Whole Body Vibration stimulates the body’s natural stretch reflex and causes muscle contractions in much the same way that a doctor’s tapping below a patient’s patella with a reflex hammer elicits a knee-jerk response. The stretch reflex is controlled by stretch receptors called muscle spindles that are located in skeletal muscle. Muscle spindles are usually activated when a muscle is under a static stretch or is quickly stretched or overstretched, causing a reflex contraction of the muscle. With whole body vibration (WBV), this reflex action is continually stimulated, so a muscle continues to contract and relax until the vibration stops.  Studies have reported that activation of one muscle spindle will cause a reflex contraction and relaxation in many adjacent muscles.

WBV training contracts virtually 100% of the muscle fibers of any particular muscle, whereas weight resistance training only fires about 40%. WBV fires not one muscle group after the other, as typical weight training does, but the whole body neuromusculoskeletal system is being stimulated at once. That is why with WBV your training time is significantly reduced.

The science behind how and why WBV works is actually quite simple. Imagine, with WBV you are standing (or sitting) or a platform that is rapidly moving up to 50 times a second. Naturally, your body must react to the external stimulus of the rapidly moving platform. Since the vibrating platform is constantly moving, all the muscles in your body must also constantly compensate for the movement.

Your muscles are rapidly stretching and contracting as a result of the vibrations. This is why your body fatigues much faster when doing workouts on WBV equipment as opposed to conventional workouts.

WBV stimulates your brain and helps improve balance and stability because the rapidly moving platform forces your mind to react to the new variable you’ve given it. Just standing on the vibrating platform will force all of your stabilizer muscles to react and fatigue from keeping you in one position.

WBV requires very little exertion compared with traditional forms of exercise.  Some studies comparing this training method to traditional strength training have found similar gains in strength and gains in explosive power.