Stephen Priest, co-owner of Ms. Fitness in Fountain Valley, likes to joke with his clients. He leaves a toy snake here, a black rat there, as a reminder of the Halloween to come.
He put up a flier on the wall announcing: New Equipment – Coming Soon. The photo, taken during the 1960s at a gym in Encino, depicts a row of those old vibrating-belt workout machines. Two women have the belts around their thighs, and they just stand there, waiting for the machine to jiggle their fat away.
“I leave it up just to remind them of the old days,” Priest says of the flier.
“Some ladies still ask, ‘Why don’t you have them here? They really work,’” Priest says. “Well, unfortunately they didn’t work. You can shake fat, beat fat. It’s not gonna break the fat cells down and make them smaller, and you can’t wash them off or pee them out. That’s not the way fat works.”
Priest, 54, a British former Olympic weight lifter and previous Mr. Orange County, has run Ms. Fitness with his wife, Susan, at the location on Magnolia Street for 20 years. A veteran of the gym business in Orange County, he knows workout equipment and club development.
“You can’t burn fat on this,” he says, showing off his antique belt-contraption near the front desk. He says he would shuttle his Jack LaLanne clients from one machine to the next: “You need half an hour on this one, half an hour on the neck one. And you need to go to the wood rollers, and you need to roll your fat with the wood rollers … it does nothing. Just a waste of time.”
Priest bought his model, which was sold by Sears, probably in the 1970s, at a Goodwill store about 15 years ago. He paid $20, and another $75 to fix it up. It works: The belt moves back and forth faster than a KitchenAid mixer. It actually does feel nice on the lower back.
But for weight loss? Susan Priest hops on, flicks the switch and demonstrates, saying sarcastically: “It feels wonderful. My fat is melting away!”
Credit for this invention, as with so many others of dubious origin, probably belongs to John Harvey Kellogg, the eccentric physician and cereal pioneer who drew rich people in droves to his sanitarium in Battle Creek, Mich., in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kellogg invented a vibrating chair and platform, believing they could improve circulation and relieve constipation.
The vibrating-belt machine soon followed, and they were a staple of fitness centers for decades, despite health experts and scientists arguing they did nothing for weight loss, since there was no inherent calorie burn to be had, and no muscles were actually worked. By the 1980s, the machines had all but disappeared.
The belief that high-frequency vibration can be good for health has persisted, however, even if manufacturers no longer play the weight-loss card.
Power Plate and Wave make a variety of vibrating-platform machines, and some gyms have them. Proponents say it helps the muscles contract faster, and some studies show that it can improve athletic performance. But others caution against using such machines too often. Cedric Bryant, the chief science officer for the American Council on Exercise, told The New York Times that high doses of such vibrations could upset the digestive tract.
Contact the writer: lhall@ocregister.com
