EMS Fitness With or Without Weights?
Is there any benefit to using weights with electro muscle stimulation?
The short answer is you don’t need weights with your EMS workouts.
We actually do use light weights with our clients because there are some benefits, but they have nothing to do with making the exercises harder.
What about heavy weights? The general recommendation from most experts and EMS equipment manufacturers is not to combine heavy weights with whole-body electro muscle stimulation, and below we will explain why. However, there is plenty of gray area because EMS is such a versatile tool that allows for a lot of options.
I know the terms “light” and “heavy” are relative. Since we provide EMS personal training, I’m referring to relatively light or heavy weights according to each person and their strength.
One of the many benefits of EMS fitness is that the intensity can be adjusted as high or as low as desired. The SuperSuit provides all the stimulation needed for the muscles. You are not required to use additional equipment at all.
This makes it convenient to do EMS workouts at home, outdoors, at a park, hotel room, and anywhere really.
That said, we do use weights. Mostly light ones by any subjective measure. All of our trainers have a tool kit they can choose from. We have options ranging from stress balls up to kettlebells. The intention behind using such tools is to help guide the movement rather than providing additional load for the muscles. We can also train without any weights at all.
Very much like in Yoga asanas or Pilates, using props can help with proprioception and bring more awareness to the movement. In fact, in our tool bag, we also have a “magic circle”, often used in Pilates matwork.
Flexing your arm is going to seem much more intuitive to achieve if you do a bicep curl holding a dumbbell, even if light, than if you’re just trying to contract your bicep on its own. In addition to the movement being more intuitive, the tactile feedback of the dumbbell will also give you a sense of how hard you’re contracting your muscles.
We mentioned proprioception, which is the body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location. The hands, very much like the feet, are often the first point of contact with any object, so I believe it is important to engage and train this system to maintain dexterity and a sense of three-dimensionality.
Cool, but don’t heavy weights deserve love too?
Yes, of course, they do, as I said at the beginning, I have nothing against heavy lifting.
The problem has to do with quantifying how intensely you’re working out when lifting heavy along with whole-body electro muscle stimulation.
There is a gray area, however. I can see how it can be useful for athletes, bodybuilders, dancers, and so on. There would need to be some adjustments and considerations, and most likely target the stimulation around muscle activation, synergies, or sequencing. Whole-body EMS allows us to turn on or off any muscle group and adjust them to our desired level, so there could be some very interesting applications.
We will revisit this topic again in a future blog entry to explore the reasons for our ambiguous position regarding electro muscle stimulation and heavy weights.
We want to hear from you. What type of resistance training do you prefer? Higher repetitions or lower repetitions? Do you think it would be fun to try superimposed EMS?
Email me your answers: conrad@bodybuzzfit.com
Book a 30-minute call with me to see if EMS would be right for you here: https://calendly.com/conradfitness/30min
Conrad
Director of Education and Technology
conrad@bodybuzzfit.com
Bodybuzz
Bodybuzz combines Certified Personal Training with Electrical Muscle Stimulation, giving your body a deeper, safer, and more effective workout. 20 minutes twice a week is all it takes!
Our personal trainers will guide you through a custom EMS workout designed specifically for you. Whether you’re looking to build strength, lose weight, get toned, or recover from an injury or illness, we offer a safe, low-impact solution to help get you there.
EMS has now been FDA-cleared for use in the US and we are proud to be one of the first companies to introduce this technology. It is a full-body workout that uses a special muscle stimulating suit that sends low-level impulses to your major muscle groups to trigger muscle contractions. It’s a unique sensation that is painless and invigorating. EMS workouts are designed to achieve optimal conditioning, burn fat, develop strength, build muscle, tighten skin, combat cellulite, jump-start your metabolism and restore your body’s natural balance.