Alright I guess it is time that I do a follow up to probably my most highly commented on post…my response to the shake weight.

The fact of the matter is I thought this would have been dead a long time ago. I thought people would watch the video, have a good laugh and be done with it as many have a very short attention span when it comes to things internet related (myspace or aim instant messenger anyone?). I had no idea I would still get people complaining as comments on my blog about how terrible their customer service was and I had no idea people would still be defending them….anonymous people which makes me wonder who they really are. oh yeah and by the way my comrade Steve challenged them to show us the studies they are based on and I challenged them to show us real people with real results…we haven’t heard back.

There are more reasons to laugh at this pathetic excuse of exercise equipment then simply because it looks like someone is training for a pearl necklace. That fact is what made the thing so damn popular because it was so ridiculous looking that it went viral. One person claimed they put 2 on their order (an order they did as a joke) because customer service said some people like to use 2 at once. Well hell why stop there let’s go full body like Southpark’s Mr. Garrison did with the Entity Are they going to come up with a shake weight meant to tone your glutes as well? I’d like to see how that one is marketed; I have a feeling it would be a completely different demographic.

Well before I go off on yet another tangent let me explain why it wouldn’t be good for females other then the fact that they are paying to do something that has been going on in brothel’s for years. The fact of the matter is that they are going up the wrong tree when it comes to generating the kind of results they want.

The promises are vague in what they say it accomplishes. Long lean defined arms? Huh? If women are unhappy with the “floppiness” of their arm it isn’t normally just because it isn’t “toned” or “defined”. According to the textbook on the American Council of Exercise as it was when I was going though school a couple years back one of the 3 sites for using the skinfold caliper for measuring body fat on women was on the skin around the triceps muscle. For most women the reduction of body fat would be what shows the long, lean, defined arms. Spot reduction of body fat (the theory that body fat is reduced in the area that is being worked) has been shown to be vastly ineffective. Just think about how many people you see crunching away and have pot bellies to show for it.

Next the amount of time that that “dynamic inertia” (which is the term they use to market their hand job exercise), just simply doesn’t give the muscle long enough to develop any reasonable amount of tension. What muscle “tone” really is, is residual tension within a relaxed muscle (read power to the people if you want to learn more about it). Ever notice how crappy muscle looks when you first take your cast off of it and it has lost its “tone” and atrophied? Get the muscles “ready” in a half contracted state and you will have that toned look assuming you are lean enough to pull it off. Do that by building up and mastering the use of tension and you do that with heavy weights. Don’t give me any of that crap about not wanting to be strong and only wanting to be toned. That is akin to saying to me “I want to graduate college but I don’t want to learn anything.” Flirting with the professor won’t work with this one so there is no getting around it.

Next, “machines are designed to produce bulk.” Uhm…maybe. The thing is unless you are some genetic anomaly you won’t get bulky. And if you are after that defined whatever I would guess that a little bit of bulk would be involved. The fear of bulkiness is probably the highest one I have amongst my female clients and its because they have been blitzed by this kind of crap over the years. It isn’t going to happen. To get big you need to be lifting heavy with enough volume, have the appropriate recovery mechanisms in place and you have to be in a caloric surplus. The caloric surplus is when you are taking in more calories then burning off…which I told you not to do when you are after a lean look. Also I have told you repeatedly not to use machines because they undertrain the stabilizing muscles and put you in an unnatural movement plane.

If you really want to get that look you have been looking for try giving kettlebells a go…but only if you are really willing to work hard. The shake weight is for lazy people to waste their money. Kettlebells are for the serious person after serious results. Take a look at 2 of my female comrades’ physiques….Neghar Fonooni and Delaine Ross. Is that the look you are looking for? Good…get to work, real work…not that perverted looking device designed to rip off ill informed or lazy people.

Eric Moss over and out

Related posts:

1. my response to the shake weight video
2. Shake Weight
3. dropping dead weight
4. The Problem with Weight Loss: Your Body Will Do The Opposite.
5. The REAL Secret To Six Pack Abs