plate.
For example, while your strength may improve if you exercise on a vibration plate, it won’t improve any more than it would if you did strength training off of the vibrating platform.
“So, you can get strong doing it, but it may not be because of the reasons that you initially thought. The vibration isn’t necessarily adding an extra benefit,” Welch said.
“But, with that being said … if someone enjoys doing it, if they don’t have pain when they’re doing the exercises and if it’s something that’s going to keep them consistent, then I have no problem with it,” he said.
It can be a supplement to a well-rounded strength training program, said Welch, but not a replacement.
Any claims of lymphatic drainage have not yet been proven.
One major claim about these vibration plates is that they can be used for lymphatic drainage, which is the lymphatic system’s natural process of moving and draining excess fluid.
But the idea of “lymphatic drainage” is a wellness buzzword that people often associate with weight loss and bloating, which is not what the term actually means.
“Does everyone need to have their lymphatic system ‘drained?’ No,” said Chatman. Some people may have health issues that involve lymphatic system blockage, Chatman said, such as lymphedema, which causes swelling in the legs.
People with lymphedema and other lymphatic system issues need specific therapies to drain their lymphatic system, Chatman said. “But I would say for an average individual, that’s not necessary.”
“As long as you have a liver, you’re getting lymphatic drainage,” Welch said.
Exercise already promotes lymphatic drainage, Welch said, as do things like calf raises after sitting for a long time or getting up to walk around on an airplane.
Your body is already draining excess fluid when you move around, so getting on a vibrating plate to further promote this drainage isn’t particularly beneficial, said Chatman.
“I couldn’t find any evidence that whole body vibration improved lymphatic drainage, and I also couldn’t find any studies that examined that in the research,” said Welch.
Vibration plates probably don’t help with bloating, either.
One major promise from influencers using these machines is that they help reduce bloating.
Chatman said that he doesn’t “see the correlation with how that helped with bloating.”
Welch added that while someone may have noticed less bloating after using a vibration plate, there may be other factors at play (diet, alcohol consumption, exercise, for example) that caused those improvements.
There is better fitness equipment to spend your money on, experts say.
“The main thing that I want to get across is that it would be an adjunct, but it shouldn’t be your primary source of fitness,” Chatman said of vibration plates.
Research shows that there are many other things, such as going for a walk, jog or taking part in resistance training, that are more beneficial than using a vibrating platform, Chatman said.
If you have a lot of fitness equipment that you’re already using properly and regularly and want a vibration plate to help you reach some of the proven goals mentioned above, such as better balance, that’s fine, said Welch.
But if you are hoping to achieve objectives that aren’t yet proven, or want the most effective way to reach fitness or health goals, you may want to pause before spending your money on a vibration platform.
“I could think of a lot of other pieces of equipment to select for a lot of goals before I would select that,” Welch said.
If you are considering getting a vibration plate, Chatman said, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor first to make sure the machine is a good fit for you. “See if this is something that will benefit you, or if it’s something that is not going to be beneficial depending on your medical condition,” he said.
In the end, a vibration plate likely won’t change your health or fitness immensely, but if it helps you stick to a workout plan or pushes you to make better health choices, there is nothing wrong with using one.