WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Kangoo fitness crazes' questionable benefits

New York, New York - November 4, 2011

Well, you've tried the treadmill, yoga and spinning -- how about Kangoo jumps? It's the latest fitness craze in gyms across the country and it claims to be much less stressful on your body.

It may look like aerobics, but it definitely doesn't sound like it. Fitness fanatics are bouncing into shape with Kangoo jumps -- impact absorbing shoes that are the latest way to kick start the heart and shed pounds.

"It's fun. I hate working out but I keep jumping on the Kangoo --- I can't stop," said Laura Arrigoni, a student.

The spring-loaded shoes were originally developed in Switzerland for knee rehabilitation. Fitness guru Mario Godiva Green is taking them a step further. "There are so many people that haven't been able to run for years, who haven't been able to exercise who have gained weight because of an injury that I've been able to get exercising again and running again," Green said.

The shoe's developers claim they reduce 80-percent of the stress on the knees hip and spine.
But physiologist Dr. Malachy McHugh with Lenox Hill Hospital says the shoes actually increase stress on the joints, but the muscles are working extra hard to absorb the impact.

So if anything the stress on each joint will be increased. That is not necessarily a bad thing, it could
be beneficial in training, but there is definitely not a decrease in the stress.

Still, Green calls it a fitness evolution. "The people that do embrace this, we're the ones who in five years are going to have healthier happy knees, not wearing knee braces, not injured," he said.

The shoes have got Angelina Sherin working out again. "It's less stress on your body. I don't feel any
aches or pains in my knees or my back -- it's just a bounce," she said.

For them, jumping is believing.

Manuel Gallegus - CBS News