How does Vibration Training Work?

Neurological Response

Vibration of the muscles stimulates the primary endings of the muscle spindle, which excites moto-neurons, causing a reflexive contraction of the muscle (referred to as a tonic vibration reflex). This is a neurological response.

The simplest way to think of this is when you have your knee reflex tested by tapping under the knee cap. The leg suddenly extends itself when the tap applies.

This is important as improvements in muscular strength can occur through 1. Intramuscular changes through intense weight training and 2. They can also occur through improving the neurological response to muscle contractions. Not all muscle units are used during muscle contractions. Vibration improves the synchronization of motor units and can improve the neurological response to muscle contractions allowing a more complete activation of prime movers of a specific movement and better co-ordination of the activation of relevant muscles.

The importance of this can be seen by the Behm and Sale (1993) study. They gave test subjects weight training for 16 weeks, during which one leg made rapid contractions, while the other leg did the same but was blocked. At the end of 16 weeks, both legs had made improvement on the contraction speed. The authors concluded that the intension of the movement is more important than the actual performance, a finding that confirms the importance of the neurological component of training muscle fibers.

Active muscular activity

Research has shown that Vibration exercise increases VO2 (Rittweger, Schiessl, Felsenberg 2001). This indicates that vibration causes a muscular activity and that it is a type of exercise rather than a passive vibration.

The effectiveness of Vibration Exercise on the muscles is also shown by measurement of EMG activity in the muscles. It is significantly higher with vibration than voluntary contractions against a weight.