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On the Shake Weight website, they claim:
Shake Weight® Utilizes New Workout Technology Called Dynamic Inertia, which can increase Muscle Activity to nearly 300% compared to a Standard Dumbbell.*
The asterisk points to this text:
*Study compared Shake Weight® to similar weight dumbbells performing standard dumbbell exercises.
Is there any evidence that indicates this might be true, or is it just marketing?
The answer seems to be no. I don't know if Consumer Reports is an OK reference for this site but they found it was not as effective as a typical workout.
Bottom line
Any resistance exercise can build strength. Yes, the routines on the DVDs that came with our Shake Weights can tire individual muscles. But for the chest, shoulder, and triceps, the Shake Weight's exercises were inferior to our conventional exercises targeting those muscles, and for the biceps, they were about the same. The Shake Weight routines burned fewer calories than our simple calisthenics-and-elastic-band routine—and fewer calories than walking at 3 mph.
