Jack Tame: Turns out vibration boards are back in vogue

I don’t know about you, but before we had screens in our pockets to distract us from the screens in our living rooms, I used to find TV infomercials absolutely absorbing.   

Actually, I’d go beyond that – some infomercials had a kind of hypnotic quality. You’d change the channel just for a second and then find you’d lost 15 minutes of your life to the Ab King Pro.  

I had a couple of favourites. Do you remember the Bodyblade? It was basically a long piece of plastic that you whipped back and forth, apparently stimulating a strong core response that would get you in the shape of your life. I never saw one in real life but apparently, it’s still a thing. 

And I’ll tell you what’s definitely still a thing: vibration boards. You know them. Those big plastic platforms that you stand on and apparently watch the fat melt off your body in something near to real time. As per usual, I’m late to the trend on this one. A few weeks ago, I saw one being used as a prop on Taskmaster, and I remember thinking ‘oh, a vibration board? How quaint. I wonder where they dug up one of those old antiques?’   

Turns out I just haven’t had my social media algorithm tweaked to the latest fitness trends. Over the last six months, Gen Z fitness influencers, most of whom are too young to have ever seen an infomercial, have inundated TikTok and Instagram with all sorts of get-slim and-toned-fast promises. Vibration boards are very much back in vogue. 

Truly, I thought these things had been left in the late nineties. I’ve only been on one, once – a school friend’s mum was a bit of a sucker for the old daytime TV, buy-one-get-one-free promotion, and she bought a dubious vibration board sometime around the turn of the century. I remember it giving slightly ominous fire hazard vibes, but it was a bit of fun for a couple of teenagers who wanted to feel their teeth chattering and the house slowly being moved off its foundations. 

The real genius of vibration boards is that compared to a lot of other as-seen-on-tv fitness junk, it kind of looks like it should work. For the grand total of two and half minutes I probably spent experiencing the vibrations, it felt more likely to spur a bout of urinary incontinence than any sort of miracle transformation. Maybe I’m too cynical. Maybe you swear by your vibration board, and you’ve transformed yourself from a melting scoop of ice cream into a lean, taught, tanned adonis, simply through the magic of standing and vibrating.  

I reckon the real secret is hiding in plain sight, behind the influencers and their various vibration board sales promotions. The real purpose of vibration boards isn’t to pull off a quick physical transformation, it’s to make a quick buck. And while there’s no such thing as an original idea, there’s a new sucker born every day.