Power Plate

Power Plate

The Power Plate program conducted at The Green Apple has been designed to provide safe, effective physical activity which has proven results.

Power Plate is a machine with a platform which vibrates at a high frequency to initiate biomechanical muscle stimulation.  During the 1970’s, Russian astronauts were able to stay four times longer in space with vibration training.  With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 knowledge of vibration training spread all over the world. Since 1990, vibration training has been used by Olympic athletes to improve performance.  There has also been significant medical research into the benefits of vibration training.

There are many whole body vibration platforms available to purchase for home use but these generally are single dimensional and provide only vertical vibrations. The Power Plate brand of vibration platforms provides multi-directional vibrations up and down, backwards and forwards as well as side to side simultaneously. This is much kinder to the body and significantly more effective.

Benefits include:

• Accelerated training time
• Improvements in bone density
• Increase in strength, especially legs (which is important in elderly people because of the strong correlation between poor leg strength and poor mobility leading to lack of life quality).
• Increased vascular response
• Better balance
• Improved neuromuscular response
• Increased power
• Connective tissue stimulation
• Power-Plate vibrations are multi-directional – up and down, backwards and forwards, side to side.

Conditions for Power Plate use at the Green Apple Wellness Centre

For health and safety reasons, there is no deviation from the set programs without permission from Management.  Exercise may be reduced, modified or omitted where necessary, but no additional exercises can be added during a session.

The equivalent of 90 minutes weight training in just 20 minutes

The first three sessions require a Personal Trainer to instruct on technique and use of the Power-Plate.

Testimonial

The Power Plate and Me

My name is Greg Pritchard and I have been a Green Apple member for about 6 years, although I was never really a gym person – but I was always a sports person, very fit up to age 25, still very active in sport until around 35 and after that (until I was around 50) I continued to play just one sport, touch football.

Between the ages of 50-55, I travelled a lot for work and ate a lot because they sold food everywhere I went.

I quit my job at 55 and started my own business as a leadership consultant and worked to lower my weight about 15KGs over several months – even joined a gym, something that I had never done. When that gym closed I moved to Green Apple.

While I have retained my Green Apple membership since about 2014, I have also allowed myself to miss many consecutive weeks – mainly because I have frequently travelled for work interstate and overseas and other times I prioritised something else ahead of my gym program.

So this meant that from 2012 – 2018 my initial 15 KG loss at times pushed up to 20KGs lost and sometimes went back to around 10KGs lost (and all points in between).

In October 2018 I felt motivated again and Petrina suggested I try an 8 week power plate trial. I soon recognised that power plate was working different parts of my body so after the trial, I extended power plate by another 12 sessions.

Time for a new program, I thought and my thinking was to alternate between a gym program and the power plate. At this time I felt pretty good but wasn’t really monitoring my weight or diet. I had perhaps 30 or more sessions on the power plate prior to seeing Darrol for my program and when he weighed me he said, ‘this is the lowest you have ever weighed in here’ – but even then I did not attribute results specifically to power plate.

However, I did take note that 7-8 KGs had gone in 4 months and it wasn’t because I missed out over Xmas.

As I am writing this, it is about 6 ½ months since that weigh-in with Darrol and I know I have still missed several weeks of gym in that time (but did not miss any meals).

Recently, when I have been at the Green Apple I have doubled my power plate time – not by adding lots of sessions (probably only 20 -25 sessions over 6 months) but I have lengthened the sessions to around 30 minutes. And when I weighed myself recently I recorded – a further 11 KGs weight loss.

So in about 10 months I have lost at least 18 kgs and not much is different in my life apart from power plate. I am sure farm animals are not feeling safer near me and the dairy industry still has just as much of my dollar as it has always had.

I am 63 and still a fair lump of a lad so if talent scouts tap me on the shoulder, they are most likely to be from Sumo Wrestling Federation rather than the Australian Ballet – so I am not skinny and not likely to be but feeling pretty good – it is as if power plate has fired my metabolic rate or woken up a few organs or something.

I hope this story helps someone – if you see me around I would be happy to answer your questions. One thing I am sure power plate does is activate circulation. I feel it is all happening for me underneath the wrinkly bits….

Greg Pritchard
Member since 2014