We all have our problem areas. Is your stomach not quite flat enough? Do you yearn for firmer, perfectly-sculpted legs? Maybe you think your arms are too flabby, or just not strong enough? Well, lucky for you, there’s a fitness product out there which was made to cure your exact, specific body flaw!
Except… not really. For the most part, these devices are borderline scams which use a bunch of bogus, science-sounding fancy talk in order to back up their too-good-to-be-true-claims. And most people end up disappointed when they find out it isn’t the silver bullet for their body troubles that they hoped it would be.
Buying that fancy, shaking weight or those overpriced balancing shoes won’t help you get Michelle Obama’s arms or Jennifer Lopez’s posterior. Below, we’ll get into detail about some of the worst offenders. Sadly, the odds are pretty high that some of you will have at least one of these products gathering dust in your home.
Offender #3: ANY Product Which Promises to Give You a 6-Pack
What is it: well, these come in many forms. Some seem pretty logical, like the Ab Roller wheel; others promise to help you sculpt your 6-pack while reducing neck strain, like the Ab Rocker. And some, like the Sport-Elec Ab Belt, promise to stimulate your abdominal muscles by shocking them with electricity – no exercise necessary.
Claim to Fame: in a nutshell, all of these products promise to turn your squishy belly into a rock-hard wall of rippled, muscular perfection in just minutes per day of use.
Fitness Fail: They all completely ignore how the human body works. You can do 1,000 crunches per day, but you won’t see well-defined abdominal muscles unless you are also burning body fat through a strict diet and performing interval training exercises. The sad truth is that most of us are rocking a perfect slab of abs right this second, but our body is hiding them from us by inconveniently storing our excess fat between the skin on top of our stomach area and the muscles below. A full-body workout 3-5 times per week will expose your washboard abs much faster than any of these devices will.
Offender #2: Toning Shoes
What is it: Unlike most of the fitness offenders on this list, this product goes by many names. It Started with Sketchers Shape Ups, and had a bit of a revival when Reebok came out with the EasyTone flip-flop version of it. Since these shoes first came out, there have been dozens of copycat versions from scores of different shoe companies trying to cash in on the fitness craze.
Claim to Fame: that simply by walking around in these (very awkward) shoes, it could help firm and tone your thighs, calves, and posterior. Some companies even went as far as to say that toning shoes could smooth away cellulite and help you burn more calories by “increasing muscle activation”. And what woman wouldn’t love to get all of that from just walking around in a new pair of shoes?
Fitness fail: At best, walking around in these shoes could help develop small, stabilizing muscles that you don’t normally use. But you aren’t increasing your muscle activation; you’re just using different ones instead. This, however, won’t burn any more calories than you normally would while walking. And it certainly won’t make any of their other fantastic claims magically come true, either.
Offender #1: The Shake Weight
What is it: a basic, dumbbell-shaped weight with a spring-loaded mechanism that changes the way the weight is distributed when you – yep, you guessed it – shake it. For women, it comes in a 2.5 lb version in a variety of “feminine” colors. There is also a more masculinely-colored 5 lb weight, so that the men-folk don’t feel left out.
Claim to Fame: that through “dynamic inertia”, shaking this little dumbbell back and forth can trigger almost 250 muscular contractions per minute, activate 300% more muscle than a typical dumbbell, and that you can get fabulously toned, lean arms in just 6 minutes per day.
Fitness Fail: First off, we have to call the shake weight out for also committing an English fail because, according to physics, there is no scientific definition for “dynamic inertia”. It’s just a random, meaningless phrase that the company made up in order to sound smart. Secondly, there are almost too many studies to count which unequivocally disprove all of the allegedly scientific claims their product has made. And, lastly, let’s address the elephant in the room – in order to perform most of the Shake Weight exercises, you basically have to pantomime the act of performing fellatio on a clown-colored, dumbbell-shaped sex toy. Need we say more?
But don’t let any of this news get you down, or convince you to give up on your fitness goals. We have several articles about fitness, health, and nutrition which can get you the body you’ve always wanted!
