How EMS can increase strength

With all the pills, powders, and pre-and-post workouts out there that are easily accessible for anyone with the money to buy it, it can be pretty tempting to opt for these potentially harmful tools to build or increase muscle. 

However, there might be a way to get the gains you’ve been looking for without having to resort to possibly risking your future health. 

EMS, electrical muscle stimulation, is an adaptable, easy-to-learn way to engage your muscles while training and in your everyday routine. 

Not only is EMS a way to engage your muscles in new ways, but it can also be easily incorporated into your training to fully stimulate your whole muscle for a completely effective workout.

Today we’re going to be talking about EMS can optimize that workout and get your strength to a whole new level you never even thought possible. 

How Does It Work?

The EMS works with your body’s natural processes, which is what makes it so effective! You don’t have to worry that you are damaging the body’s natural way of movement since it works in alignment with the way your body functions. 

These electrical impulses from the EMS then emit involuntary muscular contractions—traveling from your brain to your CNS to your muscles. 

Using EMS skips over the CNS part, which helps the process be less strenuous on your part. Since there is a stimulus then going on, then the body will train and strengthen that particular muscle and muscle fibers! 

In this article, we’re also going to be going through a few studies that have researched onhoweffective EMS can be, especially for a strength-centered athlete. 

Studies Backing Up These Claims

First and foremost, we’re going to go through the different types of fitness-oriented aspects that the EMS can improve upon. 

In a study titled, the Effects of a Whole-Body Electrostimulation Program on Strength, Sprinting, Jumping, and Kicking Capacity in Elite Soccer Players, you can read through their findings of implementing the EMS system regularly into an elite soccer player’s training regimen. 

As the study moved forward, it had resulted in particular findings that showed EMSenhanced the athletic performance:

"Our findings indicate that WB-EMS training, as a new stimulus, can complement or modify the common training structure and thus is able to enhance the athletic performance even of highly trained athletes.”

After the study ended, the researchers concluded that EMS had "produced statistically significant improvements in sprinters compared to other combinations."

Another study done outlining the success of the combination between the use of EMS and an 8-week training program. 

Titled as the “Effects of electrostimulation and plyometric training program combination on jump height in teenage athletes”,this study resulted quite positively!

Showing that there was an impactful result when the use of EMS was combined with a PT 8-week training program (2 days/week). 

After the study had ended, the researchers again concluded that when EMS was combined with plyometric exercises, the implementation was then considered extremely useful in the improvement of the vertical jump ability—especially when it came to sprinting and hurdling for teenage athletes (which was the control group in the study).