This week's notes from my Power Plate workout

Three articles caught my fancy this week about Power Plate -

Health and Fitness magazine had an article about a Power Plate cellulite-busting routine, which as much as anything just shows how accepted the Power Plate is in the UK as part of the fitness landscape.  I still have some reservations about anything as a cellulite busting routine, short of building up sexy muscles that eventually replace the unsexy flab.  But, sure,  I'm doing the cellulite buster as part of my overall Power Plate workout.  Y'know, we're all suckers for that.  Me included.

ELLE UK  Editor Carrie Gorman wrote about her first Power Plate workout at Harrods (the tony London department store) in a blog post, once more showing the brand-name awareness in UK.  She starts her post, saying, "I have smugly dismissed Power Plate in the past as the lazy girl’s exercise of choice." and describes the 30 minutes and how she barely broke a sweat.  Then she ends her post with, "But the next day, my body ached from the - I won’t say “work” - experience. If this works, I’m telling everyone!”"  I'll be curious to follow along and see how her results come along. 
UPDATE:  It's not worth a separate post, but being that I'm pretty much on the same track as Carrie Gorman, I thought it was interesting that on May 14 (two weeks after her first post that I quoted above, she wrote this: Four sessions down and I’m hooked. The Power Plate class is over before it’s even begun, meaning that I no longer have to chose between having an evening and going to the gym. Here I can do both."  My workout is nowhere near as grueling as hers (read her post for the workout) but I love that the PowerPlate is a quick workout. 

Here in the US, Women on the Web picked up on Power Plate as an Obsession of the Week, and Jane Buckingham told her readers  ...[it] could be the best thing to happen to fitness since spandex....It’s the most efficient and effective exercise I’ve found since not exercising (which frankly, wasn’t working so well). 

On the personal front, my friend Lakshmi's arm & shoulder "froze" on her at work and I invited her over for 10 minutes on the Power Plate, which restored circulation and gave her back range of motion in her arm.   The day before she'd had to leave work and go home and it took Advil and several hours to diminish the pain. Her pain came back today, of course.  

As for me, three times a week I'm doing an overall 25 minute workout.  On another three days I'm doing a 15 minute stretch and massage routine.  Last week after visiting 31 artists studios (it was Silicon Valley Open Studio weekend), I came home and plopped my weary feet on the machine and did an"ahhh, this is nice."

The fact that Power Plate is so unknown here in Silicon Valley still amazes me.  There was a Power Plate listed for sale on Craigslist from someone in Palo Alto. Bought in 2003, and "like new. hardly ever used."  No wonder.  Even being very motivated, it's not so much fun to be the only one using a cool exercise routine.   

More about my Power Plate experience: week one; set up