In today’s world, EMS is gaining massive popularity in the world of sports. Many people, especially athletes, recognize its amazing ability to improve their performance, enhance their fitness, and accelerate their recovery. This technology is widely used by many people, like athletes, fitness fanatics, and personal trainers who are continuously trying to do better in sports and push their limits to achieve their goals. EMS operates through electrical impulses that help stimulate muscles and help activate muscles that might be hard to trigger by using only the traditional types of workouts. While professional athletes mostly use EMS, this outstanding technology is open to all, and the best part is it can be easily accessible to anyone.
So whether you are a professional or a complete beginner and want to take the first step into your fitness journey, EMS can be used in multiple types of training, such as strength-building exercises, physical rehabilitation, postpartum recovery, and many more. In this article, you will gain complete knowledge about what EMS is and the incredible reasons to use it. However, certain types of people should avoid using EMS. Read below to learn everything about EMS.
What Is Ems?
EMS is the short form for Electronic Muscle Stimulation. This technology is made to work on electrical impulses that help in triggering the contractions of the muscles. These impulses imitate the natural signals that the brain sends to the muscles during physical movement. All the EMS devices provide you with electrodes that you stick to your skin on the targeted muscle groups. This helps in delivering minute currents of electricity that help in activating your muscles.
Electronic Muscle Stimulation (EMS) can be used for multiple different kinds of things, like increasing the strength of your muscles and recovery of muscles after the workout. It is mostly used by sportspeople and physical therapy sessions. Even though this technology is getting popular in today’s world. However, this method is quite old; it dates back to around 500 BC. In ancient times, Romans, Egyptians, and Greeks used electrical fish like eels, knifefish, electric catfish, and others to produce electrical impulses and apply treatment to their pain.
Reasons To Use Ems In Sports
EMS technology is helping to evolve the ways to train and recover for the athletes. This provides great advantages in sports performances. So if you are looking to boost your strength, enhance your endurance, and speed up your recovery. EMS can help you in many ways. Below you will learn about some amazing reasons to use EMS in sports.
1. Boosts Blood Flow To Muscles
Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) can help increase the blood flow to muscles. This feature helps many athletes and sportspeople in many different ways. The electrical impulses make the muscles contract and relax. These contractions imitate the natural movements of the muscles, and this can give you an intense experience. As your muscles constantly contract, this boosts the circulation of blood that is rich in oxygen to reach all parts of your body. This ultimately helps you to perform better in sports.
2. Improved Performance Levels
It can help in improving the level of your performance by activating your muscles, enhancing your strength, and increasing your endurance. Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) is built to deliver electrical impulses that target specific groups of muscles and help activate them, which is often hard to do by workouts. It becomes the reason to improve the power of muscles and tone them better. All of this makes the level of your performance better.
3. Enhances Endurance
Having endurance is a necessary thing for professional athletes. It is especially important for those people who participate in sports that require lots of endurance, like running, cycling, boxing, basketball, soccer, and many more. Some research on sports science and medicine has found that using EMS has proven to enhance the endurance of sportspeople. The reason for this is because it helps in improving the muscle contractions and reducing fatigue in muscles. Having high endurance in sports can allow you to perform better.
4. Speeds Up Recovery After Workouts
One of the major reasons to use Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) in sports is that it helps professional athletes to recover faster after their workouts. Its amazing features boost the flow of blood in your body and help remove the lymph fluid from your body’s lymphatic system, help in reducing inflammation, and provide you with good healing, which is essential for faster recovery from muscle soreness and injuries. It can be incredibly beneficial for people who have to engage in extreme exercise to improve their gameplay in sports.
5. Delivers Quick Results
Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) is quite time-efficient and helps in delivering results quickly. This is one of the best reasons that many professional athletes use EMS in sports. It can help you by increasing your strength and conditioning your workouts during your methods of training. Each EMS session takes about 25 to 30 minutes to complete and has 300 times more efficacy. All of these make EMS an excellent thing for athletes and people who want to achieve fitness but have busy schedules.
6. Minimizes Muscle Soreness After Exercise
Using Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) after your workout or during your exercise can help in minimizing the soreness in your muscles. It helps you with better blood circulation and faster recovery of muscles. When your muscles are stimulated by the electrical impulses of EMS, they get contracted and more relaxed, which improves the blood flow in your body. The increased circulation of blood provides your body with more oxygen and essential nutrients for the muscles. It can also relieve tension in your muscles.
7. Maintains Muscle Density Longer
It can help maintain muscle density longer by continuously stimulating muscles in a way that can’t be done even by traditional exercises. The electrical impulses from Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) work on both the internal and external surfaces of the body, allowing it to activate deeper fibers of muscles. This quality helps in preserving your muscle mass and strength for a long period of time. Because of this reason, it becomes quite useful during the time when there is less time for being physically active.
8. Elevates Explosive Force
Muscle’s explosive force is also called explosive strength; this is an extremely useful ability that allows a person to generate a huge amount of force in a short period of time. The explosive force is mostly used by basketball players to perform the slam dunk move or a sprinter accelerating their way from the starting point. This requires the combination of both speed and strength, which is why using an EMS can be quite helpful. EMS will not only enhance your strength but also your responsiveness, allowing you to perform more explosive force movements.
9. Activation Of Fast Muscle Fibers
By directly stimulating electrical impulses from the Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS), you can activate your fast muscle fibers. These muscle fibers are required for quick reflexes and powerful movements. Fast muscle fibers are able to contract in 0.01 seconds, which makes them three times faster than other muscle fibers. However, they get fatigued more quickly. So using an EMS can help in increasing their performances, which will be beneficial for you as an athlete while performing in high-intensity sports that require you to be more speedy and powerful.
10. Lowers Joint Load To Enhance Movement
Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) helps in lowering the load in your joint, which allows enhanced movements of the muscles. This activates and strengthens your muscles without applying any additional stress to the joints. Being involved in traditional training can put strains on the joints, especially when lifting heavy weights and performing repetitive movements during physical exercise. It also promotes the growth of muscles and improves your performance. All of these reasons make EMS an ideal piece of technology for athletes.
Who Should Avoid EMS?
Even though Electronic Muscle Stimulation (EMS) is an outstanding technology and can help you in plenty of ways, there are a bunch of reasons to use EMS. However, it is also highly recommended to avoid it by people who have certain conditions.
- You should avoid using EMS when you are suffering from any infection or fever.
- During the time of pregnancy, avoid the use of EMS, especially in the abdomen area.
- If you have a pacemaker (a small device that helps in maintaining heart rate by sending electrical pulses) installed, then you should not use EMS, as the current of EMS will interrupt the pacemaker.
- You should avoid EMS if you have nerve or brain disorders.
- If you are suffering from a serious illness, then you should not use EMS without first consulting with your doctor.
- When you have surgery, then it is best to avoid EMS. However, you can consult with your doctor.
- If you have any kind of electrical device implanted in your body, like a pain stimulator, then it is best to avoid using EMS.
- EMS should never be used over your eyes.
Final Thoughts
Electronic Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has plenty of excellent benefits in sports. It can boost the flow of blood in your body, improve your level of performance, enhance your endurance, fasten the process of recovery after exercise, deliver quick results, minimize the soreness in your muscles, maintain the density of muscles for a long time, increase your explosive force, activate your fast muscle fibers, and reduce the load of joints. All of these make you faster and stronger in sports. However, you need to make sure that you are using EMS in the right way and avoiding it if you are suffering from illness and any other reasons mentioned above.
At SilaFit, we understand that everyone has different needs and has unique goals to achieve fitness. We have built a team of highly skilled trainers with lots of experience and custom EMS programs that help you achieve your specific goals. Our staff members guide you on how to use EMS and how to add it to your training. For more information, you can contact us at 240 744-7634 or send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.