“We can get some benefits,” explains Fornusek, a professor of sport and exercise science at the University of Sydney. “For people with a complete spinal injury, their muscles will grow to a certain point, they’ll get blood flow, they’ll get things like reduced muscle spasm.”
In some cases, it can even help retrain a muscle to fire again: “Sometimes it can feed back into the brain because it also activates sensory fibers. It has potential.”
SpeedFit EMS training.
Its potential is often exaggerated by companies that sell it to the public to get fit quickly.
Sixpad has been accused of misleading marketing, while Danoz Direct’s Abtronic was withdrawn from sale following the ACCC declared it misleading with his claims, he could eliminate fat and cellulite, flatten abs, and that 10 minutes equaled 600 sit-ups.
When I have a phone induction before a SpeedFit EMS training class (there are currently 29 SpeedFit studios in Australia), I am told that during a normal workout, we only work one muscle group at a time. However, through EMS, we can activate up to eight muscle groups at once. A 30-minute session, the woman tells me on the phone, is like 960 sit-ups and 960 weightlifting reps.
About him Speed Fit website, explains that sending electrical impulses that contract your muscles is “incredibly time efficient: in just 20 minutes, an EMS machine will give you the same results as spending several hours sweating at the gym.”
I walk into his small gym in North Sydney, where only two people can work out at a time. A wetsuit-like vest and the straps around my biceps, thighs, and buttocks are sprayed with water, to conduct electricity, and plugged into the station.
Co-owner Roland Safar, a friendly Slovakian whose background is neither physical nor health, walks me through the 20-minute session. He invested in the business when his college friend Matej brought a machine from Europe and asked Safar to test it for three months. Safar did it once a week, he tells me, and was so impressed with the changes in his body that he agreed to invest. We do some basic squats, lunges, and bicep curls while he manually increases or decreases the intensity of the electrical pulses that contract my muscles rhythmically. I didn’t feel bloated during the class, but after a very basic 20 minute session, my muscles were certainly sore and felt like they had been worked on. “Can it cause cramps?” I ask as my biceps clench. “No,” he assures me, insisting that it relieves them and sore muscles instead.
The workout is perfect for people who are short on time or really don’t like being in shape, he says, as you get more for your money.
This may or may not be true.
What is true is that EMS can cause much more muscle damage than normal exercise because it activates our muscles “in a weird way,” Fornusek says.
Too much intensity and the simultaneous activation of many muscles can cause injury and even lead to life-threatening situations. Rhabdomyolysis, “which is extremely difficult to evoke during normal exercise,” adds Balzevich. there you have There have also been reports of shocks, burns, bruises, skin irritation and pain associated with the use of some EMS devices.
For this reason, Blazevich advises people who want to try it to do a detailed safety check and make sure it’s operated by a qualified professional (preferably someone with a Ph.D. or an allied health professional with clinical experience).
And while some athletes use EMS, it’s rare.
“It’s certainly not a recognized part of any training plan I’ve seen internationally,” says Blazevich, reminding that performance is about skills rather than muscle size or even strength.
In fact, the Australian Institute of Sport says its use is “very limited and only in specific circumstances.”
Fornusek adds that “there isn’t a lot of strong evidence” that it improves post-exercise recovery or that it primarily benefits healthy people who want to improve their fitness or strength.
“My gut feeling is that it’s better for people with a central nervous system disability or injury,” he says. “But if it works for you and makes you more active, then that’s a good thing. It definitely has a place.”
Its appeal, to many, is that you can get through each session quickly – it provides a shortcut if you don’t enjoy exercising.
Although everyone loves shortcuts, I wonder if we missed something along the way. Shortcuts focus on the destination, not on how to enjoy the process.
Charging
And since a high percentage of people don’t use their gym memberships and more than half of Australian adults doesn’t meet the physical activity guidelines, perhaps if we want to improve our fitness, we would all do better and have more fun if we forgot about the destination and found a way to enjoy the journey. Blasting your muscles with electricity is not necessary.
Get the most out of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox Every monday.
