Anybody here tried EMS?

[KOArtist]

I've heard (with the right protocol/program of course) that it can favorably alter your muscle composition from slow-twitch to fast-twitch, among other benefits. Anybody here tried it? If so, can anybody suggest a good model to buy, hopefully not too ridiculously expensive? thanks

 

[musketeer]

Really funny story:

A skinny (non-exercising) guy I know bought this tens kit from a catalogue for about $100 and put it on his abs while he watched TV -it was a like a 8 inch wide elasticated belt that you stepped into and pulled up over your midsection. He got quite used to it and one night he fell asleep lying down on the couch with the thing TURNED ON (low).
He woke up about 6 hours later after having a nightmare about being repeatedly punched in the stomach by youths. Then he got this horrific cramping feeling in his abs and looked down and realised that the machine was still on. It was plugged into the wall and he had to get up to unplug it, but his abs were completely dead and he couldn't contract them volunteraly and he couldn't move! Every 7 seconds the machine shocked his muscles again and he was writhing in pain! It took him about 10mins to crawl over to the wall to get to the power source. He told me his abs were sore for about 10 days and he sold the thing on eBay.

 

[KOArtist]

CoolColJ: How about you? I know you visit the Charlie Francis board and he's a big believer. And I don't mean the weak little ab-contractor ones, there's way better/stronger ones, like this one: http://www.unitytools.com/clients/contexts/compex/index.asp?cid=1584&pid=3039

Opinions? Experiences? thx

 

[KOArtist]

CoolColJ????

 

[KOArtist]

http://www.inno-sport.net/The Buchenholz Method Vol 3.htm

A little link from CoolColJ, good read on how effective it can be.

 

[Illuminati]

i dont know about it building muscle, but it works hella good for rehab

 

[KOArtist]

Yeah, Ive used it for rehab myself. The most interesting stuff in that article was "After a 4 week period of internally-driven training exclusion (read: no strength training) we determined that EMS training, by itself, consistently produced 20-30% gains in strength with all of our heatlhy "test subjects". "

That parts pretty amazing if you ask me. I'm mostly looking at it to enhance explosiveness/fast twitch count only, but if it produces 20-30% gains in strength, it seems it could probably help w/ mass too.

 

[Madcow2]

I didn't read the whole article but the one issue you tend to run into with studies like these is that the population is almost never one the routinely utilizes strength/weight training. Just getting the muscles moving is often enough to elicit a decent response from an untrained population. I don't know if this applies here or not but it's very common.