EMS Workouts and Injuries
As the great poet Drake once said: “like a sprained ankle, boy, I ain’t nothing to play with.”
I agree with Drake here. Having suffered sprained ankles, a meniscus tear, a subluxated shoulder, a dislocated finger, a shoulder impingement here and there, occasional lower back pain, and a chronic neck injury, I am familiar with dealing with injuries. The culprit of most of these injuries? Basketball… and yet, I still play it!
I dedicated my career to mostly working with people with injuries and coming out of physical therapy rehabilitation. The goal of physical therapy is usually to get you back to moving pain-free. Insurance typically only covers a predetermined number of sessions for each issue. Physical therapists try to make the most out of your time together, but in my entire career, I never heard anyone say: “I had 8 sessions and it was more than I needed”. This process translates into patients coming out of physical therapy weaker than before they got injured and sometimes still in pain.
Problems from injuries
The joint: You have difficulties moving the injured joint, maybe you feel pain when moving in certain directions, or you can’t even move it. The rest of the body will compensate so you start using other muscles and joints in a way they weren’t intended. This compensation can sometimes lead to overuse injuries.
Activities: Many activities will be impacted in ways you may not even imagine. If we take the example of an injured shoulder, washing your hair, getting dressed, getting groceries, traveling with bags, picking up children, and other common activities will prove exceptionally challenging.
Psychological impact: The psychological impact of injuries can be significant and varied. For some people, an injury may lead to feelings of sadness, anger, and frustration. These emotions may be particularly pronounced if the injury prevents you from participating in activities that are important to you, such as sports, work, or playing with your kids or grandkids.
In some cases, an injury may also lead to anxiety and fear, particularly if you are concerned about your ability to fully recover or if you are worried about the potential consequences of the injury.
The road to recovery tends to feel long, inconvenient, and depressing. It is worth doing everything you can to recover as fast as possible so you can get back to your normal life, but also to avoid any further loss of strength in the affected joint and rest of the body if the injury prevents you from performing your regular physical activities.
Enter EMS Fitness
Electric muscle stimulation workouts are excellent for people going through physical therapy or post-rehabilitation for four great reasons.
- SuperSuit: The EMS SuperSuit has electrodes that are placed directly on every major muscle group. The stimulation will elicit a muscle contraction whether there is movement or not. Long-term, it is better to move along with the stimulation to ensure optimal muscle adaptation, but short-term EMS will allow for muscles to maintain strength, and even increase even though you’re injured.
- Background: Historically, electric muscle stimulation has been used in physical therapy to avoid muscle atrophy and alleviate aches and pains. We wrote a blog about the differences between EMS as a treatment with a TENS unit in comparison to EMS as a fitness modality, you can read about it here. Although we do not treat injuries directly as a physical therapist would, EMS fitness can help speed up the process as we can incorporate any of the homework exercises in our sessions in addition to the stimulation potentially affecting the injured area.
- Stronger faster: In conventional training, and especially after an injury, you would have to resume exercise with very light weights and slowly progress to heavier loads. This process typically takes around three months or longer depending on the consistency and the type of injury. This means you’re mostly training your muscle endurance fibers, also called slow-twitch fibers for the first couple of months until you can get to actual strength training and target the fast-twitch muscle fibers. EMS fitness stimulates both muscle fiber types from day one, so you will regain strength quicker than if you took a break to recover.
- Recovery mode: We end our EMS fitness sessions with a few minutes of our Buzz Recovery program which uses a more superficial but continuous stimulation that increases blood flow, removes lactic acid, and helps with lymphatic drainage. Blood flow is important for recovery from injury because it helps to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the affected area. Oxygen is necessary for the healing process, as it helps to promote the growth of new tissue. In addition to delivering oxygen and nutrients, blood flow also helps to remove waste products and toxins from the area, which can otherwise hinder the healing process.
If you are interested in learning if EMS fitness would be a good option for you, book a free consultation with me here: https://calendly.com/conradfitness/30min
Conrad
Director of Education and Technology
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.