Use up to 100% of your muscles, not just 40% ???
Now it is quite often quoted in Vibration Training marketing that this form of training recruits almost 100% of your muscle cells, as opposed to only approx 40% in other forms of training. Of course if you ask these companies "why" they have it in their advertising they are clueless as to why this figure is even used, and the principles behind it, beyond "it sounds good". The fact is most have just copied it from someone else's site hoping to God no-one ever asks them to explain it.
This is the principle behind that quote...
During a voluntary reflex you body only "allows" itself to use a lower % of muscle cells for a very logical reason. It limits your output because whatever daily task you are doing is obviously not life threatening or harmful in any way. It is an "action" and not a "reaction", so you can not simply override this inbuilt limitation by trying to go harder or faster. In fact the more thought put into a deliberate action, the less likely you are accidently going to jump up into the higher levels of recruitment.
Why...? Something must always be left for fight or flight, and these range from simple rebalancing, jumping off something and landing safety to a full on fight for your life.
Classic Eg... A basic squat on a Lineal Vibration Training platform replicates the landing eccentric contraction we produce in a effort not to hurt ourselves from a fall. It is a very short sharp and powerful response where it is not unusual to be asked to catch 6 times your own weight +. It is only because its seems normal and we have done it since childhood, that we do not think about the physics involved and how truly incredible they are, and it is all done without conscious effort.
In Vibration Training we flip the physics on its head and bring the ground up quickly and hard underneath you. This fools your body into thinking it is landing hard after a drop from a height and it produces whatever force is required ( just for a split second ) to catch your own weight x gravity to not hurt yourself.
A Basic squat on a Pivotal platform equates to someone pushing you from the side, and it replicates this by only bringing up one foot while dropping the other away from under you. In this case the primary response is to re-balance with as much force and speed as is needed to stay upright. And again not fall over and hurt yourself.
Either way its all about the instinct to protect your body from harm.
But wouldn't it be cool to be able to use 100% all the time. I would be stronger and faster than anybody else ?
Wrong. The fact is it would be very dangerous for us to use 100% of our cells in every movement as then our day to day tasks could lead to total exhaustion which would leave us vulnerable in times of need and danger. To give you an example of how powerful and draining these systems can be is the classic Lion chasing its pray. Are you aware that quite often the Lion must sleep after catching its pray "before" eating it. Why is that , because it hasn't always enough energy to eat it, and they quite often only hunt at night to avoid heat exhaustion. If it fails to catch the meal or have a fight and lose, it can actually die from starvation through the combined energy loss with no reward. All this from only about 10 seconds of fight or flight.
This is one of the reasons why responsible companies that use the higher level machine all have time restrictions and recovery breaks surrounding their use, because even mother nature knows overdoing these things is not a good idea.
Why is getting to this 100 % so important for us, what's wrong with just leaving it at 40%
Well these short burst of fight or flight is something we are meant to have in our lives, every single animal does which is why they do not get obese ( unless we domesticate them and force feed them ) but because of the "too safe" and "lazy" environment we have created for ourselves our daily calorie expenditure is all out of whack. We are meant to fight or work hard for our food, and that in turn lets us not get fat from what we do eat.
Vibration Training is a simple way for us to access not only extra muscle cells we normally never get to use, but gives us those short bursts of intensive calorie burn our body expects to be part of our lives. So unless you are planning to start catching your own chickens by hand, or take up cage fighting, its time to start thinking not about what you do have in your life, but what's missing.
Like that other 60% you have hidden in the back burner.
