Shake Weight: Bang for your Buck, or Invented by someone with TOO much alone time?

By now we have all seen the lovely Shake Weight Promo....if your lucky you've seen the SNL spoof of it which is what we all were thinking when we first saw it anyway...


At first I didn't think anyone would take this thing serious, but once again, fads win and people started getting it. My dad even got one for christmas, so trying to be unbias I decided to try it out. As appealing as the Shake Weight might seem when you’re watching late night TV, there’s not much muscle behind its infomercial hype.

A spring-loaded weight that moves up and down. You try to hold it steady (and try not too look too raunchy). Ads claim the weight forces up to 240 muscle contractions a minute, resulting in a complete upper-body workout in only 6 minutes. Sounds good in theory. Who doesn't want to do hours worth of work in 6 minutes? Sadly like most things that seem too good to be true, this one is. Simple logic and research says even if muscles contract, it doesn’t mean they’ll grow. You need to progressively add weight to challenge your muscles, says Mark Peterson, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist at the University of Michigan. The Shake Weight for Men weighs only 5 pounds, and hundreds of reps with minimal resistance won’t grow muscle. Sure you will feel some muscle fatigue but I could have you tap your index finger on the table for 60 seconds and eventuallyt your hand will cramp up...does that mean in 4 weeks you will have the hands of the hulk? More likely some kind of crippling finger arthritis. Save your money and your time here, just use normal weights.