Electronic muscle stimulation (EMS for short) has been around for a while - 50 years or so - but thanks to Instagram and celebrity endorsements, it's starting to get popular.

Put simply, it’s a fitness tactic that involves strapping pads to your body and using controlled zaps of electricity to contract and release your muscles.

Just like analogue exercise it strengthens your muscles by stressing and damaging them. But the benefit of EMS is that you can be much more efficient with your strengthening and damaging.

I was told, as I turned up for a "training session” that 25 minutes in an EMS suit is the equivalent to putting in an hour’s grind at the gym.

Now I wish I could say my experience mirrored Ivan Drago’s from Rocky IV but the reality was much less glamorous.

The dream...
...the reality

I was wired up by Eduard, a 50-year-old who hailed from Latvia and, admittedly, looked good for his age.

In his front room, which doubled as a studio, I ran through three programs: resistance, cardio and a warm-down - all while being shocked by an Apple-esque monitor that stood in the corner, hooked up to the suit.

At best it felt like mildly irritating prods. At worst, it felt like trying to do push-ups whilst being punched in the stomach.

“On a scale of one-to-ten, you should be going at around seven or eight, the key is not to over-force,” Eduardo said.

Afterwards I felt like it had been a tough workout but nothing dissimilar from a trip to the gym.

I didn't really feel the full effect of EMS until a day or two later

It was only after about two days when the aches and soreness set in that I realised my entire body had been put through the ringer even though the actual “exercise” had been pretty tame.

Eduardo runs emsfitness.co.uk and if you want to get into full-body EMS you need to be aware it’s not cheap. One session costs £50 which goes down when you buy bulk: signing up for 30 sessions will see you £900 lighter (£30 a go).

I paid £25 for a trial session - which then becomes free if you decide to go for a subscription. As yet, I've not signed up.

But there’s a reason for the price - the suits don’t come cheap. Created by a Hungarian company called Xbody , each one costs about £15,000 once you throw in the required control panel. Any personal trainer that wants to start offering courses has to not only pay for the gear but also gain a training qualification.

The Xbody training suit (
Image:
Xbody)

But even though full-body training sessions are yet to go mainstream, other companies are using the technology at what could be called entry-level.

If you *are* aware of EMS it could be thanks to 90s-style home kits promising to give you washboard abs while you sit watching TV. That type of thing is still around but - thankfully - it’s come a long way.

Slendertone recently launched a new type of EMS belt called Connected Abs that uses Bluetooth and a smartphone app to guide you through tailored workouts. You can set the level of intensity yourself or follow recommendations on the app.

The app may be free, but the belt will cost you £179.99

Rather than giving you an all-over blitz, Slendertone focuses on the core - which basically stabilises all your other muscles while you’re exercising. The company says that 30 minutes using the belt is the equivalent to cranking out 202 sit-ups.

Less expensive than a couple of months of full-body EMS, Slendertone’s new belt will still set you back £179.99 . When I strapped one on (less than 10 days after my adventure with Eduardo) I found I was breathing heavier and my heart rate was faster than before.

“I love that Slendertone can provide the toning element to your fitness regime,” said Made in Chelsea’s Lonan O’Herlihy, the face (and abdominals) of Slendertone’s new product.

“Exercise and motivation is the key to seeing results,” he maintains. And after thirty minutes with the man - who looks like he's carved out of granite - I'm not going to argue.

Other companies are offering similar wares: Japanese company SIXPAD is launching two new EMS kits in the UK in June. One of which is a Cristiano Ronaldo-endorsed stick-on six-pack called Abs Fit which costs £149.00.

In fact, several top-level athletes, including Usain Bolt, swear by it as a means of training.

"EMS is indispensable to daily training and exercising on a daily basis can lead to optimal physical performance," says Cristiano.

Ronaldo says he uses EMS to help with his training

Even the scientific community seems on board with the idea.

Back in 2012, a research group at the University of Poitiers in France ran an experiment pitting EMS against traditional land-based training for elite sprint swimmers.

“Programs combining swimming training with dry-land strength of electronic stimulation programs led to a gain in sprint performance and were more efficient than swimming alone,” concluded the research team in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning .

Now, the obvious caveat to this whole song and dance is that EMS is not going to give you a Zac Efron or Beyonce body overnight.

In fact, if you want results like that it’s going to be closer to six months or, more likely, a year of hard work. But it does add an extra dimension to workouts and will target muscles that you might have been overlooking.

And whether or not you fancy strapping into EMS yourself, you can't deny there's a buzz around this new form of fitness.

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