Americans are obsessed with taking the 'work' out of working out

Every generation has its own version of the vibrating belt machine — the '50s-era contraption that promised to literally shake housewives into shape with minimal effort (and effect). This perpetual fitness obsession is why, on a recent Friday in June, I found myself strapped into the 2025 iteration: an electro-muscle stimulation suit. For 15 minutes, sporting an outfit that had me looking like a cross between Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill" and a Transformer, I lunged, squatted, and pressed around a compact, chic-ish space as the getup intermittently sent little electrical impulses through my body. At first, I cackled as the EMS suit gripped and vibrated me every few seconds as I attempted to move. By the end, I came to dread the waves — it felt like a shock collar people put on dogs to stop them from breaking out of the yard.

Despite my discomfort, the premise of the whole thing was enticing: EMS suits supposedly give you the same results in 25 minutes as you would get from working out for four hours, at least according to the fitness studios that market them. The quest to work out without actually doing much work is eternal.

We know that exercise has all sorts of benefits. It's good for our hearts, our muscles, our minds. It increases energy, helps us live longer, and prevents disease. In a society that glorifies fit bodies, exercise can help keep things aesthetically in check.

The problem is that exercise isn't always the most fun endeavor, at least by many people's estimations. So we find ourselves looking for shortcuts to reap the muscular rewards for a fraction of the sweat equity. Companies are happy to oblige, offering up all sorts of quick fixes. Whether much of this works, fitness-wise, is doubtful, but psychologically, the ploys are effective.

"Our capitalistic culture of fitness has really morphed into sellable life hacks, and the process has become transactional for many," says Sam Zizzi, a professor who focuses on sport and exercise physiology at West Virginia University. He compares these various fitness shortcuts to a lottery ticket. You know chances are slim to none that you'll get the winning Powerball ticket, but you buy one anyway just in case. Who doesn't want to hack their way to health, especially in an era of extreme instant gratification — and Ozempic?

American fitness culture is intertwined with the American idea of individualism: You pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and success depends on individual commitment and will. An equally powerful American tradition is the desire to have something for nothing, explains Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a history professor at The New School who's the author of "Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession." We want to believe that there's a magical product right around the corner that will grant us miraculous results with only a small bit of input on our part. "Both of these ideas are equally powerful in making American fitness culture so long-standing," she says.

People may think of some of the quick-fix stuff as relics of the past, like the aforementioned vibrating belt machines marketed to women in the mid-20th century, when it was thought that exercise wasn't just unbecoming of women but potentially dangerous. There were also later developments that followed in the belt's wake, like the sauna suits of the 1970s and the ab belts of the '90s. These concepts persist, just in different formats. There are the shaking weights that promise to rattle your bicep curls into overdrive, vibrating platforms for you to balance on to turbocharge your squats, and sculpting machines that promise to boost your glutes without you having to do a single squat.

"It's human nature to gravitate toward shortcuts," says Cedric Bryant, the president and CEO of the American Council on Exercise.

Those shortcuts sound nice, but the research on many of them is limited, and where it does exist, it's often conducted or paid for by the companies selling the products.

"The concern with all of these gadgets is that, similar to supplements for weight loss and health benefits, there is no, or at least very little, data and strong comprehensive studies that show, yes, this is going to be beneficial," says Jessica Bartfield, a clinical associate professor of weight management at Wake Forest University's School of Medicine.

ACE has commissioned research institutions to test the claims of many of these low-effort, heavily marketed products, Bryant says, and for the most part, they've found many offer marginal benefit at best. And none are a substitute for a comprehensive, regular program of physical activity. "The science behind most of these products is weak, often anecdotal, and almost always overhyped," he says.

The effects these products do have aren't particularly impressive. Take the example of electromagnetic body sculpting treatments, such as Emsculpt, which are supposed to tighten muscle and burn fat. One review of the literature on the practice found that patients' measurements decreased by 2.9 millimeters on average, or about a 10th of an inch.

"That doesn't seem like very much," says Melanie Jay, the director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for BTL Aesthetics, the maker of Emsculpt, sent along a pair of presentations from the company touting the product's ability to increase muscle strength, prevent muscle loss, and enhance flexibility. They also pushed back on the conclusions drawn by the 2022 literature review, arguing in part that its data largely encompasses the Emsculpt, not the newer Emsculpt Neo (though two of the studies the independent paper cites include the newer version as well). They put me in touch with two doctors to vouch for the device — Jonathan Schoeff, of Rocky Mountain Advanced Spine Access, and Eugene Lou, from Minivasive Orthopedics. Schoeff said that the Emsculpt is a powerful tool to "direct metabolic change" though he advises patients it's not a replacement for the gym. Lou said the device "absolutely can be" a replacement for exercise, citing the positive experience of two of his patients in rehab settings. Schoeff is a paid educational consultant for BTL and participated in research sponsored by the company. Lou is a paid speaker for the company.

Leah Verebes, a physical therapist and assistant professor at Touro University, notes that studies and independent reviews indicate that the fat loss effects of Emsculpt are modest and often within the margin of error. "Overall, Emsculpt is best suited for functional wellness and rehabilitation, not significant weight loss or body contouring," she says.

She had comparable thoughts on EMS suits, like the one I tried: they have some potential in the rehab world, but their fitness value outside that is more about getting the ball rolling on a behavioral shift. In other words, if the shocking suit gets me off the couch, fine, but otherwise, I can move on.

Verebes is similarly agnostic on the Shake Weight, an as-seen-on-TV classic. It's better than nothing, and the shaking may recruit more muscles than a regular weight, but it's not a replacement for a regular strength routine. "I think you might look a little funny with the Shake Weight, but you know what? If it's getting somebody who normally would just sit on the couch and flex their elbow bringing the can to their mouth, at least they're doing something that's getting their body moving," she says.

Coming into this story, I expected the people I talked to to do a real LOL when I mentioned various devices, but that's not entirely what happened. Many of them seemed supportive of the idea that if a wacky little accessory is a way to get people to start doing something, so be it. But people should be realistic about how effective said devices are and whether buying them will actually change their habits.

"There's a motivational piece here for people who are ready to change their health," Zizzi says. In sports psychology, motivation driven by outside factors like a new gadget or some office competition often gets "pooh-poohed," he adds, but all motivation is useful. It's just that extrinsic motivation fades fast. He points to the example of fitness trackers — when people get them, they use them and may even increase their activity, but over time that use declines. The fitness graveyard is filled with fads of the past. Who among us hasn't bought a treadmill or a bike or an ab roller, thinking, "This will finally be the thing that gets me to work out," only for it to sit in the corner and collect dust?

People's starting points matter, too. Take the devices that let you pedal your legs while watching TV. "On a scale of fitness, it's a 1 out of 10 or a 2 out of 10," Zizzi says. "If you did that and you are diabetic and you don't get any other physical activity, that's probably better than telling somebody, 'Hey, you need to walk, walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week to meet guidelines, or it doesn't count.'"

Of course, this isn't all just harmless. Some of these products may hurt people — the supermodel Linda Evangelista said she experienced rare but severe side effects after undergoing CoolSculpting, which is supposed to freeze away fat. Basically, all fitness-related contraptions come with some sort of disclosure or require you to sign something saying that if you get injured or die, it's on you.

Jay, from NYU, says she's never recommended one of these treatment hacks to patients. "Maybe if they're trying to decide between a tummy tuck or one of these, I don't know. A tummy tuck is probably more effective, but of course, the risks and the downtime might be higher," she says. But that's not really the point. "The bigger point is that it doesn't give you the same benefits as exercise or losing weight and maintaining weight loss."

If I decided I absolutely could not live without the EMS suit, it would probably be an OK addition to my normal workout routine. But I shouldn't try to get by on less than half an hour of exercise once a week. As Verebes said, these sorts of workouts might be better suited to particular applications. Bryant notes that EMS could be helpful for people recovering from an injury because "it helps to restore the connection between the nervous systems and the muscles." For a healthy person, however, the benefit is "going to be much less dramatic."

Even the experts and their loved ones aren't immune to this stuff. Jay bought a vibrating platform, but she got really dizzy on it, so she gave it away. Mehlman Petrzela's son bought an ab belt he saw on TikTok.

The modern narrative around fitness is that it's not just about being thin — it's about being strong, healthy, and fit at any weight. But underneath all that is an enduring truth: People want to look conventionally attractive.

Those attitudes feed the tricks that have long plagued the fitness industry. People get duped by supplements that supposedly burn fat while they sleep and vests that claim to sculpt abs while they sit on the couch, not because they're actually trying to improve their fitness levels, but because they're looking for a shortcut to an aesthetic goal that's often unattainable.

"There can be a lot of misinformation, a lot of gimmicks or gadgets or supplements where they make some promises and there is no evidence, no data, to support them," Bartfield says.

Social media doesn't help the situation. It places unrealistic aesthetic expectations in front of us all the time — and lets companies sell us endless ways to attempt to achieve them in 10- or 15-second video bites. My Instagram knows that I'm fitness-curious and weight-conscious; it's filled with ads for weight-loss drugs and quick-fix fitness gear. I regularly exchange various hacky fitness ads with friends.

Exercise can be arduous and hard. Going to the gym often isn't an instantly gratifying activity. Beyond the overarching purpose that is long-term health, you don't really noticeably accomplish anything with a single run on the treadmill or one set of squats. It's natural that people would rather skip to the fun part of nailing that summer body without sweating it out in a spin class on a frigid day in March.

"People are wired for these fast, easy solutions, and your brain naturally goes toward the area of least resistance," Verebes says.

The (very skinny) elephant in the room here is the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy (which is the same as Ozempic) and Zepbound (Mounjaro) that really do seem to deliver miracles. They help people with obesity lose weight and, as long as they keep taking the drugs, keep it off. For many people, these drugs can make a real change to their lives. These pretty miraculous drugs may have people looking for miracles elsewhere, which obesity doctors and fitness trainers warn against. GLP-1s need to be accompanied by healthier diets and exercise routines, especially since they can lead to muscle loss. Being thin is not synonymous with being in great shape.

"We certainly do not want people to think that you can lose weight, and that equals health," Bartfield says. "There's the idea of nutritional quality, the idea of body composition, right? Maintaining muscle mass."

In what would be shocking news to my younger self, I genuinely enjoy exercise. As a person who also likes to eat and drink a fair amount (a fact that would not be a surprise to younger me), I work out most days of the week as part of a perpetual balancing act. But I'm also not immune to the appeal of shortcuts. In my 20s, I tried to work while sitting on an exercise ball, but I had to stop because I couldn't stop myself from slightly bouncing up and down as I typed and making myself nauseous. A few years ago, at the advice of my mother, I spent a couple of thousand dollars on CoolSculpt, which, as far as I could tell, had little effect. I've gone farther down the GLP-1 "microdosing" research rabbit hole than I'd like to admit, though the price tag always scares me off. I don't want to work out with no work, but I'd like to work out with less work.

Fitness isn't as easy as diet and exercise. It's also not something that people can hack their way into. To reap the benefits of exercise, you kind of have to exercise. That doesn't mean running a marathon, but it doesn't mean vibrating the fat cells away, either. The good news is that the simplest stuff is cheap or free — go for a walk, lift a weight, find an activity you like. The bad news is that it requires time and effort that a quick-fix mentality doesn't allow for.

In the days after my little EMS suit adventure, I was a little sore, indicating the device probably did something. But I won't be going back. The price point was not within my budget — membership at the studio I went to was $225 a month, and you can do it only once a week, which means more than $50 a class. Plus, as mentioned, the intermittent shocking really was not for me. I'll be doing things the old-fashioned way, one weight and stride at a time, until an ad inevitably gets me once again, and I'm testing out the 2026 version of the vibrating belt.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.