ELECTRICAL MUSCLE STIMULATION

EMS has been around for decades as a way to strengthen muscles for injury rehab, fitness, and sport performance purposes.  The classical way of applying EMS is to place electrodes on the muscle(s) you wish to get stronger and crank up the power to elicit a contraction.  Most times, it's applied passively; meaning the user isn't moving while the machine goes to work.  Active EMS has been growing in popularity and for good reason as movement with EMS yields far better results.  The reason is because the brain and nervous system is involved so you get usable strength; after all, what's the point of making a muscle stronger if you can't use it!  The only time movement is inferior is if the user has an injury that needs to be restricted from movement so it can heal (i.e. immediately post-surgery/injury).

 

There are countless EMS devices on the market that are designed for different purposes. The device we use, the Globus Genesy, is among a small but growing class of stimulators (ARPwave, Neubie by Neufit, NXPro by NeuXTec, Phoenix Waveform, Axon i-Myo Pro, etc.) designed to induce eccentric, or lengthening, muscle contractions; whereas most devices on the market create concentric, or shortening contractions.  The overwhelming majority of aches and pains people are experiencing are due to movement imbalances caused by tight/shortened or concentrically contracted muscles.  When a muscle is in a shortened state it isn't as strong as it should be, which forces other muscles to pick up the slack; this is known as a compensation pattern.  Eventually those muscles and joints wear out from overworking leaving you in pain.  The typical method of treatment is to focus locally on the injured area and sometimes on the nearby areas; oftentimes completely ignoring the rest of the body.   The Globus allows us to scan the entire body to pinpoint exactly where the root(s) of your pain are coming from.  For example, what if your back pain is coming from a weak muscle in your foot?  No amount of back, glute, hip strengthening work will alleviate the pain until the foot is addressed.

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Once the problem areas are found, full-body corrective exercise is done.  You likely have heard the song "the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone"; well that couldn't be more true!  Those tight, shortened muscles will cause weakness in other areas too.  So while we stimulate the problem areas with the machine, we exercise the whole body!  As the training process goes on, you will experience a full-body strengthening and flexibility effect which gives rise to pain relief as the body becomes strong and balanced.

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This process is incredibly effective, but it surely is not passive.  Many people mistakenly believe this to be a treatment analogous to Lasik eye surgery where you come in and the machine zaps your pain away.  While results are certainly obtained faster than most methods, it is still a training process no different than any other form of exercise or rehabilitation.  It will require work, time, and effort.  The only way to truly alleviate, not merely mask, pain caused by muscle imbalances is to train functionally.  If you are someone looking for real solutions and are willing to put in the work we would love to work with you!