The Shakeweight: Dork Review

A couple of months ago, a video did the rounds of a brand new piece of workout equipment that promised to eradicate bingo wings and have people queuing up for a ticket to the gun show.

I watched the promotional video. About five times. What can be so interesting about a glorified dumbell, I hear you cry?

Check out the video to see why it’s worth several (highly amusing) watches.

In the meantime, the people behind the Shakeweight sent one over for me to try.

The Shakeweight is basically a large dumbbell with ‘vibration features’ which means the ends vibrates as you ‘shake’ it. It comes with a DVD that shows you how to tone your arms in six minutes a day.

It’s easy enough to use. Simply hold it in two hands and shake it towards and away from you. There are various other exercises you can do too, all of which works different parts of your arms.

The big question: Does it work?

I’d love to say it’s a complete gimmick. But you can feel the burn as you use it, so I’ve no doubt that it would help you tone it up. The vibrating motion has much the same effect as power plating, putting extra pressure on your muscles.

But spending six minutes a day solidly shaking a dumbbell is boring. Exercise regimes need to have variety in order to be motivating and interesting, and that’s something this program lacks.

Advantages

Battery-free
Simple to use
Compact

Disadvantages

🙁 Lack of variety in exercises

🙁 You feel like a prat using it

Conclusion

If you don’t mind looking a little foolish and prefer a regular exercise routine rather than a varied one, this might be worth a try as the results are good. For the fickle and vain (e.g. me) it doesn’t have quite the same appeal as power plating.

Buy it from the ShakeWeight site for £29.99 or from Amazon for £9.81

Emma Cossey

Emma is our resident fashion and social media specialist, having worked as a blogger, editor and writer on a number of fashion and beauty websites. She writes regularly for The Bag Lady, and has previously written for The Times Online, Shoewawa and Jorg & Olif among others.