Here’s what getting ready to do an EMS (electrical muscle stimulation) training session entails. First, you strip to your pants and a sports bra. Next, you don the provided t-shirt and cycling shorts. Finally, on goes the EMS suit, the insides of which have been spritzed with water to conduct the current, the outsides of which look faintly like something Frankenstein might’ve had in his lab.
By the time I’m in the West Hampstead branch of E-Pulsive being wired up by the personal trainer who’ll guide me through the twenty minutes, I’m damp and bogged down by equipment. I also realise I’m nervous about the first jolt of electrical muscle stimulation they're about to beseige my body with. I resist the urge to bolt, reminding myself that I am here on a mission to find out why Madonna, Elizabeth Hurley, Heidi Klum, and Poppy Delevingne are fans.
It’s not as bad as anticipated. More a light electric clutch where the pads hit my body than a shock, though each time the pulses are on, my muscles respond like quivering fish keen to escape a net — but escape they can’t, because they are firmly strapped into the suit. It’s satisfying, too, as if Things Are Happening beneath them. We start with intermittent pulses — ten seconds on, twenty seconds off — during which I squat, plank and push as my muscles leap around under duress.
I go home thinking it was all a bit odd and perhaps a gimmick. But the next day my muscles feel sore to the point of wincing when I descend the staircase. The movements we did during the workout didn’t warrant this response, and during my next session three days later, I ask them to switch the duration and intensity of the EMS suit up to see if my muscles respond commensurately. The answer: a categorical yes. And a big ouch.
I’ve now completed two EMS work outs a week for a few months. Each time, the focus has varied. Sometimes the arms were turned up a notch, sometimes the legs. I often asked for my core area to be on as high as I could bear in an attempt to tone that forever flabby area. Herein lies the real appeal: yes, it does absolutely amp up the ante on a short work out, but it’s very handy that you can customise the intensity whether to bring your body back into balance after an injury, or because, like me, you’ve got a stubborn area that needs a bit more help.
E-Pulsive co-founder Eladio de Leon says, “there is no other work out as efficient and effective,” and I am inclined to agree. But you don’t just have to take our word for it — studies on EMS training have shown that over a twelve week period, clients could lose up to 9 per cent body fat but — and this is the real win — gain 30 per cent strength, with 98 per cent of muscles engaged during sessions.
The thing you won’t get from it? The satisfaction element of exercise — you know the one: sweaty, heart rate up, a bit of burn as your body starts to ask for a lie down and a hot bath. But if you’re all about results and want them, stat, book in. For my part, I’ll incorporate it into my routine, but will be interspersing it with other forms of exercise so I also get the release my body craves.
Private and partner sessions start from £50. Trial sessions cost £20. Initial consultations last 45 minutes in total where the trainer will discuss lifestyle, goals and potential injuries followed by a fully customised 20-minute EMS workout.
