The deal
Since I’ve moved to Cape Town, I’ve become a lot more active and exercise is a fun part of my day, so the idea of trying out BodyTec’s Electro Muscular Stimulation (EMS) sounded excellent, and very mysterious…
What it is
Basically, it’s a 20-minute session doing light exercises while hooked up to an EMS machine, which stimulates your muscles through electrodes. It’s really fascinating how it works. I won’t go into the technology behind it (you can read all about it on their website), but in a short this stimuli causes the muscles to contract and creates an intense and deep muscle strengthening exercise.
How much more intense can it be, though? A lot. One 20-minute session is equivalent to 4,5 hours doing normal strength training at the gym. That’s a lot.
They got me
They got me wearing some complicated-looking stuff and hooked to a machine, ready to do some light exercises (they’re only considered light in the conventional exercise sense, but in the EMS world it’s a whole different ball game). I must admit that at this point I saw potential death flash before my eyes. Once they explained it all, I was ready to feel the EMS buzz for the first time and it was a bit crazy:
Once I knew what I was dealing with though, I realized that it wasn’t scary at all, but it was now ‘Woman Against The Machine’ in my own body.
I was a human transformer and every time that damn machine buzzed, I went into robot mode. I literally felt like a robot. The stimulation grips the muscles you’re working with and makes each exercise a cajillion times more difficult. It looks like I’m being a big weak baby, but I’m actually kicking ass on the inside:
And so…
It was fun and if you wage a battle against yourself in your head while doing it, it’s even more fun. I quickly felt where my muscles were a bit weak or needed some extra attention. It’s also intense on the core and this makes me happy because I’ve only recently come to realise how important core strength is in everything that we do.
I was really tired after my session and my body had no idea what I just did to it. The next few days my bum muscles told me exactly how they felt about it all and I felt like I had done a mad workout.
It’s an interesting 20-minute on-the-go exercise option for those looking for better physical results, with less time available to achieve them.
