Issue #31: How to Power-Up your Strength Training with EMS?
BLOG: How to fire-up your muscle tension!
Do not judge a men’s strength by the size of his muscle.
When it is said that muscle strength is proportional to its cross-section, that statement must be qualified: everything else being equal. “everything else” is largely the level of activation of the muscle by the nervous system aka. neurological efficiency.
It is estimated that an average person can only contract 20-30% of his muscles when trying his hardest. Even top athletes use no more than 50% of their muscles. But this deficit in recruitment is something good. If we would light up all our muscles with the full potential of electricity we would tear our muscles, rip off tendons and even break our bones. But electric impulses by the brain is the key to more strength!
Although the beneficial effects of electrical impulses on muscles have been known since Emperor Claudius (recognizing the positive impacts of electric shocks on paralyzed muscles), and it is no coincidence that even the first astronauts used it in the state of weightlessness to keep their bodies alive, EMS technology somehow yet didn’t really spread in professional sports and gyms. The reason is very simple. Sport is a most active, dynamic movement, not a still or some static movement.
What is EMS and what is it good for?
I would briefly summarize the operation of electrical muscle stimulation as follows: an external (through the skin), small-strength, electrical impulse causes the muscles to contract and then relax. The pulses are created by a device that is delivered to the body through an electrode that contacts the skin. These impulses mimic the action potential from the central nervous system, so the muscles contract as if the information had been delivered to them by the brain. The difference is that this method bypasses the body’s energy-saving system, so it does not limit the percentage of fibers that are activated. Therefore, EMS can activate muscle fibers in much larger amounts.
BUT! Only through the subcutaneous upper nerve endings
And that's the point: Low frequency alone is not enough to achieve sports and full-body muscle recovery goals as it cannot be deep-acting and training/treatment specific. But if we take advantage of the beneficial effect of the middle-frequency (in the range around 2000-7000 Hz) it becomes really deep and effective.
And don't be scared to hear about 2000Hz! In medicine, this type of frequency is used between 2,000 and 10,000 Hz to have a beneficial effect on even bone tissues or just to cure incontinence.
How to use EMS Training to power-up your strength?
Well, that’s simple. You have basically three options to do that:
You can perform a warm-up with the PowerSuit for 10-15min where you put on our Visionbody PowerSuit and go through every basic human movement. Like Push-ups, Squats, Hip Hinges, Pulling Exercises, and Loaded Carries. The Visionbody EMS device will activate throughout that warm-up 30% more muscles than a regular warm-up routine. Because the electric impulses of the middle frequencies go deep into the muscle tissue and squeeze them like a towel. this will help the nervous system to activate more muscles in regular training.
You can also use EMS with your regular training and let the impulses flow through your muscles while you do your training. But 20min EMS Training equals 3-4hours of regular training, so be careful with the dosage. And be careful with your weights. You can not use heavy weights which is usually responsible for muscle recruitment. In EMS Training the electric impulses act like heavy weights. But in a healthy way because the risk of injury equals zero.
You can perform in addition to your regular training 2 times a week and EMS Training to boost your results with weights or endurance goals. So if you love to lift and run just take our Visionbody EMS Device as a booster to your regular training routine and activate more muscles. Most of the sports are training in a one-way street. Runners run, lifters lift, swimmers swim. By this, we built up a bilateral deficit which is the reason for most of the injuries. Our Visionbody PowerSuit train the whole body and take care of the muscles you usually neglected.
Put it all together…
Electric muscle stimulation is happening naturally by the brain or artificially by an EMS device. Heavy lifting is the most powerful tool to activate muscle fibers throughout the brain, but it is also quite dangerous because heavy lifting demands good posture and quality of movement which is often compromised. Especially for beginners.
EMS is not fancy new stuff. It is a scientific approach to more muscle tension and therefore more muscle recruitment. The difference between old devices and Visionbody is the frequency. Visionbody mixes up low and middle frequencies like a cocktail. The middle frequencies are the key to a more effective muscle recruitment because their transport the low frenquencies directly into the muscle.
But this cocktail of electric impulses must be right for your goals. This is why we have not only one program like all the others, but more than 15 different ways to mix the right cocktail for your training goals.
And one more reason…
…why everyone should use EMS as adjunctive therapy because it helps to improve the brain’s learning process. For a long time scientists said, that EMS does not help to improve the brains with motor learning processes. The brain needs approximately 10,000 repetitions to learn how to perform a particular movement efficiently. Now we now that this can also be accelerated by a middle frequency device like the Visionbody PowerSuit.
But we always say: “You have feel it, to believe it!”
All the best and power and strength to you!
Johannes