The Motto Is Still ‘No Pain, No Gain’ : Toning Tables Debunked as Sweat-Free Route to Fitness

I went to the Slender You Figure Salon in the New York area one morning to try the new toning tables, attracted by the promise of a “no sweat” workout that I could get from simply lying on six different motorized tables that would gently move and stretch my body.

Toning tables and their claims of inch reductions and “passive exercise” (the machine that works while you lie there passively thinking about getting thin) are the rage now in America, according to such proponents as Leonard Keller, marketing director for SunTana Corp. of Jonesboro, Ark., the world’s largest manufacturer of indoor tanning beds and now of toning tables as well.

In 1986 SunTana took over the manufacture and distribution of toning tables from a Florida man who had been making them in his garage. In a little more than a year, 1,000 sets of six-table units selling for $2,700 have been sold. Back orders for 600 sets stretch for months.

Toning Salons Popping Up

Now toning salons are popping up across America. Keller predicted that new all-in-one models will soon be showing up in self-service laundries, beauty parlors, resorts and tanning salons.

While users say they have lost inches on toning tables while their muscles are shaped and firmed, there is no body fat loss involved in using the tables. Losing fat entails burning calories, which is certainly not the case in the no-sweat routine.

“Toning tables are for people who have no time for exercise, people who don’t like to exercise,” Keller said.

His wife lost 13 inches after seven one-hour sessions on the tables, he said, and other women claim to have lost much more, in addition to gaining flexibility and improved circulation.

Unlike traditional health clubs, the Slender You Salon has no chrome weights, exercise mats or slinky women in leotards. Two identical sets of tables, 12 in all, lined both sides of a thickly carpeted room. A stationary bicycle was off in the far corner.

Mike Goldick, the salon owner and manager, said each of the tables, which look like comfortable, Naugahyde-covered examining tables you’d expect to see in a doctor’s office, would gently move different parts of my body, lengthen and stretch muscles, firming and tightening them.

“A one-hour workout consisting of 10 minutes on each machine is equal to 7 1/2 hours of calisthenics,” said Laura, a slim assistant with 36 hours of required Slender You training.

Goldick recommended two one-hour visits a week to his clients, all of them women. Each appointment costs $12. At the initial visit, nine body measurements are taken (ankle, calf, thigh, hips, abdomen, waist, chest, upper back, upper arm). How many inches you should lose is calculated with the help of a microcomputer. Clients are also urged to diet and to work out with aerobics.

Working Against Machine

Ten minutes on the sit-up machine is equal to 90 sit-ups, I was told. I could feel my stomach tighten as I lifted my legs 2 inches off the table and flexed my toes toward my knees as the table pushed me into a sitting position. When I didn’t work against the machine, I felt nothing.

Another table works the inner thighs by rotating your legs in circles for 10 minutes, supposedly the equivalent of a 2 1/2-mile walk. The waist, tummy and hip table had my legs flopping up and down like a swimmer doing 900 back kicks.

After my brief table trial I wasn’t sweating, and I came away impressed with a concept of toning tables--not as a form of exercise but as yet another way to get money out of people who want perfect bodies.

“All research has shown passive exercise machines to be totally useless,” says Jack W. Wilmore of the University of Texas, former president of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Hope for Miracles

He said if you’re willing to work against the force of the machine, then using the toning tables is just like another form of active exercise--but most people will just lie there and hope for miracles.

“The only way you can benefit from exercising with a machine is to work on it. If you’re just going to set and ride the machine, it won’t have any benefit,” Wilmore said.

“To get any benefit from the tables, you have to push against them as they move,” said Pat Van Galen, an Ohio exercise physiologist hired by SunTana to critique its tables. “If you just lie there and do nothing, then nothing will happen.”

Van Galen said toning tables are just like new diet schemes: a fad that will soon pass.

If the tables have any real benefit, they are best for people who have never done any exercise. “After a while, they might be motivated to go for a walk or to push themselves away from the table once in a while,” Van Galen said.