Multiple Uses of the MVe® Chair
I stared at it thinking, “How am I supposed to fit onto this little seat?” I started with the manual, and after seeing the perfectly sculpted models posing in various gravity-defying positions, my mind quickly changed to, “How did they figure out the secret to levitation?” I reckoned it wasn’t just a digitally created image, and so in my tiny apartment, with the coffee table flipped on top of the sofa so I’d have room for the MVe Chair in the middle of the carpet, I put on the DVD and clicked on the sample workout.
About 30 minutes later, I had a nice sweat going on, and my muscles were sufficiently worked without being crushed. I knew several of my movements were only impressionistic renderings of the instructor’s, but I no longer thought I couldn’t do them. Well, for most of them anyway. During November and December 2008, I practiced the same sample routine multiple times each week, reading the manual about once a week to try to unlock the mysteries behind levitation. By the end, the seemingly esoteric tips in the manual about breathing and lengthening the spine started making sense. It was time to try it out on other people.
Let me back up. By the time our story begins, I had been a personal trainer for four years. For the last year, I had also been working at the Get REAL & HEEL Breast Cancer Rehabilitation Program, a clinic that delivered personal training for breast cancer survivors to help them regain control of their fitness and their life. By the time I was introduced to the MVe Chair, I was in my first semester of the Masters of Exercise and Sport Science program at the University of North Caroline—Chapel Hill, wanting to do my research project in the Get REAL & HEEL clinic. My advisor and I thought the MVe Chair could be a perfect addition to our clinic, which as far as gyms go was about on par with my apartment for being the minimum amount of space needed to do anything. Also at this time, I was recovering from a tear of my left hip adductors, and trying to rehabilitate myself to prepare for the coming rugby season.
In January, I brought the chair back to the clinic and started my first patient on it. She was a former university athlete, but chemo, radiation, and months of fatigue had left her weak, with extra fat clinging on like parasites, and wishing for the days when she was a lithe gymnast. Our main challenges were her bad hip and lack of flexibility, strength, and balance; she attributed the later three challenges to the cancer and treatment process. For 5 months we worked through the manual together, learning the best set of exercises and how to progress and interweave them into new workouts. The best part of the training was our ability to discuss the exercises on the same level of detail, as we were both experienced athletes academically trained in the field. By the end of the program, her flexibility, strength, and balance were greater than they had been in years, far superior to what she considered normal before the treatment. She especially hadn’t felt so balanced and in control of herself since she had given up sports in pursuit of her career and family.
Her success can partly be attributed to her own motivation and previous training experience. She was definitely the exception to the rule, though her 200 percent improvement on the strength and balance tests gave us great hope for the chair’s use. The real trial started later that year, when we launched an official study comparing the MVe Chair to weight lifting for the resistance portion of our training program at the clinic. Every woman who enrolled for the rest of the year was randomized into one group or the other. For the first 8 weeks of their programs, the women completed the same set workout three times each week. The workouts for the two groups were designed to work the same muscle groups in similar planes of motion (see Figure 1), and the volumes were set to match each other (see Figure 2). As the force created by dumbbells and the spring on the MVe Chair were not directly comparable, intensity of exercises was quantified using the Borg Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. On this RPE scale, ratings of 9–14 correspond from the upper ends of light work to the threshold before heavy work.
| Figure 1: Exercises for each group | |
| MVe Chair | Weight Lifting |
| Shoulder lateral raise w/ pump | Lateral raises |
| Single leg pump | Crunches |
Mermaid | Oblique crunches |
| Front leg pump | Ball squats |
| Calf raises | Calf raises |
| Two arm pump | Chest press |
| Pelvic lift | Bridge |
| Figure 2: Intensity and Volume each Week | ||
Week | Target Intensity | Volume |
| Week 1 | RPE 9-10 | 1 set of 8 reps |
| Weeks 2-3 | RPE 10-11 | 1-2 sets of 8 reps |
| Weeks 4-6 | RPE 12-13 | 2 sets of 8 reps |
| Weeks 7-8 | RPE 13-14 | 2 sets of 8-10 reps |
Throughout the year, 16 women participated in the program, 8 randomized to the MVe Chair, and 8 to weight lifting. They started with 8 weeks in their selected protocol, and then had 3 more months of training that mixed whatever exercise their trainer thought best. The results indicated that after only 8 weeks, the MVe Chair exercises were almost as good as the weight lifting routine at improving muscular endurance. The muscular endurance test score was the sum of how many repetitions the participants could perform of kneeling pushups, crunches, bicep curls, lat pull downs, quad extension, and hamstring curls. The four weight lifting exercises used a standardized weight, based upon age that was a percentage the woman’s body weight. No statistically significant difference was found between the groups for total number of repetitions completed at the final test (p = 0.707) or for the improvement from baseline (p = 0.782). Both groups showed a statistically significant (p < 0.000) improvement in muscular endurance from baseline to the end of 8 weeks. These results indicate that both modes were effective at improving muscular endurance, and that the MVe Chair may be as good as weight lifting for improving muscular endurance during the early stages of an exercise program for breast cancer survivors.
The women were just as curious as I was about how the chair worked the first time they saw it, specifically how they could work all their muscles with the MVe Chair. “That question was answered after the very first day. I love the Pilates machine. I liked how it CAN work every part of your body,” said one of the ladies. Many of the women had never done gym exercises before, and found the MVe Chair a great introduction. “The nice thing about it over free weights is that the arm is controlled, sort of guides you to different levels of difficulty without overdoing the weights.” Another woman commented, “The other thing is that I liked how my exercises were tiered and varied. I liked that I could get an entire workout from one machine.” Many of the women also commented on how the MVe Chair not only improved their limb strength but worked on their core strength and balance. One advantage identified about the Chair over weight machines was “I felt better after one of these workouts—like I had been stretched. After several weeks I not only felt stronger, but I moved easier.” The feedback from the women who used the MVe Chair was all very positive, and many expressed a desire to continue using the chair after they finished the program.
During the whole time I was training people at Get REAL & HEEL on the MVe® Chair, I was using it myself as part of my training regimen. At the time, I was playing Division 1 men’s club rugby. Rugby, more than most other sports, requires a balance between brute strength and fine skill, between grace and violence. Most importantly, it requires a very strong core to successfully complete the set pieces that occur throughout the game, such as the maul, scrum, and lineout. For those not familiar with these funny British terms, allow me to describe them. In the maul and scrum, eight men lock their bodies together to try to push another eight men around the field. For these moves to succeed, all eight men must have their cores locked solid so they can properly transmit power from their legs through the oppositions’ guts as they push them over. If one man lacks the core strength to hold, he risks not only collapsing the whole team but severely injuring himself.
The lineout also requires great core strength, but for a much different use. Being tall and relatively light, I was used as the jumper, which means that two men grabbed me around the knees and hoisted me straight into the air. Once aloft, I had the job of competing against the opposition jumper to grab the ball out of the air, which is thrown in from the sideline, all without falling over and landing on my neck. Unfortunately, the laws of rugby dictate that the ball cannot be passed directly to the jumper, but must be thrown in between the two lines. So whichever jumper is more stable while reaching outside of their base of support (in this case the hands of his lifters) has a much greater chance of snatching the ball. However, if the jumper reaches too far out of their base of support, they run an even greater risk of falling over their front lifter, kicking the back lifter in the face, and landing on their own neck. Not good all around.
When jumping in the lineout, the keys are to lock your legs, squeeze your glutes, and tighten your transversus abdominus (though usually what they shouted at me was less scientific and more colorful). After trying every exercise in the MVe Chair manual, I paired it down to one routine to improve core, hip, and knee stability, thigh and leg tone, and to help relax and realign my muscle fibers after a week of hard training. I traditionally performed this routine (Figure 3) on Fridays to give myself an active recovery day between our team run Thursday night and our matches Saturday morning.
Figure 3: My MVe Workout | |
Exercise | Volume |
Hundred | 10 breaths |
Single leg stretch | 10 per side |
Bicycle crunches | 10 per side |
Mountain climbers | 10 per leg |
Side mountain climbers | 10 per leg |
Teaser | 10 |
Side bends to side twist pump | 10 per side |
Front step ups | 10 per leg |
Side step ups | 10 per leg |
Cross leg pump | 10 per leg |
Pike | 10 |
Side pike | 10 |
Sideways pushups 2 | 10 per side |
Kneeling press | 10 |
Horseback | 10 |
Flying eagle | 10 |
Pelvic lift | 10 |
Teaser stretch | 3 full exhales |
Of all the exercises performed, I found the most useful ones to be the mountain climbers and step ups. They were perfect for linking leg function through core stability, the exact combination I needed for mauls and lineouts. The side variations were helpful in providing stability in the frontal as well as saggital planes and rehabbing my adductors. I could feel the muscle adhesions loosen up to allow the fibers to realign as I progressed through the set. Moves like the side twist pump and flying eagle helped improve my shoulder flexibility and function, which aided in keeping my upper body injury free for the first season in years. For raw abdominal strength, I consistently flogged myself with the front and side pikes, and felt a similar burn in my hamstrings from the pelvic lift.
My patients and I all became big fans of using the MVe Chair regularly. Compared with my experiences of using other Pilates equipment, like a reformer, I found the Chair much more applicable and specific to both working with breast cancer survivors and preparing myself for sports. As myself and a few of the ladies have said to each other, the Chair guides you through the exercises, helping you achieve whatever aspect of fitness you desire to get out of it, whether it be strength or balance. As an exercise specialist coming from a traditional strength training background, I would now recommend the MVe Chair in any and all training situations.
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