Please excuse the shaky writing, but this is coming to you from the very latest in exercise technology, a vibrating Power-Plate machine. Apparently, if you do a 10-minute workout while standing/squatting/bicep-dipping or abdominally crunching on a determinedly vibrating surface it provides you with as much physical benefit as an hour-long conventional workout.
I'm not quite sure of the science behind it - something about the shakiness causing your muscles to contract and relax more rapidly and more often - but commonsense tells you that everything's harder on a moving surface, and so it proves.
Twenty seconds into a squat and I can feel a burning sensation in my quadriceps that usually takes half an hour in an aerobics hall to achieve. In the twisted and counterintuitive world of fitness, I take this to be a good sign. Eleven seconds of holding a tricep dip and a soupçon of bum-tightening lifts later, I am starting to love the Power-Plate. Why? Not because, as some of my filthier minded friends had suggested, there is any parasexual thrill to be had out of it (although frankly, my hopes were high), but because it makes you vibrate! While you exercise! It's like a little fairground ride of your own. It provides the Holy Grail of all reluctant exercisers - a novel, fun sensation that distracts you from the activity's boredom and pain. And in some poses - ones that enable the vibes to ripple through the larger muscle groups - it feels like getting a massage while you work out. Genius!
Madonna, Claudia Schiffer, Sadie Frost and other time-pressed celebs presumably buy it for its much-touted efficacy (the owners reckon you need only eight sessions to begin to transform your spongy flesh into carbonised steel), upon which, after one abbreviated session, I am not qualified to judge. But if you have £2,599 to spare and a corner of the living room you'd like to be forever gigglesome, it might just be money well spent. For the more penurious among us, the good news is that the machines are starting to appear in various gym chains; so for once it may not be the rich who get all the fun.
· Next week: Tim Dowling tries boxing.
