Power Plate and me...and Madonna, and Cindy Crawford and Serena Williams...

My Power Plate machine arrived last Friday, and I'm just now getting around to writing about it...why? Well, I wanted to give it a go for a few days. And at the end of a week, I say, "So far, great!!"

The Power Plate, as I hope you know, is a very impressive piece of exercise equipment: it has a 3 dimensional vibrating plate, and you do your regular exercises on it, which are aided and intensified by the fact that your muscles are vibrating 30-45 times a second. For stars and celebs like Madonna, Cindy Crawford, Hilary Swank, models like Elle MacPherson and athletes like Serena Williams, it's about warming up and exercising in a shorter time. For me, it's about the studies showing how effective it is in helping osteoporosis.

Randy and Ryan (pictured to the right) delivered it to my house and set it up for me. They were so funny and nice, and had just come from delivering a couple of Power Plate machines to Stanford U. Poor guys had to make the drive to my place from Stanford in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic. (A normally pleasant 20 minute drive becomes an hour-long frustration if you run into the Apple workers as they leave for the weekend.)

My only gripe about the machine is how hard it is to get specific training here in Silicon Valley. Some cities have Power Plate studios. In London, posh department store Harrods has in-store Power Plate training in the 5th floor studio. In New York, LA, Denver, and elsewhere, finding qualified trainers is not a problem. Here in Northern California the equipment is mostly found in the training rooms of our pro sports teams: 49ers, Raiders etc.

So I'm scrounging around the web, getting all the YouTube videos I can about different training techniques, and I downloaded the exercise guide from the Power Plate web site. Still, I'd like someone to work out three or four routines for me.

Til I get my own workout, I'll occasionally publish some of the YouTube stuff I've found helpful. I hope you like it. If you have Power Plate videos to recommend, let me know.