Below is another excerpt from our expert interview with Bryant on the difference between the K1 Machine and the Popular Plate we see at large gyms.
Lenette: I know that you mentioned at the very beginning of this interview that you first found out about whole body vibration technology with the popular Plate brand. I think that a lot of people listening to this interview, if they’ve ever heard of whole body vibration before, it may very well be that brand. You’re such an expert, in my opinion, because you’ve tested and tried out so many other whole body vibration machines out there. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with that and how they checked out, how they compared to the K1 Machine?
Bryant: Sure. I’ve tried over 17 different machines that I can’t mention here. The professional ones, the home use ones, the expensive European models, and the cheap Chinese knock-offs. You’re right. The Plate, of all those that I’ve tried, is actually by far probably the biggest company. Not because they’re the best. It’s just they have the best marketing.
Lenette: Right.
Bryant: I won’t get into the dubious history of Plate, but it is made in China. They initially had a stainless steel machine that was made in Europe and then they brought it to China and said, “Hey, make it for us cheaper in large quantities.” And they’ve got really nice marketing. Don’t get me wrong. Their professional model, is pretty decent, but fundamentally of all those machines I mentioned, there are two major types of motion. You have machines that are linear or lineal or vertical, which move up and down like an elevator in one dimension and then you have the oscillating or pivotal or teeter-totter seesaw motion machine. So there are two fundamentally different types of whole body vibration machines. It’s important to note that the original Galileo, where a lot of the original research was done, was done on a pivotal machine. A lot of those borrowed research from Vladimir Nasarov and Carmello Bosco that all these companies put on their websites was done originally on the pivotal machines. That’s important to realize that a bulk of the research is actually on the oscillating motion, not on like the Plate.
The Plate calls it tri-planar, which is really a misnomer. It’s pretty much just pure up and down. You have like a millimeter of back and forth, side to side, but it’s more or less up and down like a linear. But that motion really isn’t all that natural, because think about it: if you’re going up and down in one dimension, your spine elongates then it contracts. Elongates and contracts. It’s like a pounding motion, like a jackhammer. Pound, pound, pound. For people that are really athletic and in good shape, that’s not a big deal. They can handle it. But for the bulk of America that’s out of shape or getting older, has aches and pains, I would absolutely avoid that motion because you’re gonna have a good chance you can hurt yourself. I know this from experience because I’ve talked to so many people on the phone, every day now for two and a half years, and I hear people complain about how the Plate or this model, the up and down motion, they felt sore or their neck hurt or their back hurt, hurt their knees. I’ve had a couple of people tell me it really hurt their knees. They got kind of turned off by whole body vibration, not knowing there’s another type of motion, which is the pivotal or oscillating, which really is more like the way we walk or run. We kind of shift our weight from side to side.
The pivotal vibration is a more natural movement. When you look at the linear or up and down motion, think of animals like kangaroos that bounce up and down. They have a completely different spinal system. They’re bouncing up and down in one dimension, but we’re not kangaroos. We shift our weight from side to side as we move. Our spine is not designed to be jumping up and down. You can jump rope, but even when you jump rope, you kind of skip from side to side a little bit. At least most people do if you look at them. What I’m trying to say is that when we move our bodies, whether it’s walking or running, we typically shift our weight from side to side, more like a pivotal motion.
Another important point with pivotal is that the center, the pivot point, is below the spine, which is the zero point. You don’t get that stress up the spinal column. With the Plate and other linear machines, the whole plate is moving up and down, so the spine along with everything else is getting the pounding. That means there’s a lot less stress on the spine and the neck along that zero point.
Lenette: Yeah, I tried out the professional, commercial Plate model. I went to my gym and got a training session, a 25-minute training session with that commercially-rated Plate and ultimately it did not feel comfortable. The trainer even asked me as soon as I got on, “Let me know if you feel nauseous,” and it does feel uncomfortable. The vibrations go straight to your head and your eyesight becomes blurry and I really felt like almost beat up that evening and the next day. I don’t think I could recommend that to many people I know, especially a 25-minute workout. It was a very odd feeling compared to the K1 machine.
Bryant: And I had Dr. Coco, a professional chiropractor, give me a comparison between the Plate and the K1 machine, and he overwhelmingly is for the Noblerex K1 over the Plate for the same reason you mentioned. Very uncomfortable. Also Dr. Winkler who I talked to told me he would never get a Plate for his home or his clinic. I just mention them because one’s a chiropractor and one’s a doctor, and actually Dr. Coco is a teacher. He has a chiroschool, so he actually teaches other chiropractors and he recommends the K1. He actually had double hip replacement surgery and the K1, where he was having trouble after surgery. He had a really tough time. He gained weight, couldn’t really get around that well, was in pain a lot and the K1, what he said was it really strengthened the muscles that were supporting his hips and he lost 10 percent body fat using the K1.
Lenette: Wow. Incredible.
Bryant: He didn’t like the Plate at all. It just aggravated his hips. Dr. Winkler also. So I’ve had some people…oh, let me just mention this. I almost forgot. Dr. Brent Pheland and Brigham Young University did a study of the Galileo, one of the premier pivotal machines that we mentioned before, versus the Plate and he found that the Galileo outperformed in every category the Plate that was tested. In fact, in some of the categories he tested, the Plate actually had more negative. They weren’t even neutral, but they were actually more negative than no change. So there is some even more recent evidence that the linear motion is not as effective as the pivotal. I mentioned the Galileo. Again, it’s a great machine and it does move in an oscillating motion, but it’s very expensive. It’s only maybe needed for professional sports teams. Those kinds of intensities that that machine will get and the amount of weight that it will handle is really not necessary for the average person. Plus, it’s $10,000, so it’s a little out of the ballpark. But it’s a good machine. It was the original and they still continue to make the machine, but to me the K1 machine for a quarter of the price you get 95 percent of the same benefits or more.
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