#3: Turning the Current on Menopause: Can EMS Technology Reverse Osteoporosis and Sarcopenia?

The Benefits and Impact of EMS Technology on Health Optimization

In this episode of Biohacking Eve - Health Optimization for Women with Judith Mueller, guest Bjoern Woltermann, founder and CEO of Katalyst, discusses the groundbreaking effects of Electro Muscle Stimulation (EMS) technology. The discussion includes insights into a study from the University of Erlangen showcasing EMS's efficacy in improving bone density and muscle strength in elderly women. Bjoern shares his personal journey of discovering EMS and how it transformed his back pain and fitness level. The conversation also delves into the broader benefits of EMS, including its applications for aging women, muscle mass retention, recovery from injuries, and even space missions. Additional topics include EMS's impact on female health issues like osteoporosis, sarcopenia, postnatal recovery, and pelvic floor strength, as well as potential contraindications and the future of integrating Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) technology with EMS.

00:00 Introduction to EMS and Bone Health Study

01:05 Welcome to Biohacking Eve with Judith Mueller

01:31 Meet Bjoern Woltermann: Founder of Katalyst

01:52 Understanding EMS Technology

03:01 Bjoern's Personal Journey with EMS

13:57 The Impact of EMS on Muscle and Bone Health

25:09 EMS and Women's Health: Menopause and Beyond

29:07 EMS for Postnatal Recovery and Pelvic Floor Health

35:51 The Role of EMS in Recovery and Rehabilitation

37:40 The Origins and Safety of EMS

38:25 Selective Muscle Activation and Recovery

40:32 Addressing Muscle Imbalances

42:02 EMS Training for Tendons and Ligaments

45:13 Katalyst: The Smart Home Training System

49:47 The Katalyst Suit: Design and Functionality

01:02:35 Training Recommendations and Schedules

01:09:00 Safety and Contraindications

01:10:01 Exploring Blood Flow Restriction (BFR)

01:11:12 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Links:

Katalyst: https://bit.ly/KatalystBE

Bjoern's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwoltermann/

Erlangen Study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245024223_Effekte_eines_Ganzkorper-Elektromyostimulations-Trainings_auf_die_Knochendichte_eines_Hochrisikokollektivs_fur_Osteopenie_Eine_randomisierte_Studie_mit_schlanken_und_sportlich_inaktiven_Frauen

Menopause episode: https://youtu.be/NX0-mmnCuDc?si=Et4DnzX5ALdgwktr

Sarcopenia episode: https://youtu.be/9kimNmpRbXM?si=Urg6h7wt5Rc-gv2Y

Insta/TikTok: @BiohackingEve
Website: www.BiohackingEve.com

Transcript

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 0:00

there's a 2017, University of Erlangen study, they took women 75 years plus minus four years, one year through EMS training, they did DEXA scans before and after, so more or less, like it was between four and 6%, the control group lost. 6 percent bone density over one year. The EMS group gained, I think 0. 5 percent bone density in that year. And they tested a lumbar spine. So lower back. And femur neck, this is what you generally break. If that's not the definition of anti aging, where you basically not lost a year, but gained a year, now there's two years difference between the control group and the EMS group. And that is on bone mineralization, similar results on the strength portion. So general sarcopenia, loss of muscle mass, roughly a percent control group gained 10 percent of strength

Judith Mueller 1:09

Welcome back to Biohacking Eve Health Optimisation for Women with Judith Mueller, where we shine a light on everything that will help you reach your best self as a woman, as unique and individual as only you can be. Live long and prosper, my friend. Hello. Welcome back everyone. Today we have Bjoern Woltermann on the show. Bjoern is the founder and CEO of Katalyst, which utilizes full body electrode, muscle stimulation. That's a bit of a mouthful. So(EMS) technology, it's called, and EMS technology makes working out easier, faster, safer, and more effective than ever before. Welcome, Bjoern

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:51

Thank you for having me.

Judith Mueller 1:53

so first of all, what on earth is EMS technology?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:57

So EMS technology is as you said, like electro muscle stimulation training, and it basically simulates the same thing, how your body works already and uses this brain signal that it simulates to help your muscles be active, to contract to have a better tetanus. So coming to a full contraction and yeah, helps you working out and it does all that without the need of an external weight. So for example, if you do a biceps curl very simply. What it does is if you do the biceps curl, the triceps works against the biceps. So that's the counterforce. you don't need to have a 20 pound dumbbell in your hand, which over the leverage of the arm would have a large load on your elbow. So for example, individuals that have issues with joints or have a high injury risk in itself don't need the weights and can work out. And now think this, not only on the arm, but over the whole body.

Judith Mueller 3:01

Cool. how did you get into that?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 3:04

How did I get into that? So I was in tech that's now 12 years ago. And I have a lower back condition in the first place. So I had a career change in my early twenties because I wasn't supposed to sit in place for a long period of time. And I found myself 150 days a year on a plane because I had teams in 15 different countries and I was flying around the world between different countries in Europe, Israel, East coast, West coast Basically everywhere. I was in absolute agony. I was on painkillers 20 days a month and My physician told me, you have three choices. You're either going to quit your job. You are gonna significantly strengthen your back, or we're going to operate probably next year on a herniated disc. And I was like I don't want the disc thing. Let's not do that. I also don't want to quit my job. So what are we going to do? He says I go to the studio down the road and they're using these suits and I do this twice a week and they help you stimulate your muscles. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's absolutely amazing. And I was just sitting there what are you talking about? What is this? And he says, and the best thing is, it's just 20 minutes. I said, okay, now you lost me. It's too good to be true. Forget it. It's just, that's not it.

Judith Mueller 4:23

It's like the magic weight loss

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 4:24

Yeah. exactly. And he said no, go. And I knew that he was not a fitness guy. He was mid 30s at the time or like early 30s, but like decently in shape. It was in Berlin. So I just got out of his practice. And I just went down and, looked at the studio and there was this like beautiful white studio. Big window front, two individuals in black suits, cables everywhere, in front of a device with a trainer and doing this.

Judith Mueller 4:59

And when we say black suits it's not, like a suit suit. It's more like a space suit.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 5:04

Yeah, it literally looks like a bomb vest, people ask me especially 10 years ago can you travel with this? It's you put this in your carry on, do they let you through TSA? I was like yeah. It's they're not looking for the wires. They're looking for the stuff at the end of the wires. So that's a different thing. It really looks like a bomb vest. And the weird thing was, people were not really moving, they were just moving their arms like butterflies but there was a puddle of sweat in front of them. And I was like is this a heated room? And I went inside, it was not hot here, like it's normal temperature. so there were like two trainers, one trainer was currently busy and the other one saying hey, welcome. I said, what is this? This is EMS training I said, can I try this? Yeah. Come next week. I was like, what? They're sorry, we're booked. And I'm like, okay, interesting. So I came a week after and did my first training. I got into the suit and it gets wetted a little bit because you need contact between the suit and the skin. Like you need electric contact and as an insulator. So okay. It gets wet. Interesting. And three minutes into this thing, like your body is okay what happens? Really something is new and you feel your body in a way. Yeah. Interesting. I never did before. And I was like, wow, this is fascinating. Five minutes and I was dripping. I was like, I'm barely moving. And I was like really excited about that. And then after 20 minutes, like it was over. And I was like what just happened? Like it's over. And I felt this almost light because the resistance goes away and everything is there and you have a post workout endorphin rush And I just left and I went home. I just walked home and I told my wife, I did this absolute crazy thing. And then. Almost I forgot about it until two nights later. I was in Frankfurt and I woke up at night and I needed to go to the restroom and I had a hard time getting off the toilet because I was so sore and my brain was just running and racing and I was like I spent 20 minutes standing in a suit barely moving doing like half squats and my body feels like I went on a two day hike So I went back and I said, I'm going to try this. And I did a membership which was once a week. four trainings a month, and every Monday at 6 p. m. I had my slot, because Monday was my non travel day. And six weeks later, I woke up on a Sunday morning, in bed, and I could sit up. Which, first of all I was like, what? And we had coffee and I told my wife I haven't taken a pill in a week and I can sit up in bed. And she was like, you're kidding me. It's no, truly. And that was like the first moment for me, like there's something really here because the level of, and for background I'm a behavioral economist by training, so. game theory, human behavior, like how do you model things out? How does motivation, input, output work and rewards? And the amount of work I had to do to fix this with this technology was like out of proportion. I spent six times, half an hour total getting in and out of this thing. And I fixed the thing that nagged me for years and really made my life miserable. And I was like, there's something really here. The second portion was my training partner. She also had every Monday. a fixed meeting, like a fixed session with me. So every Monday we met was a 60 year old female. And first I was like gym strength training Also back in the days, just for context, everybody was still on cardio, cardio, cardio, cardio and I was a runner myself. And again, runners have back issues anyway. And then my back issues, so it didn't make it better. So I had the 60 year old female. beside me. And first I was like surprised what is she doing here? But then we did the same exercises. We did the same movements. Of course, she had her own stimulation levels and her own difficulty for that. But it was absolutely fascinating talking to her when I asked her like, why are you doing this? And what she said is, Oh, I want to be able to take my groceries alone and don't ask for any help And I want to play with my grandchildren. And then, and I was like, okay, This is truly a technology that's changing quality of life. and this is how it all started. The third component then for me was same year, like two, three months later, my wife and I were sitting with friends in Beverly Hills and we're like four couples. And the girls started talking about fitness. Zumba was a thing in the days. my wife by that time already also became a customer. Totally loved it. And she said Oh, everything is a bit firmer and everything is a bit nicer and everything. She wasn't a fitness nut yet today. She's like crazy fit, but we went on this fitness journey anyway. But she's it's amazing. other ladies were like, what are you talking about? And I was just overhearing that I said, we're sitting in Beverly Hills and you guys don't have this. Like it blew my mind. I was like, why is that? And I know like never heard of it. And I said, we have it like more than Starbucks in Germany. at that time we had 500 locations in Germany. Today's there's 1400. I just did a comparison for the U. S. market. in Germany, we have more EMS studios than McDonald's. We have 1300 McDonald's, and we have 1400 EMS studios because some didn't survive the pandemic. in the U. S. we have about 100 studios now, maybe 150. And we have 13, 000 McDonald's. That tells you something because it tells you also something that is absolutely mass market. It's not, rich people, edgy, whatsoever stuff. If you have, if you had McDonald's distribution level, like your mass market, like that's the definition I would say.

Judith Mueller 10:44

So touching on suit suit versus space suit. This literally came, About as a spacesuit in a way, right?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 10:53

Yeah so it's quite interesting, like the electro stimulation has been around in physiotherapists since the 60s. Also in the late 60s, there were some Russian sprinters that came out of nowhere. And of course they had a lot of help by the pharmaceutical industry and doping in Eastern Germany and Russia back in the days was a big thing, but they were surprisingly fast and what they've been using is something called Russian stim. It was a very crude way of stimulation, but they found out that if you stimulate your muscles, you can actually, Trigger fast twitch muscle fiber responses, which are otherwise really hard to trigger. You need extreme speeds like running with a parachute and stuff like that, which in American football is like, it's a big thing in America or a sled, or you need extreme loads. And when you have extreme loads on a athlete with high volume or on an previously injured individual, you're just getting injured again. So that's what they found. And they also used it in Mir, which was like the first space station that we had in space. we're currently in conversations with similar agencies on a different continent to figure out what we can do, because at the moment, the way space workout works is there's a huge device that creates resistance and zero gravity on ISS. The problem with that is they put it up there once and then everybody can use it. But what we are talking about is Artemis which is the new moon mission that SpaceX and NASA are doing. The device is 3000 pounds, which is like for the rest of the world where we have metric system, it's like about a ton and a half. So that's like a car. And if you now have to carry a car on top of everything in every rocket, that's just another Car that you cannot have in payload. What we are currently exploring is do we just replace this whole thing with EMS technology and blood flow restriction actually which is the other thing that we're looking into,

Judith Mueller 12:51

Which we'll come to later on as well. Just for context, basically the reason we want to have weight training, obviously we want to have weight training for healthy individuals anyway, but the reason we really need in spaces, otherwise you're aging at about 10 times the normal speed you would

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 13:05

I got the stats from the NASA guys and 85 percent of the space shuttle crews that came back could not walk after landing. 85%. One is muscle mass. The other one is your motor neural system is not working anymore because it hasn't been firing for three weeks. Generally, those were three week missions back in the days when we had the beautiful space shuttle. And so that's one thing. The other thing is that they're losing like 14, 20, whatever percent of their muscle mass and actually bone density on top of it to a level that is basically, non recoverable. this is why Long term missions to Mars or moon are going to be an issue if we don't mitigate that and yeah, that's what we're working on.

Judith Mueller 13:57

So let's turn to women's topics, given that we're a women's podcast, So there's a couple of things we're going to speak about in a minute, but it's everything from menopause. So dealing with issues like osteoporosis, sarcopenia the post natal stuff, pelvic floor, urinary incontinence, also sexual dysfunction. So let's start with the general aging, actually. So muscle, bone health, deeply interconnected, et cetera. Talk us through that.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 14:24

So first of all, just because women are women from a hormonal perspective. So if you're hormonally female, I'll put it this way. your metabolic response and anabolic response to training is significantly lower than that of a man. So a lot of women historically didn't want to go to the gym. I don't want to bulk up. I don't want to be big. I don't want to do this. Even if you lift like crazy, you're not going to be big. That's just because hormonally they're there. And if you look at some CrossFit athletes, there's a genetic aspect to that. If you're not Icelandic, then you're most likely not going to look like that. It is for women, no matter what they do, much harder to keep their muscle mass, to keep their bone density in the first place, because they have a fraction of the testosterone of men, huge problem. And then there is a feedback loop between your muscle mass and your testosterone levels. So when you're not going for muscle mass, and when you do that cardio in the first place, you're basically teaching your body. To become more efficient because in cardio, we're trying to run faster and longer with the same amount of energy. So we're basically trying to get the body into an efficiency state. But what we actually want is we want to burn more energy. We want to burn more calories, which is the opposite of what we're doing. So what strength training does and I'm using strength training because the weight training is now gone because we don't need them anymore, at least in our version of it, or resistance training, probably like the term that's universally workable because it also works with rubber bands and so on and so forth. When you build muscle mass, you have a variety of benefits. Number one, the more muscle mass you have, the higher your natural testosterone levels will be. Yet on a lower level than men, but still on a significantly higher level than if you have like low muscle mass. Secondly, and that is the one that everyone who's cautious about their form and their fit and their size is. Muscles burn energy 24 7, no matter what you do. If you sleep, if you're in a coma, you burn energy through your muscles. It's that's literally what it is. And, It's interesting to see it's a, there's a term called the basal metabolic rate, which is literally if you're lying in bed for 24 hours, just breathing how much does your body consume? And I know this from myself. I'm male, but yes, I know this from myself. I got mine up from 2, 400 to 3, 500 calories. I have so I have 51 kilos of muscle mass. That's a different topic. I was a skinny dude. I was a really skinny dude. I was about 80 kilos, 82 kilos. I'm six four which is like 1 94. Just for context 1 93, 1 94, just in between. And I was this really skinny dude 10, 15 years ago. And I have the picture, when I was in the suit, the first time, 12 years ago it's really funny. People are like, who is this? It was funny. I just showed up a year ago at a at a high school reunion. And some people said who is this guy? It's so muscle mass burns energy 24 seven. So every pound of muscle, every kilo of muscle that you put on. is going to help you because you basically need to eat more to just maintain that.

Judith Mueller 18:10

I mentally converted into bars of chocolate when you mentioned your BMR

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 18:14

And you have to just keep, feed the beast, so to say, right? You have to feed the engine. The next thing is there's a very interesting correlation between your immune system and your muscle mass. So your body, and this is the new term that we use here in the U. S. a lot, it's your muscle is your armor, that's literally what we have. It's like literally the armor of your body, it's it's around your organs, it's around your your bones, it's around everything. And there's interesting statistics. your likelihood of surviving a car accident is even significantly higher. And then as we age, your likelihood of falling is lower because you can actually catch your body or you trip and you can catch your body because you're strong enough. Even if you're landing on your hip, there's muscle around it. You're not just directly falling through and breaking a hip or breaking a leg or an arm or whatever. So muscle mass.

Judith Mueller 19:12

It's also the osteoporosis that's linked to the sarcopenia. So more brittle bones linked to lower muscle mass. So you're more likely to break something if you fall and your recovery time is actually, especially at an advanced age, going to be much, much slower than if you didn't have that issue. So there's four, five, six different things that actually feeding into each other.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 19:31

Exactly. And yeah, so coming from muscle mass over to, to bone mineralization. So how do we keep bone mineralization up? So there are cells within the bones and. they basically fall asleep, just like figuratively speaking, unless there is stress on the bone. So almost if you have like a piece of wood and it's think like this, right? So that there needs to be tension on the bone. People say do plyos That kind of stuff is like these shocks are actually not that good and oh, let's see there's a discussion about it But what you need is like you need compressing and movement and Compressing motions on the bone

Judith Mueller 20:14

What are the cells called?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 20:16

there are two types of cells. osteoplasts and osteoblasts one of the two one of them is building up the muscle the Calcium and the other one is building down the calcium on the outside of the bone. So basically the calcium is added to the inside and on the outside, the old calcium is being taken out. I think osteoblast and osteoplast. So the bone cells, and we talked about biceps and triceps working against each other. So now we have biceps and triceps working against each other. And they basically both are pulling. So they are squishing together in this case, your humerus. And first I thought This doesn't work. I think there's a 2017, University of Erlangen study, they took women 75 years plus minus four years, one year through EMS training, they did DEXA scans before and after, so more or less, like it was between four and 6%, the control group lost. 6 percent bone density over one year. The EMS group gained, I think 0. 5 percent bone density in that year. And they tested a lumbar spine. So lower back. And femur. On your, basically femur neck, this is what you generally break. If that's not the definition of anti aging, where you basically not lost a year, but gained a year, now there's two years difference between the control group and the EMS group. And that is on bone mineralization, similar results on the strength portion. So general sarcopenia, loss of muscle mass, roughly a percent control group gained 10 percent of strength. So it is literally like the question always in longevity very often that I feel is like, how do I. How do I slow down the decline? We're not talking about slowing down the decline. We're putting a dent in it and we're going back up. That's really what we're doing here. a good friend Dr. Anath Sapan she started as a customer. And basically became an absolute this is it. I give this to all my patients. She's a postmenopausal OBGYN specialist. And she was just, she couldn't almost sit still in this podcast because she was so excited. She said, I was so much in pain. I had so many issues at this and that and the other, and my life completely changed within weeks. And what she said is I even had a patient tell me like, my tinnitus is gone. Like it's like there's just so much that when we have healthy muscle mass and we're active and we have good blood flow and we have good hormone releases and there are so many positive side effects to building a strong and healthy body and the term strong is absolutely a positive term and what I really want to encourage all women is don't shy away from strength training. Be a strong woman does not only mean like mentally strong or, emotionally strong and whatsoever be physically strong. And for example, one of my employees, she just had a baby like nine months ago. And she said I love it because I have to hold her all the time. And that is a one sided thing. And I have to be strong for that. And, I'm carrying her around and Yeah, we're going to come to recovery and other things as well, but being there for your family, for your kids, for everything that life throws at you even like I said, the car accident, it's like being strong is one of the best predictors of quality of life as you age that's out there. And I'm just going to, I think Peter Attia put this, it's like literally grip strength is the fastest test for longevity.

Judith Mueller 24:07

Yeah. I think that was also an interesting fact that you mentioned on another episode somewhere, you said that muscles provide 80 percent of the shock absorption if you fall, if you have impacts, so car accident, et cetera, which I found super fascinating.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 24:24

Yeah, fat, fat is just very fluid. It just like right goes through like muscle is literally dense. My, my wife is always telling me that her massage therapist is like saying, Oh, you're very tight. She said, that's not tight. That's just good muscle. we had a new person telling us that there's a difference between muscle and muscle, like from a denseness, from a quality. And she said, you want grass fed muscle. You don't want Wagyu.

Judith Mueller 24:49

What does that mean?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 24:52

No, it's like you want just really, you don't want a lot of fat in your muscle mass, right? So if you get like an A5, it's white stuff whatsoever. this is why it's soft, why it's tender. As a human, you don't want that, right? So you don't want to be overfed and, have that. You want really dense, tight muscles. And these then can be the shock absorber that you said.

Judith Mueller 25:09

Let's stick with menopause hormones, et cetera. We've touched a little bit about muscle mass and testosterone. Obviously in menopause, you've got estrogen and progesterone disappearing. Let's call this an inflection point, basically. How does all of that play together?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 25:28

I'm not a medical expert. I just got this like through my medical experts that I'm working with. And I always would say Hey read the originals. What I did not know until a while ago. the female sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and they are derived from the female's testosterone. So if a woman doesn't have testosterone, she cannot make the other hormones.

Judith Mueller 25:56

Interesting.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 25:58

For example where that's coming from. so there's an aromatization happening from testosterone to these female sex hormones. Which for example, is like when you had let's say you had some bodybuilders or wrestlers or guys that are taking very, very high testosterone or they take anabolic steroids, most steroids have an aromatization aspect. And they grow breast tissue because of that and then they get that removed there are even some known famous people that once of a sudden you see that changed something that is because they probably have taken testosterone in a very high dosage and anabolic steroids which are aromatized into female. So this is like we've seen this but we are not really aware of it. So for women it is absolutely important to have healthy testosterone because otherwise they cannot produce the hormones they need for healthy female balance. What Anat even told me is women have more testosterone than estrogen.

Judith Mueller 27:10

Yeah,

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 27:11

So now what we have is a situation where everything gets better. If you're building good testosterone, where you get the testosterone from you get it from physical stress and activity and from muscle mass. So now even your female sex hormones get better if you have better muscle mass as a female because you built the thing in between, which is testosterone.

Judith Mueller 27:35

there was also another episode that you did and we'll leave people to discover that for themselves, but that was linking cholesterol as a precursor to, again, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, et cetera, how that piles up after menopause. Let's move to while we're on the sex hormones, let's move to reproduction. So we're talking sexual function. We're talking pregnancy, healthier babies, easier birth postnatal. I'll

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 28:01

So on the male side, I sometimes have one on one conversations with friends or customers and like after maybe a beer or like a second drink, it's can I ask you a question? And what's up? It's almost like shy. Is it possible that like things change down there It's yeah, it is. Because if you have a healthy pelvic floor and women are much more aware of that than men. Yeah, things work better because you basically have to restrict blood flow. That's like what, if you cannot restrict blood flow, ED is your friend and you don't want ED to be your friend. So that's on the male side. On the female side, it's a similar aspect of that. So if you are able to control your pelvic floor your first of all posture, everything like you're in a much better position. The other question that I'm getting is so my wife has been doing this now for like half, half a year. Is it possible that yeah, like you get stronger down there and, things are more fun. And it is it is definitely a very joyful side effect. I would say and then leads to self esteem better self esteem leads to relationship aspects, fun, all these aspects in a pregnancy situation we have two, two recovery needs, basically, like we have the abs that need to be, redeveloped. We always say please wait for six weeks after, so natural birth. We're talking natural birth. We're not talking cesarean, right? So cesarean is a different thing. It's a scar. It's that's a different topic. So natural birth, we basically say wait for six weeks. And then after six weeks. start the training again. We heard from our customers and I don't have a study on this at hand, but the rebuilding and like the reconnecting of your abs, the different strands significantly increases, significantly like speeds up. The biggest thing for me is my sister friends of mine who I knew that had postpartum incontinence issues. And some women even have incontinence issue without having given birth. can basically call it a day. You can literally check that off the list. It's it's a non issue. It's like literally not an issue. A friend of mine she did a lot of CrossFit and plyos and whatsoever. She said she always had issues with them. Gone. Done. Forget about it. It's literally gone. So from a healthy, fit individual, it's still easy to train the pelvic floor. And we had these they're, like, Certain devices that you put in that helps your breathing. And, I actually met like the founder of that, like six, seven years ago. And I thought cool, like you're solving a real problem. but then seeing how it's not just mitigating the problem, but actually making things better and actually life better. It's like when you give birth, like you need to be very strong, you need to be able to get the baby into this world. And when you do a full body workout, it really deserves the term of full body. I'm getting all these LinkedIn messages people that I don't know, but that are my customers. And they basically tell me their stories there are a lot of stories from women who say my quality of life has improved significantly As a woman, if you have kids and you have your household and maybe you have a job on top of that, it's like your life is atomized. you don't have an hour and a half or two in a row. You might squeeze in something here or there and everybody else comes first. I hear a lot I just get up half an hour early. I just do my Katalyst and then. I wake up the kids and get them to school or I get them to school and then I have half an hour for me and then I'm done and then I get ready for the day and move on with the day. You have to be able to do it and it has to be able, it has to be effective. Those things, right? Because if it's effective and you can't do it, it doesn't help you either. So I have to say, I'm very happy that we can help in this area, although we didn't design it this way, it just happened to be this way. But I have a lot of very happy people in my, my company and audience they said Hey, it really helped me with this, that, and the other. I even had a gentleman that called me the other day is even upfront and you're thinking it can help you also have to do it, but if you do it it actually is going to help. very excited that one more thing on this. I was shocked about a year ago I was in a hotel and there was an ad running. And it was about like diapers and incontinence bed layers I'm like, that is such an awful experience if that is what you have to do in life. So the one thing that I'm very. adamant about is there's hope for many conditions that we didn't really think we had hope to fix them. We were just treating symptoms and incontinence is such a diminishing quality of life factor. It is actually solvable at this point in time and blows my mind that we're not more talking about that. Yeah.

Judith Mueller 33:16

up on the six weeks postpartum and pregnancy. You saying you should already be using the suit during that time, or is this more of a

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 33:25

So what we say is it's always very fresh the muscles have been stretched quite a bit. There could be micro ruptures and so on and so forth. So we're letting that heal in the first place and then we strengthen and bring it back. first six weeks. Let it heal, let your body recover from a very amazing, but still very intense moment and let it recover and then come back. Don't, rush it. That's really the piece here.

Judith Mueller 33:50

just try to get some sleep basically? And during pregnancy, I guess it wouldn't be very practical because you wouldn't fit in the suit.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 33:57

The first, like probably five months or four months you would. But so the moment you find out you're pregnant, please stop doing it. So depends on when you find out. Just stop doing it. I don't believe it's a problem, but we don't have enough data on it. And quite frankly, it's not needed. It's really not needed in that time. You should be. ideally getting into good shape. And when your core is strong, especially lower back is a piece like, carrying the extra weight and carrying this front load that you have your body gets out of balance, right? So you constantly have to, it's not that I know this from personal experience, but just like pure physics. So being strong in the first place just prepares you much better for your pregnancy. The moment you know you're pregnant, pause on it, be active, walk around, do what, whatever you want to do and then six weeks after you welcomed your little one to life and to this world, start again, and your recovery is going to be quite significant. I have one more pelvic floor story. It's a male story. But it's very related and it fits in. So I have a customer who called me two years ago, And he said he had prostate cancer and he had a complete removal. And normally like rebuilding your continence in that area takes about six months. He said, I'm an MD myself. So a friend of mine told me like, Hey, get one of these suits. said his recovery was two months. And very influential person in the U. S. He said, if you ever need anything in D. C., let me know. That was like, literally the thing, this works thank you so much. And he was just honestly grateful that, his recovery sped up this much. But that's how much this can do in this area.

Judith Mueller 35:52

Let's stick with recovery. Tell us about Ben Greenfield's knee.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 35:57

what do I know about his knee? Have he's been using it for quite some time. He's been very very long in it. I think the story was my knee on Ben Greenfield's podcast. It's actually my knee. I had it in 2015. I had knee surgery and physician told me again, six weeks. Don't do anything. La la la la la. But and I was like, ah, no. I already had a prototype at that time. And what I did is I was just standing and had my stimulation on my femur. So quadriceps and hamstrings, glutes, all that. And the upper body, I did all the stuff like range of motion. And then after six weeks, I went back to this physician and he said Hey, let's have a look. And he looked at my legs and said which one did we operate? Cause it was atroscopy. You could barely see the scars anymore. And then the atrophy was basically like, you couldn't tell and he said, what did you do? So this was like 2015 and yes, it was a thing, but it was not that normal. To actually be very proactive and using it in recovery. He was like amazing. Like he was like totally blown away. But that's, for example, one of the reasons why we see in certain sports at Europe, much faster recovery time in soccer, for example, when people get injured. You can still train the rest of your body. Let's say you have a hamstring injury. You can still train the rest of your body. You can still train the other leg or other pieces, but you couldn't squat or lift, or run or walk but you're basically preventing your body from falling into this deep valley of performance and dropping off. And then you need to train yourself out of this again. So at the beginning, what we said is so EMS really. started in performance, but then has been used since the 60s in physiotherapy. So most of us had EMS already in form of a small sticky pad device on your knees or on a certain muscle to just regain it when it is injured, which is also super interesting to me because when people always ask me, it's is this safe? I'm like, so your physician prescribes it to you to recover an injured muscle. I think that's the definition of this is the safest thing you should be doing to get your injured muscle healthy again. The only question for me is why are we waiting until we get injured? So this is like why we should be using this prophylactically. But yeah, so in recovery it's amazing for the area itself and the way we do this in Katalyst. So for example, every body part we can selectively, or even muscle group, we can selectively activate and deactivate and say, Hey, I want to train the rest of my body, but my hamstring, I had a hamstring tear in 2019. At a Spartan race, got cold because I had to wait, started sprinting. It was an audible bang. Where my hamstring one of my hamstring heads said goodbye and I just kept working out. I just muted the hamstring or lowered that one. And now it's much better. You're still going to be able to train and you can be sure that you don't injure yourself again.

Judith Mueller 39:08

And the other thing that I find quite interesting is when you have an injury, you're actually have a neurological block on these muscles firing. And that means how do you retrain them? How do you keep them back up? And that's why normally you get physiotherapy, you need to have some sort of external stimulus just to even get to them and Katalyst can do that.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 39:29

We have a very interesting use case and that's frozen shoulders. So people that have pain in their shoulder, they are in the vicious cycle because the pain makes the muscle cramp. And then a muscle cramp, the body is trying to prevent movement because they're afraid of pain. Like a vicious cycle. So when we externally then stimulate this, these muscles First of all, they have to move. They can't do anything about it. The second thing is they exhaust. So now they're exhausted, which means they relax. So now you're like breaking this vicious cycle. I have a ton of customers who said I had shoulder issues forever. I'm finishing my golf swing now. I'm like, totally active again. I can lift my arms again and so on and so forth. So the external stimulation is really. Great. We're also working with a few of like pro athlete physiotherapists here in the United States. Especially the ones to say Oh yeah, that the trainers come to us when nothing is firing when nothing is working whatsoever. And, that's really like when that comes into play, you have to help the body. That's really what it is. Like you have to help the body. The other thing is generally after injuries, you are developing disbalances. basically either right dominant, left dominant, forward, backwards, because the body is thinking like, I'm trying to protect that injured area and you create a limp or like a little bit of a, one sided piece because this is very evened out. It's like the rest of the right side and the left side always gets the same intensity. So the weaker one always has to catch up to the stronger one. So we are getting rid of a lot of imbalances. So tennis players, golfers. baseball players people that all have one sided activities. In the new mother example, right handed mothers carry their baby on the right side, not on the left. You barely switch them around. You barely do that. So you're also creating these one sided disbalances or fatigues. And that's something that, full body EMS training is just absolutely phenomenally in balancing that out.

Judith Mueller 41:32

And they can get quite heavy, those babies as well, right?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 41:34

Yeah, and you have to teach them like now is over at one point in

Judith Mueller 41:37

Okay. You can walk now. Well done. So posture and mobility generally is something that we can address with EMS as well. So tell us a little bit more about how does it work on a. Sort of body part level. And by body part, I don't mean, left front, sideways, et cetera. Is it the muscles only as in, are we going for hypertrophy? What happens to tendons? Is that because you're not really physically lifting the weight, right? You don't have that.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 42:03

So the tendon, tendons for sure. Yes. Tendons, ligaments. What we strengthen is everything from attachment point to attachment point. So you have an attachment point, then you have the tendon, then you have the muscle, then you have the other tendon, and then the attachment point again, right? Because we're pulling with the same or a larger force between these two points. What we're not doing is joint impact, cartilage, ligaments around the joint, the ligaments that attach the muscle to the bone, they also have to carry the force and they also get the strengthening effect and over time they build up and become stronger. More resilient. So it is strengthening the full motoric system, so to say, and full chains, you can, for example, do full posterior chain movements and not just isolated movements. we always strengthen the agonist and antagonist. for example, the biceps and the triceps or the hamstring and the quadriceps so that they always, create the counterforce. So they always work against each other. In this interplay between these two muscles, what's also happening is when your biceps is contracting, your triceps is elongating under tension, which is the negatives, right? So eccentric movements, which is what we really want to do, which we know now from exercise science, that's really beneficial. So for example, when people can't do a pull up, like how do you teach people to pull up? It's jump up and then lower yourself very slowly until you can do your first pull up. That's how you do that. Why? Because that's an eccentric motion, right? Your muscles get elongated under tension, and this is where you have the micro tears, and this is where you have a really good, rebuilding of muscle fibers. Ligaments get trained, the muscles get trained, but the joints don't get loaded and that has two benefits. One, the wear and tear goes away. The second thing is the joints have a longer recovery time than the muscles because they're much less circulated. if I have an athlete or I'm very active I have probably like a 48 hour recovery time on my muscles, but I might have a much longer recovery time on my knees. therefore, when you replace or substitute regular weight training with a Katalyst or other EMS training, you're basically giving your joints more time to recover while you're training the muscles that need the next training.

Judith Mueller 44:48

Interesting. so I'm looking for a check on completeness as a way, in the sense that how can I check that? I'm training my muscles in both directions and all three planes in the sense that I'm doing a full, 360 sideways, front, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing is you've obviously got the big muscle groups but you've also got the smaller stabilizers.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 45:13

So what we have not talked about yet at all is so when we built Katalyst. I wanted to make this the absolutely most accessible training system on the planet. EMS training in itself is already great, but you have to go to a studio you have to be in a physical place, you're sharing a suit that someone else sweat in before some people like that, some don't you have to find the right time, you have to find your trainer, you have to get the trainer that knows what you need and so on and so forth. So what we've built. And we said especially in America, where it's a big country. And if you're not close in a big city, then to a studio, it doesn't work. So we literally built the only content guided smart home training system. In the U S we only the only one that's legal. And the rest of the world, there are some others that are legal because it's not regulated as a medical device. But what we really did is we created a. guided training suite that comes with it. think Netflix, you can change, you can search for like hundreds of different content pieces and the trainers guide through these 20 minute workouts dependent on what the training goals are, what they're not only doing is they're not only guiding through how to move, but they're also helping you control the suit. So literally they control the suit and they make adjustments. It's all gets personalized to you in real time. So first time people say Oh, this is a life trainer. No, it's not a life trainer. It's all like software AI and so on and so forth. But it is literally personalized to the customer in the moment. So if you or me were doing the same workout, we're sitting the same button, we still would get a different workout. We would do the same movements like me and my training partner 12 years ago, but we would get different impulses. So the way we are designing these workouts is they start with relatively light stimulus and small muscle groups, large range of motion. And then over the 20 minutes, they get harder and harder and harder. And we go more to gross motor skills like squats or other pieces. during the whole 20 minutes, the whole suit is working. So when we do a biceps curl, it's not just that the arms are active. It's no. Everything else is active at the same time. So what's happening is we're basically in isometrics. Let's say we're just standing and we're doing biceps curls. So a lot of the body is in isometric tension where the arms are now dynamically moving through the range of motion under tension, and then we do butterflies and then we do supermans and so on and so forth. We also have. categorized the workouts so that there's something for everyone. There's stuff that's like super simple, super basic. Let's say, Hey, I had a really bad episode in my life. I'm not in shape. I barely can move yes, we have something for you. We get you there. And then over time it gets more and more and more. If you're saying like, Hey, I want to balance on something. And I want to do a Superman and play the violin. Why I want to do this. We also have that minus the violin, but, bring your own violin, B Y O V, yes. Bring your own violin. And then what we have is like sports specific stuff. So if you play racket sports or if you're a golfer or if you're a runner, like there are specific training plans for that. What we recently launched is a resilient joint series. So we're really going for how do you stabilize your knee, your hip, your shoulder, your arms your ankles and so on they're like specific series around this. It's highly customized to specific conditions and specific areas like lower back or core training and so on These are all in there and they are then curated to those training goals. And then the customer can put that together, either go on a preset path or say Hey, today I want to train on this, or I want to do a lower body training And that is. how we're making sure it's balanced, it's like well coached. The coaches are very, although they're on demand, they know very well, what people are making mistakes everywhere. And like, when you lose your balance, like it's after the third or the fourth rep it's sometimes I always feel like, how can you see me? it's really fun but this is how the programming works with Katalyst.

Judith Mueller 49:48

And tell us a bit more about the suit itself. And I think when we say space suit, especially when we talk to women about it, sounds a bit scary, doesn't it? So tell us a bit about how's it built up as it's made of two parts, et cetera.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 50:02

again, we wanted to make this the self served most accessible like training equipment. So the way this works is it's a two piece. It has a base layer, which is. specifically designed for this so that it keeps the water, takes the water and creates a really good connection between the suit and the body, but it's like a hygienic I can wash it every time when I travel, I have three that I travel with and basically throw them in a bag or throw them in the shower and stuff like that. The suit itself is comprised of three components. We have a shorts which covers the glutes, the hamstrings, and the quads. We have a vest, which covers the abs, the pecs, or the chest the upper back, so traps, lat, and so on. And Spinos Erecti, which is like the lower spine, those stabilizers. And then we have two arm straps, one for bicep, and they have two electrodes. Each one covers the biceps, one covers the triceps. Those are 26 basically electrodes that are covering the body. And what allows that that allows us to literally cover all major muscle groups. You don't need to know where to put the sticky pad and all of that. You just get into this. strap it tight so that it has good connection with your body and you're basically good to go. What this also allows us to do is the way it works in the purchasing process, you just decide you want one. And then afterwards we send you an email with a questionnaire and it has some information about that how to measure yourself. So we need eight numbers from you. We need your height, your weight, your gender, your age. And then four circumferences. And based on that our system is putting together the right modular pieces for each individual. And that allows us to literally fit anyone. Which was very important to us. When you have like onesies, you always have like compression issues somewhere, doesn't really work. The other thing, how we designed the suit is that it is highly, highly flexible because. Generally, people are on a journey. They either want to gain here or want to lose there and so on and so forth. So if you make it very, very precise and not that much flexible, like you basically shrink out of your suit very, very quickly. And especially people that say no, I really want to now. Take command of my health and I really want to get there. What happens, first of all, what happens if I'm successful? First of all, you're going to be successful. You just have to use it. You can't let it hang. You actually have to use it, but when you use it, it's going to be successful. First of all, it's quite adjustable, but what we do at Katalyst is we say Hey, if you actually think you need a new piece, we're going to send you a new link. You're going to need a new set of measurement. And if our system says, yes, you need a new suit, We give you a new suit. Generally, it's one piece that you need new. We give you a new piece. You give us a testimonial. We give you a suit for free. That's what we do. That's the deal because we want people to be successful and if you shrink out of a size, good for you, let's celebrate it. the suit then covers, as I said, 13 different muscle groups all over the body. We're starting with a known pattern, think a equalizer in a audio system. Like I want more treble and more bass. And so I want more glutes and I want more arms. And over the years that we've been doing this. So in the U S we've been in market like three and a half years now. We found out like, what is a good starting intensity for which muscle group? And then over time you find out, Oh, I can take a little bit more here and I want a little bit less there. And the system's learning over time and it's creating your personal pattern. And then the trainers say Hey, today we're working on this. And then that gets personalized with your pattern. And this is how the stimulation works. The suit. Like I said, it has two pieces, comes with two base layers and then all the other pieces. Even the electronic suit you can wash in the washing machine, you can throw in the washer where people are sending, saying like there's cables in there and wires yeah, I know. Took us a long time to get there but we exactly wanted to make this as customer friendly as possible. I barely washed the suit because the base layers get all the sweat and doesn't smell and it's anti bacterially made in it in the first place, but we also have more and more trainers use our equipment now and studios and. They want to provide a very hygienic environment. So instead of what we had before, like where you have to take the cables out, and it's a very cumbersome process, which means people are not doing it. You just put it into a mesh bag, like similar to how you would wash your lingerie, like similar thing, put it in a mesh bag, throw it on the washing machine, call it a day. So ease of use was really front and center for us. Yeah.

Judith Mueller 54:54

of washing cycles trying to destroy it and you didn't manage, you just gave up at some point.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 55:00

So reliability was a real key thing for us. I want something that really lasts and customers have a long time of fun with. We went through a crazy test protocol and one of them was like, wash to destruction. So we literally did five washings and then tested electrically is everything there visually? Is everything there? Fine. Five washings again. And our factory in overseas Taiwan and they were like, okay, so we had 100 washings, machine washings. And we put the worst detergent combination in there that we could find and like bleach and whatever everything. Don't do that at home, right? Like literally don't bleach it or whatsoever. Don't put it in a dryer. Dryer is not good. The heat is gonna, there's a lot of bonding stuff. You wouldn't put your hard shell, think about your hard shell, like whatever 800. or pound Arcteryx jacket or ski jacket, you wouldn't put in a dryer anyway, right? So that's treated like that. At 200, they said, can we please stop? Can we please stop? This doesn't get us anywhere whatsoever. I was like, okay, keep it. Because honestly, what I was hoping for we're going to find a destruction at a crazy number and I wanted to use this number. And now I basically like my factory was begging me. Can we please stop the test? Because it was like good. And I was, I feel very good about it. At one point in time, I'm just going to do it for fun. Yeah. I had to promise them that if the machine breaks, I'm going to pay for the machine.

Judith Mueller 56:23

Washing machine

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 56:24

the washing machine, yes, industrial washing machine. But they were just saying no, this is just too much. No, it's to put it into context. We are the only. smart textile produced at scale that I know of. So where else do you have a smart textile? All the other smart textiles that I know of, which is like an electronically conductive mass produced textile, is the chestband of a polar. You remember these

Judith Mueller 56:54

That these watches that you put,

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 56:56

under your chest. There was a test that Google did once and with Levi's where they wanted to have a jacket that had like your iPod controls on that. These all break. These are like, there were some ski jackets who wanted to put headphones in the ski jackets and like remote controls, they're all broke. So building something that is reliable, customer friendly. It took us really some time, but we're in a very happy place. And now we're like, here, take this, go have fun.

Judith Mueller 57:29

And it's even, for example, I really like traveling with a suit and you come with this nice spray bottle. Those who've tried EMS, you know what I mean? If you don't, don't worry about it. But basically it comes with a spray bottle that you use to wet the electrodes. I'm like I've got a small suitcase. I'm usually traveling with hand luggage. So I leave it at home and I just use the shower head and the, I don't know if I should or should not be doing that.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 57:49

Just take the battery pack out, take the impulse pack out. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, you can totally do that. We're coming up with a new very travel friendly wetting solution prepping solution. What I would recommend is take a water bottle. Put a small hole in the head and then just upside down. You just have to walk it over it. That's enough. so we've made this whole like prepping process much, much easier. let's talk about the prepping process for a moment. It's like, why do you need water? There are suits out there that say they are dry suits. So first of all, there are no such thing as dry suits. Air is an insulator. It doesn't conduct electricity. So you have to be wet one way or the other. The way they do it is they, it's a onesie. You're literally like, just wearing that thing. and it's on directly to the skin with rubber electrodes and there's a warm up you have to do. So you're basically getting into the suit and they let you jump around for 10 minutes and to sweat into the suit so that you can get conductivity. We tried that seven years ago when we were on this like R& D journey. And what we found was if you're in a very cold environment, you're generally not sweating that fast. When you're in a very dry environment, you're not sweating that fast. And to your audience, postmenopausal women don't sweat that much. So in my intention to literally build a great experience for anyone, I said, yes, it might take you three minutes to get your suit ready, which is roughly what it takes me to get my suit ready, maybe five. It's more like I needed to, when I lived in Seattle, it took me longer than five minutes to get my running stuff on because it was raining all the time. It was like really shitty. And like you're in London. So like same thing, right? So your running gear takes longer to get on. Put it into perspective, but to have a consistent, predictable, great feel you need. know that there's water. That's just what it is. I recommend putting warm water in there a kettle or something like this, like really warm water and put that on, makes it much nicer. Unless you live where I live, then I actually like the cold water. I live in the desert that's that's, it's a different thing, but it's by design. It's not that we couldn't build a dry suit. It's like we knew to be predictable. We need to control. humidity and the prepping of the suit. We're making it easier and easier over time. We just created a new electrode material, which is like super easy to wet, and you can even tell from a visual indicator, if it's already done or not. It's lighter, it's more flexible. You're going to love Gen 4. Especially a women fit around the chest and the upper back. We always had compression issues for women. So we worked for two years with 16 fit models, different sizes, shapes, and a Nike engineer, like former Nike engineer we're very happy with where we are now.

Judith Mueller 1:00:48

And when you do that, as when you're back in the studio, A, obviously if you're not paying attention and the impulse starts and you're not paying attention, you're not contracting muscles, that's a bad idea. I haven't had that issue here. And the other thing is I always got in the studio, I got that little bit of a, let's call it zip, right? So when the impulse starts, there's always a bit of a tiny electrical shock. I haven't had that at all with the suit. How do you do that?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:01:13

That's a fit thing. So it's you have to have good contact. So the way we built the electrodes, it's there's actually a squishy foam under the electrodes. And that like creates like a buffer. So it's not just a flat electrode. So most electrodes in studios are either like rubber electrodes or like they're very stiff or they are just a very flat laminate. So we created some squishiness. So even If your body is moving, It moves with you.

Judith Mueller 1:01:42

Awesome. So I think for me, when we talked about comfort as a couple of benefits for me specifically. So one problem I have is I'm pathologically late to even getting to the same appointment every single week. If you're 10 minutes late for half an appointment, it's a little bit tricky. It doesn't matter. I can do it on the road. I can do it at home. If my meeting's over running, I'll do it over lunch. So basically sometimes I stick myself in the suit, pop in the sauna after I'm already nice and sweaty, let's get the last bit out. So that works super well for me. And again, not only turning up to appointments on time, but as you mentioned with the studios, a lot of the time they're booked, right? The slots you want to have, they're very busy. And also I'm away a lot as you were back at the time. So for me, even being in town to go to the studio wasn't possible. So I literally just pop the suit into my luggage, actually into my hand luggage, But I always have that with me. Sticking with availability and training schedule, what is the recommended one, and I have to put that into perspective. So for example, I am a massive fan of. Book called Body by Science which is by Dr. Doug McGuff, if I remember correctly. And he was basically saying, look, you want to get to complete exhaustion. He actually breaks the fast and slow twitch fibers down into four categories, not just two. And he says, you basically want to get to, point off, imagine your baby is trapped under the car. You've got to lift that car. That's the intensity you're going for. And. I've been doing weight training for 20 years. I started using EMS back when I was in Germany, actually sort of 15 years ago. And for me, I have not been able to reproduce the kind of, let's call it effort, the effort that the suit, not just that I can put in, but the suit enables me to put in, because it is very difficult. You don't have the, when you just working with weights, there's always that little bit of mental element. And even if you really want to. You just can't get to the same levels with the suit. So massive fan of that, but sticking with the training schedule. So Doug is basically saying complete exhaustion, do it every sort of five to seven days. What is your recommendation?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:03:51

So when you start, there are two boundaries, right? There are two bookends, let's put it this way. So the minimum is two nights of sleep. That I would definitely put that 48 hours. And what we are going off is like the traditional super compensation curve, right? So how long does it take for your fibers and for microchondria? It's three days for your general muscle fibers, it's two days. What's your basically recovery time around this? Don't do it more often because then you're down training because you're still in the valley and then you put the next intense on it So it's at least two nights of sleep When you start doing Katalyst I just have a text chain with a gentleman, who wanted to try it and does it for for business reason and Like he's every day, It's not getting better. it's getting worse. Listen to your body, especially at the beginning. So five days at the beginning, like in between, definitely a good thing because you're breaking so many old muscle fibers that have been hanging around and that need replacement. You're going to be quite sore at the beginning. I found twice a week to be the sweet spot, but it's highly dependent on what else you're doing. So if you do a lot of other weight stuff on top of it, then do it once and do this five to seven days. But the other thing for me is also, you are reaching fibers that you don't need this like absolute heavy example with the, like lifting the. The car, when the baby is trapped in the car accident and so on and so forth, you don't need to go there with Katalysts and EMS training, because as we said earlier, that's normally the only way how to reach your fast muscle fast, rich muscle fibers where here we have four modes. We have a power mode, which is specifically for type two and type two X muscle fiber activation because it like fires so fast that they can't relax. They actually build up to a tetanus as well. So twice a week has become the sweet spot for strength and power training. Cardio you can do as often as you want. Like we have a cardio mode. You can combine it with your bike. if you're in a hotel room and you don't have cardio equipment you can do some jumping jacks and whatsoever is in there. We have these like cardio things. What I generally do is twice a week. 20 minutes of strength or power. And then I add 10 minutes of cardio towards the end which also helps me to flush out lactic acid and get a little bit lower on the soreness and that really helps with that. So that's my recommendation. You don't have to switch upper body days and leg days because it's a full body workout and you get it in a short amount of time. And then lastly, I think 10 years ago, we started to talk about like short workouts and, short workouts are good and efficient and HIIT training whatsoever. Like the mechanism that's actually being mentioned here is, or what they mean with that is. When you train over an hour, the body starts to shut down and protect itself and you have a high cortisol response. Cortisol is a testosterone killer. So when you're training for actually an hour and a half, two, three hours in the gym while you do something, you basically kill your testosterone, you kill your recovery. This is why athletes like Kobe, like he did a four in the morning, Then he did a noon session and he did an afternoon he split up his training so that his body comes back from the stress so that the cortisol response isn't that high. So those are all benefits that just are in the product itself because it just takes half an hour.

Judith Mueller 1:07:16

Is there any point to doing? Because you're still under the hour, you're 40 minutes, you're doing two strength sessions in the same.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:07:24

You, you can, and some people do that. And The question for me is do you want to, you definitely will go with lower intensity at that point in time, if you like that, if you want to do that, knock yourself out, be my guest, like absolutely. You can do that. And we have customers who are doing that. Listen to your body. If you can't walk two days later, it was too much. That's literally the

Judith Mueller 1:07:44

Thought that was the point.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:07:46

Yeah. But can't walk, like literally can't walk if it's hard to walk. And getting out of the car is you get reminded what you did two days ago. Yes. That's absolutely there. If you can't walk, that's too much. If you literally say oh no, so can't walk. That's what I mean. yes, you wanna be sore, you want to feel it. But, do it in a way that you're not agony or you're taking painkillers if you're taking painkillers to overcome the soreness, it's too much.

Judith Mueller 1:08:11

that's too much. Fair enough. So the idea really would be start with a strength session, do some cardio and then there's recovery. For example, stretch. I know there's some Actually, I haven't tried the yoga one yet because I'm one of these girls who prefer to lift a little weights over yoga, but I look forward to actually doing that the other question was, I know you've previously talked about energy use when you're doing these things. So there's a reason you want to do the strength first and then the cardio.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:08:36

Yes. So when you want to do good strength training, you have different energy sources in the body. Glycogen being one of them, which is basically the sugar that's stored in the muscle. So when you start with cardio. the body first goes to the easiest source which is the glycogen. So now you don't have the glycogen for the strength training anymore. So you want to start with the strength training, do a light warm up, and do first strength training and then do cardio second.

Judith Mueller 1:08:58

Okay, interesting. Let's quickly touch on any contraindications. I know we've talked about safety, don't do it, just postnatal and during pregnancy. Are there any other restrictions? Is there a minimum age? Any injuries you shouldn't be doing it with?

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:09:14

Yeah, so in the United States, it's regulated by the FDA to start at 18. Do I think 16 year olds can do it? it's better than heavy weights on still soft bones, but I don't know how it is in other countries, so I can't talk about that. Pacemakers are no. Any implanted electrical devices. If you have an insulin pump, take it off. Stuff like this. So no electronic devices on your body. If you have open wounds, fresh fractures, that kind of stuff. Yeah, you should be careful with that. If you are unsure, consult your doctor.

Judith Mueller 1:09:53

Good stuff. So last question.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:09:55

active hernias, no.

Judith Mueller 1:09:58

Okay. We'll bear with that one and hopefully get no other injuries. Last question for me, we've touched on BFR bands. So blood flow restriction bands. Tell us what this is and how this is relevant to Katalyst. And when is Katalyst going to get one? Gen five.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:10:13

We're currently collaborating with another company and exploring BFR. the idea of blood flow restriction basically is in regular training you are creating a higher hormone response because the lactate stays longer you have a nutrient deficiency in your muscle, and you're basically putting the muscle under more stress. That's the very, very high level simple version. what we're doing in Katalyst is we're putting a lot more work on the muscle anyway. So we're draining the nutrients much faster than in regular training. So there's already a deficiency here. I I'm not a BFR expert and I want to be careful what I say here, but someone told me that they just take the arm straps and make it tighter. I don't know if that's a good idea, but generally, like someone told me that I I don't know enough about that. there's this company from the UK who's doing this quite well. More to come. I don't want to jinx it

Judith Mueller 1:11:12

Bjoern it was lovely to have you on. Thanks very much.

Bjoern Woltermann (Katalyst) 1:11:15

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Judith.

Judith Mueller 1:11:24

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