Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Whether or not you’ve resolved to get into shape this January, Muscle Month is here to teach you a thing or two about stretching, contracting, lifting, tearing, gaining, and so much more. "I can’t believe we woke up at 7 a.m. " isn’t something you usually hear from your workout buddy, but the girl next to me wasn’t wrong. I’d actually woken up at 6 a.m. After a year of following a regular and relatively intense weightlifting regimen, I’d been offered a chance to try an Electro Muscle Stimulation (EMS) workout at Shock Therapy, the first U.S. I’d seen the trendy method, oft cited by its disciples as a super-effective fitness trick Europeans have long relied on, Prime Boosts all over my Instagram feed, so I decided to give it a try. I would go twice a week for four to six weeks, I told the gym, so I could compare it to my usual four-plus-days-a-week lifting routine and weekend roller derby.
I did not make it to six weeks. But I can’t say I totally hated it. Here’s what I learned. What the heck is EMS training? Muscles move because brains send electrical signals telling them to do so, and you can hijack this process by using external shocks to trigger movement. If you’ve ever used a TENS unit to manage pain at home or with the help of a physical therapist, you know what the proprietary pads one must wear during an EMS workout feels like. The machine stimulates your muscles to make them prickle and twitch, sometimes to the point of discomfort. If you’ve never used a TENS unit, well, there isn’t really anything else like it-so just imagine your muscles prickling and twitching, sometimes to the point of discomfort. Proprietors claim that by wearing a suit full of these electrodes (and what basically amounts to a giant soggy wetsuit on top, which is … interesting) you can burn more fat and build more muscle simply because your muscles are doing more work.
EMS can be used on top of any kind of training, supposedly boosting the intensity and Prime Boosts effectiveness of whatever you’re doing. But I didn’t try bench pressing while getting zapped