Vibration Plate Before Or After Exercise: Let’s Compare!

Consistent use of a fitness vibration plate (such as the Waver) has proven time and time again to be an excellent tool to improve muscle recovery and get more out of current workouts. In order to get the most out of your vibration plate, you’re going to want to tailor its use to your goals. In particular, you’re going to want to pay attention to WHEN you’re using the vibration plate. Should you use it BEFORE or AFTER your workout? Read on to find out.

Using A Vibration Plate Before A Workout

Whether you’re working your upper or lower body, proper stretching is critical to any workout routine. From the moment you begin to stretch on a fitness vibration plate, each stretch becomes more effective thanks to the plate’s gentle whole body vibrations (WBV). 

When used in tandem with stretching, these gentle vibrations improve blood flow to your muscles, unlocking more of your potential during your workouts. Plus, increased blood flow improves your metabolism by telling the body to burn more fat and calories. 

Also, when you stretch, the vibrations activate specific muscle fibers depending on what you’re targeting. This in turn builds muscle tissue, strengthens your muscles, and leads to increased workout intensity.This also plays a profound role in muscle recovery, which is crucial to building true muscle strength.

Whenever you’re trying different exercises using a vibration plate, the impact can be felt from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. It all starts with what you do before the workout begins!

Using A Vibration Plate After A Workout

In order to take full advantage of the most positive effects of using a vibration plate, it’s important to not just use your vibration plate before your workout, but after it as well. In fact, there is no better piece of equipment to do your post-workout stretches on than a vibration plate.

Whether you’ve been working your upper or lower body,  the vibrations of the plate reduce muscle soreness almost immediately. This goes a long way towards a speedy and effective post-workout recovery. As an incredibly convenient pain management tool, a vibration plate is very powerful.

Besides reducing muscle soreness, another great benefit of a vibration plate is to help remove toxins from your body. The way we do this with a vibration plate is by targeting the lymph nodes throughout the body. Some of the most notable locations of lymph nodes are the groin, armpits, and neck areas. The process of ridding ourselves of toxins via the lymph nodes is called lymphatic drainage.

Much of the time, lymphatic drainage occurs naturally. However, we can accelerate this process by targeting these lymph nodes with specific stretches while using the vibration plate. As the lymph nodes are all over your body, many of your normal upper and lower body stretches will engage these lymph nodes - speeding up the process of lymphatic drainage. This is especially beneficial when undergoing pain management for chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia.

No matter your health and wellness goals, there are a few basic best practices for vibration plate use. We’ll start with one of the most common questions: “How often should you use a vibration plate?”

Generally speaking, the recommended usage time is 20 minutes per session, with 3 to 4 sessions a week. Whether your goal is injury recovery or improving muscle strength, not using your fitness vibration plate enough wastes much of its potential. However, when you use it too often, your body can “adjust” to the constant vibrations. This can cause the whole body vibrations to have less of an impact on your recovery and workouts.

When you start your new vibration plate before use, make sure you start with slower vibrations. The goal here is to ease yourself into the faster vibrations. It can take a little time to adjust, but once you’re in the swing of things, it’s an incredibly easy tool to assist in any workout or injury recovery program.

With all these benefits of vibration plate use both before and after a workout, it’s clear that vibration plate use has a profound effect on both muscle growth and recovery. So whenever you decide to step on a vibration plate, especially one from Lifepro, you know you’re taking a great step towards a powerful workout or injury recovery program.