Whenever you consider energy coaching for dancers, you doubtless conjure pictures of a Pilates reformer, or some workouts with gentle weights. However for Tracy Shibata, a business dancer at the moment on tour with P!NK, energy coaching seems a bit completely different. You’ll typically discover Shibata carrying a full-body Katalyst go well with, performing easy workouts because the go well with sends low-frequency electrical currents to her muscle groups to stimulate them.
The exercise is named electrical muscle stimulation coaching, and although it’s new as a health development within the U.S., it makes use of a way dancers could already be conversant in in bodily remedy and rehabilitation settings, says Krista Austin, PhD, CSCS, a sports activities scientist and train physiologist, as it’s typically used to help the musculature round an harm in order that it doesn’t atrophy.
EMS caught on as a full-body exercise in Europe within the early 2000s, and now it’s taking maintain within the U.S., with boutique EMS studios popping up everywhere in the nation and firms like Katalyst providing at-home EMS choices. As a fast and low-to-no-impact exercise, it is sensible that EMS already has devoted dancer followers like Shibata. Listed below are the potential advantages—and disadvantages—dancers ought to find out about earlier than making an attempt EMS.
What EMS Is Like
An EMS session includes placing on undergear and a go well with (which may embrace shorts, a vest, and armbands) that’s barely moist. Sure, moist: Water conducts electrical energy, and as soon as electrodes are linked to the go well with equivalent to the key muscle teams (biceps, triceps, quads, glutes, pectorals, abdominals, and so on.), an exterior management system can be utilized to ship impulses to these muscle groups, stimulating the nerves that make them contract.
A coach or coach will assist stroll you thru simply how a lot present you want—a low dose seems like a light-weight buzzing, whereas a excessive one feels extra intense. All through an EMS session, you carry out easy body weight workouts (like squats, bicep curls, and lunges) that correspond to the electrical impulses. (So that you would possibly transfer via a squat for 4 seconds as you obtain the impulse and your muscle groups contract, then have 4 seconds of relaxation.)
Classes sometimes solely final 20 minutes and might finish with a couple of minutes of restoration: You would possibly stand, lie down, or evenly stretch as the electrical present pulses your muscle groups like a delicate therapeutic massage.
The Potential Advantages for Dancers
Muscle recruitment: “Often, our strongest muscle fibers take over the duty,” says Chris John, an internationally licensed EMS coach and the proprietor of Volts & Amps EMS studio in Sloatsburg, New York. “So let’s say with our bicep, we preserve coaching the identical 60 p.c of that muscle fiber over and over. EMS helps recruit weaker muscle fibers and strengthen them.”
Low to no influence: If the explanation you strength-train is to stop accidents while you’re dancing, you don’t need that strength-training routine to pose a excessive harm threat. EMS eliminates lots of these harm considerations: There aren’t any heavy weights (or any weights in any respect, normally), no leaping, and little to no influence on the joints, which is good for dancers, says Arianna Lionetti, a New York–space dance instructor who makes use of EMS weekly. “As a dancer, you’re continuously doing high-impact work that’s so strenuous in your joints,” she says. “EMS is a much less demanding method to your physique to enhance.”
Thoughts–physique connection: Most dancers have had the expertise of being instructed to interact a sure muscle however feeling uncertain about the place, precisely, that muscle is, or what it seems like to make use of it. EMS can assist construct a thoughts–physique connection that can provide dancers extra management over and data of their muscle groups, says Lionetti, which she says helps her each within the fitness center (when she’s understanding sans EMS) and within the dance studio. “As an alternative of somebody pointing at your muscle and telling you to contract it, the EMS does it for you,” she says. “It allowed me to be like, ‘Oh, that’s what that seems like.’ It offers you a goal of how your physique is meant to really feel throughout an train.” Shibata agrees: “In dance, there are a number of actions you are able to do by utilizing the inappropriate muscle groups, and over time that’s extra put on and tear in your physique,” she says. “Understanding the way to transfer in an environment friendly and proper method is absolutely vital, and also you don’t at all times perceive that by simply watching somebody do it.”
Restoration and mobility: Although each Shibata and Lionetti admit they had been fairly sore after their first few EMS classes, each anecdotally share that now the exercise leaves their our bodies feeling extra free and cellular than a conventional strength-training session, which can include extra tightness. “Whenever you’re understanding, it’s like a deep-tissue therapeutic massage on the identical time,” says John. “You come out and you are feeling energized, your lymphatic system is open. It’s not like conventional weight coaching, the place you’re feeling like that you must stretch afterwards.”
The Potential Dangers
Although utilizing EMS expertise that has been cleared by the FDA ought to usually be secure, there are dangers of overdoing it. Uncommon instances of rhabdomyolysis (or extreme muscle harm) have been linked to EMS (although different high-intensity types of train can even result in this situation). Austin says there’s additionally a threat of EMS overtraining small muscle groups and ligaments not constructed for a lot stimulus, which may trigger irritation and put on and tear.
The Backside Line
EMS remains to be comparatively new expertise, and there’s not but adequate analysis to again up claims some manufacturers make about its effectiveness. And, says John, it’s solely meant to help, not fully change, coaching you’re already doing.
If you wish to strive EMS, make sure the expertise you’re utilizing has been cleared by the FDA, and that you just’re working with an authorized and competent coach who can educate you in regards to the contraindications (which embrace being pregnant) and make sure that you’re not getting extra depth than your physique can deal with. Begin sluggish, suggests Shibata—even when it feels such as you’re not doing a lot at first. “You need to acknowledge that you just’re nonetheless doing arduous work,” she says. “Only a completely different form of arduous work than a dancer is used to.”
