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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Shocking Results: The Science Behind 20-Minute EMS Workouts
Conrad shares his unique journey into fitness from working as an executive assistant to a Venezuelan billionaire to becoming an EMS training specialist focused on helping special populations achieve results.
• Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) uses a suit with electrodes to stimulate all muscle fibers simultaneously
• A 20-minute EMS session can deliver results equivalent to 1.5-2 hours of traditional weightlifting
• EMS activates both slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers regardless of the weight being used
• The technology particularly appeals to women over 40 who feel uncomfortable in traditional gym environments
• Proper intensity management is crucial - aim for challenging but not painful stimulation levels
• EMS shows potential for rehabilitation applications, possibly helping with nerve damage and activation issues
• The suit allows for targeting specific muscle groups while still engaging the entire body during single exercises
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Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we have another great episode for all of you. Today For those listening that are current members we are getting ready to open up the new Mount Sinai location. We're shooting for April 21st. So that's what I've been doing all day is getting that ready. Easter weekend we're going to close the old ones, say goodbye, cry a little bit and then wake up Easter Monday and be super ecstatic and excited and never care that we'd left in the first place. So looking forward to all that. But more importantly, on today's show we got Conrad. Conrad, thank you for coming on. Before we hop into literally the topic of this because it is kind of unique which is EMS, just tell me a little bit about how you got into it, because I mean, getting into fitness is unique and then getting into EMS is even more unique.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you for having me and congratulations on opening a gym. That's a big endeavor, and so congrats, hats off to you there. Yeah, so how? So? First, the first question of how I got into the fitness industry real quick. I was in New York and New York city. I was 23. It was the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008. I was in sales for a financial company. I hated it in 2008. I was in sales for a financial company. I hated it, and so I thought I'm young, let me do something that's a little more extravagant. And so I became the executive assistant to a Venezuelan billionaire and I was traveling with him around the world. But I worked from 6am to 11pm, didn't have a life, didn't see more than the walls of my hotel room, and he traveled with a personal trainer, and the personal trainer worked about an hour in the morning and then went for a walk with him in the evening, and I thought I need to be that guy.
Speaker 1:So I spoke to him.
Speaker 2:He was like yeah, I just got a certification and so that I always wanted a job where I could help people and also didn't have a ceiling to how much I could learn. Uh, and so I went to personal training, and that was now 16 years ago, and throughout my career I mostly worked with people with diabetes, injuries, chronic conditions and um, so these special populations that often the fitness industry has not put at the center of their marketing or service, and so I was always looking for ways to help my clients and I stumbled upon EMS, and it changed my career again. So EMS stands for electrical muscle stimulation. It is short for WBEMS, which is whole body electrical muscle stimulation, and it's a suit with electrodes. It's a 20 minute workout and it's very intense and very effective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you don't hear that intro story to fitness. Often Worked for a billionaire, saw a trainer and got ahead of easy yeah, I know usually it's something way different. I've never heard that before in the five years of doing this show. So, yeah, mind-blowing you. You think see, this personal trainer has life easy. I will tell you, most trainers, as you know, now work from 5 am to 8 pm, have no life and you just kind of go off the fact that you love helping people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes you smile yes but but that guy, wow, that's uh, that's a awesome story, man, yeah thank you and hopping into uh ems. I was telling you a little backstage. It's a company by me which is a giant franchise that does something very similar. They're all about 20 minutes. Hook up to this whole bodysuit ready set go. This is my biggest question and I know for non-fitness people this is not their biggest question.
Speaker 1:Not even like fitness, like non-fitness people this is not their biggest question, so, but from something not even like fitness, I'm like just strict business owner question about how this works right, the time and setup it takes to put on a whole body suit and then take yourself seriously. We're looking at america and thinking to myself wow, I look like an alien. Um, to then go get shocked intentionally to go work out and feel more uncomfortable, like how, how do you convince people? Yeah, you can try, right, because if you're not the benefits, right, even if it's the best thing in the entire world, how do you get some? I struggle getting people just to walk. Let's go for a walk today or let's do a 20-minute workout. I'm not telling them to go put a giant suit on and we're not only going to sweat, but you're going to feel more uncomfortable because we're going to electrocute the shit out of you. So several things there.
Speaker 2:First of all, putting on the suit you do have to wear it depends on the suit and there are different manufacturers, but you do have to wear usually a cotton layer, base layer, and then the trainer and this is the uncomfortable part has to wet the pro suit, the suit, with the electrodes. There are ways to make that comfortable. You can use hot water and that way when you put it on it doesn't feel like.
Speaker 2:My mind just goes in the gutter when you say that Exactly, then usually, if the trainer is well-trained, they can suit you up pretty quickly. It should take about a minute or a minute and a half to put on the suit and then take it off. So we're still within, you know, inside the 25 minute range. And then, yeah, you do get, I'm going to say, stimulated, not electrocuted. So the stimulation is an electrical signal, but how you contract muscles is through an electrical signal of your nervous system. So your nervous system does deliver an electric shock to your muscles which engage your muscle fibers, and so this is mimicking that signal and enhancing it. So you are still contracting your muscles.
Speaker 2:It's not a passive treatment. You are exercising, you are doing movements, lunges, squats, whatever exercise you want. You are contracting your own muscles and then you're allowing the suit to enhance your own contractions akin to lifting heavy. So EMS shines as a strength training tool and in about 20 minutes you do get the equivalent of about a two hour session of weightlifting. And this is based on research studies comparing people doing EMS for 16 weeks, once or twice a week, to a group doing 32 hours of traditional training to eight hours of EMS time, and the strength results were comparable the strength results, and that's why that comparison is a one to four Right. So one session of EMS is four hours of traditional training. I don't make that comparison because when you're training four hours you have other elements, you have metabolic conditioning, you're stretching like there's other things. So I'm reducing it to closer to an hour and a half, to two hours of weightlifting.
Speaker 2:Okay, but how do you?
Speaker 1:convince someone to do it. So how do you get clients to?
Speaker 2:do it. So it's a good question now. Uh, I personally offer a 50 off on the first session. Uh, I travel to people's houses so I can't offer it for free. In a studio, you could offer a free session or or a discounted, you know, three pack or whatever and and. But you have to have a good experience. And mostly it's word of mouth. It's someone that says like you know what, fine, I'll try it and, and they refer out and and that's how it goes, and it's. The population is mostly women ages 40 and up that don't like the gym environment, don't like the gym environment, like the toxic culture of some gyms, don't like to lift weights, don't want to look bulky, like all these fears around lifting weights, may not have access to weights, may rather have someone come to their house, and they don't want to have a full gym in their house, right? So there's all these conditions that, like EMS, allows to circumvent.
Speaker 1:This is a tough one for me.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, no, please, please. I mean these are valid questions because I have had people like, wait, you have to put on a suit and, wait, someone else has used that suit and I'm like, yes, okay, but the suit gets disinfected and you're wearing a base layer, so it's not direct skin contact, you know what.
Speaker 1:That doesn't even bother me, cause I get it. Cause, like gym equipment, what do you think we do? We're not like placing the leather off the machines every time, right? So that I totally understand. It's like it's just so funny that the episode that came up right before this listeners and for you to understand, it's not a BFR training.
Speaker 1:So right before this for listeners and for you to understand. We're not at bfr training, so we're like two super unique niche style workouts. It's just the mental side of like personally for myself, like I can get behind a lot of stuff, so like just from a sales point not from a health point of convincing people to do something, and these two are just like that tough. It's a tough sell.
Speaker 2:It's a tough sell, but if you can promise about two hours of results in 20 minutes, that's that's where where, like, the marketing would go into right. Like that's where, like you're getting results, you're getting more for a bang for a buck. Like when, when you put on the suit, it's and you're getting more for a bang for a buck. Like when, when you put on the suit, it's and you're doing bicep curls, your legs, your glutes, your quads, your abs everything is still firing. So it is like, even if you're focusing on one exercise with one small muscle group, like everything is getting stimulated and challenged yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's break down the science behind it.
Speaker 2:Tell us to me from a basic level about why it works. So the basic level of understanding is we contract muscles through an electric signal of the nervous system. This mimics that signal and enhances it. Now, when you're going to the gym, typically you would do if you were doing like a traditional body split routine 10, 15 minutes of legs, 10, 15 minutes of arms, 10, 15 minutes of abs, right, and by the time you get the full body, you would run at around an hour, an hour and a half, depending on how fast or short or if you superset, right, but I mean sort of.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've been doing traditional training, you know, you know, 11 years. I'm all about just the deadlift day, man, 60 to 70 of the muscles in my body. It's one movement, 20 minutes. I'm done yeah so.
Speaker 1:So imagine doing deadlifts, but like, deadlifts are not going to challenge your chest, they're not necessarily going to challenge your triceps, right like of course, but at least I get like most of the body out of the way in one day, like one lift, and I do three sets of that. Then I can move on to like, even like powerlifting splits. Right, that's most of the body it's most of the body. Yeah, yeah so you're getting close to that, or just, uh, squat presses like then you're what else that pushups for, for movements you're done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. So the imagine doing all that with EMS. But but no, so the, the idea is that, or the idea, the science behind it is that by the, the other thing that this thing is, the stimulation will, will fire all the muscle fibers. So type one, type two, anything that's underneath the electrode will get stimulated.
Speaker 1:What muscle fibers are prioritizing? Is it prioritizing one or two? Because, like you, there's two.
Speaker 1:Let me just give a common misconception about muscle fibers, because I'm a general public, not a press, but other people. So muscle fibers are a percentage of the muscle. This type one is type two and there's subsets inside of both of them. The most common one we keep tabs up as a subset, it's like uh, 2a and 2b. Yeah, right, you can only have a certain percentage of a muscle. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1:Uh, it always uses example from multitasking. Right, people think that you can, your body, your brain can multitask. Multitasking physically impossible. Right, you can't focus a hundred percent of two things because you only have a hundred percent of your attention. Yeah, anything goes for muscle tissue. You can't full focus a hundred percent on type one and type two. You can only split, like 50 here, 50 there, or 60, 40 or whatever it may be, which is why you'll never see a long-distance runner be able to lift a lot of weight and then vice versa. So which is a prioritizing? The movements you're using, the weight you're using, like, how does your brain know, or your body know, to like hit different types of the fast, central, slow, twitch muscles With the suit or without it, you mean?
Speaker 2:With With the suit. So the suit. There's two theories Either it's the inverted size principle, the Heneman's size principle, either it's inverted, so it's targeting type two first, or the shotgun theory, which is just firing everything that's underneath it. And I tend to believe it's closer to the shotgun theory that it's just firing whatever muscle fibers are underneath the electrode. And the electrode I'm saying the electrode, but it doesn't have to be like the electrode is usually on the belly of the muscle and it will, depending on the parameters that you use, like you have frequency, you have pulse width, so depending on those parameters, it will go either deeper into the muscle or more superficial, or it will engage more or less muscle fibers. So the, the stimulation will engage the muscle fibers which, um, by engaging type two muscle fibers with zero to no weight, like even if you're holding like three to five pounds, like we're doing squats or deadlifts with that much weight, and it's still engaging those type two muscle fibers.
Speaker 2:So it means that from day one you can get people stronger quicker, not just because it's 20 minutes, but because when you have a total beginner, 85 year old, it's never lifted weights. You're not going to put them like, okay, five by five deadlifts. Right, like you're not going to do that. It's going to take time to go through. You know, 15 reps, 12 reps, 10 reps and like. Over like a period of 8 to 12 weeks, you'll start getting into strength training here from day one. You can already target them with actual strength training. That's one benefit that is hidden and usually not very marketed by EMS trainers.
Speaker 1:Interesting. It's just a straight out fire of electrodes, right? So I'm doing the electrode sorry for electro stimulation inside of all the muscle fibers and the body's, kind of just activating how it goes, so like I was telling you backstage, and you can break down the difference of it, like I've done a new fit, yeah, which you said is different than this.
Speaker 2:So why don't you explain the difference and I'll share my experience of the new fit I'd rather you share your experience with your new fit first, because I've never tried new fit and I I just I've seen it on instagram. I've seen what it is. It's like electrodes on usually one or two joints, so it's never the full body. But but you tell me what, how it was your experience?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was like 10 electrodes on my legs and we did basic squats, like just body weight squats, and then I pushed myself a little bit.
Speaker 1:Uh, some lunges and then some glute bridges like all body weight, yeah, and playing with the intensity of it. Just first reaction way too long of a setup like that was my biggest turn off with it. Yeah, like sitting there putting all them on I have a lot of hair as a male, my legs not comfortable. I can say yeah. So that was the first thing. The second thing is it felt weird not being able to like actually contract the muscle the way I wanted to contract it. So what I mean by that is when I'm doing a lunge for my right leg, let's say an example and I want to extend my quadricep muscle by standing, I felt like I couldn't do it and sometimes I felt like it was putting me in the reverse and it was trying to tighten the muscle up. It's like very similar to getting a charlie horse. Where you're at that borderline, you're like you're not sure is my leg gonna cramp up?
Speaker 1:is it not gonna cramp up? Am I gonna hate my life tomorrow like you don't know and you just constantly felt like you were in that stage, like I feel like my muscles just gonna lock. It never did, but I felt just uncomfortable in that situation. It was hard to do whatever it did it for 20 minutes, put it away. The interesting part was I literally couldn't bend my leg for three days afterwards.
Speaker 2:You were sore.
Speaker 1:No, not even sore. I've never I've been sore. I've worked, I've done Tough Mudders, I've done 13 mile Spartan races. I know sore I could not bend my knee. It was such bad DOMS that just the range of motion was yeah, three fucking days.
Speaker 2:It was so painful it was, like I would say, a little too effective. I would say that's overdoing it a little bit For our first session. I would say maybe they wanted to impress you a little bit. They knew you were a trainer.
Speaker 1:No, no, it was one of my trainers that does this. That's what makes it bit. They knew you were a trainer. No, no, it was one of my trainers that does this. That's what makes it worse. It was an employee of mine. Maybe it was just payback against me, I really don't know. I was trying to show off to you oh, this is so easy, I can go all day. She's like you should probably stop. I was like, yeah, do it. It, it's your fault. Yeah, apparently like. My point is like if I did that traditional weightlifting style right, and I would stop because mentally like I wouldn't be able to do anything right, I would never be able to get to be that sore because my brain would just be like I'm done, but inside the electrodes you don't realize how much you're exerting, so it's a lot easier just to kind of slip past that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense yeah, so there's a few key differences. One one, I would say so this doesn't. This uses electrodes, but they're they're. They're on a suit, and so the suit is just like a jacket and the electrodes are placed where the major muscles are um, for the legs, it's one electrode, for the quads, one electrode for the hamstring and glutes. Typically you can move around the electrodes depending on what suit you have, and so you can target adductors or whatever you want.
Speaker 2:But the idea is that you're still doing exercises like squats, lunges, whatever you want, and it's to push to. Like I typically cue clients like I want you to be challenged, but you should be able to move, like you shouldn't be locked, and so it's training people underneath that like lock sensation or or even underneath pain. But uh, so typically I equate like, okay, 10 is pain, 9 is you can't really move, and so we want to train at an 8, so an 8 out of ten. Like we want to make sure that you're constantly challenged and you want to kind of like fight through the stimulation to like get up, get down, whatever. Um, the the setup is much quicker because it's just like clips that you put on, like I said, like it takes about a minute and a half to control the amount of electricity through it so the, the suit I use is is called the weim's pro and it has an ipad and I have all the muscles and I.
Speaker 2:It has different channels and and so I I can control, like the entire body. I can lift the entire body up or I can raise or lower every muscle, for example, deadlifts. Uh, typically I would lower the quads because I want them to be able to to, to flex forward, and so I would increase the glutes and hamstrings a little bit, maybe, maybe a little bit of the back, but I would reduce the arms, the, the quads, to allow for the movement to happen with, you know, natural activation of the muscles that you would use in that, in that exercise.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting man.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, I mean in the, in the. What's interesting, especially in, in, in, in, within the fitness professionals, is that there hasn't been that much like there are. There is research and there's research comparing EMS to traditional training and EMS for lower back pain and all these things that's. Another aspect is that the electricity does help, they do STEM units right for chiropractic and physical therapy. That's where it all came from. It's from the TENS units and then from the TENS units.
Speaker 1:I'm a TENS, sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same thing but it's different.
Speaker 2:Same thing but like it's different settings and different parameters to elicit different outcomes.
Speaker 2:But it does stem from that era of like physical therapy and so on, and so it does have some pain alleviating properties of and you can set it like I can use my suit as like a giant TENS unit for lower back and alleviate pains and so on. But the idea is to still stimulate all of the muscles that you're using in each exercise and just maybe lower some of the other ones. But what I was saying is that the research like there hasn't been a lot of research of like doing this with, uh, heavy weights, for example, and like how someone that can't activate their glutes right, like you're trying to get people to deadlift and they've been sitting all day and they have dead butt syndrome and, like you, their glutes need to activate. You would have to go through like, okay, let's do clams and glute bridges and let's activate the glutes and blah, blah, and like you would spend a good amount of the session doing that. Here there's no escaping the stimulation. The stimulation is on.
Speaker 2:The glutes are going to fire that's interesting and so someone that doesn't have good glute activation. You fire them like you start getting them to deadlift and they're going to feel it. What if you?
Speaker 1:take it to, like such an example, someone that's frozen shoulder, right, you're activating the opposite muscle or the antagonist muscles to the trapezius, because that's usually what locks out frozen shoulder, because it's too tight, right? Is that the idea to help get a person to raise through their arm? You're forcing the body to fire muscles that don't want to be fired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can. I mean you can. This is an application that you can. I don't right now. I do have a couple of clients that with. They don't have complete frozen shoulder but they have like shoulder mobility issues, and so you can have the stim super low on the traps just to have some stimulation and then increase it on the lats and whatever exercise you want to do, the external rotations etc. Like you can. You can apply physical therapy and corrective exercise uh, you know parameters into an ems workout. They will still get and this is the benefit of it is that they will still get their abs, their glutes, their quads, like everything, stimulated and challenged even though they're doing external rotations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm thinking like just people should like when they picture the human body, like you, just like see it as an electrical panel.
Speaker 1:Like everything that relates to the human body relates to construction of a house. So you look at electrical panel, right panel. Like, everything that relates to the human body relates to construction of a house. So, yeah, you look at an electrical panel, right every. That's where everything gets fed from, from one main source out to the rest of the house.
Speaker 1:If, like, your body ever still works slightly different because everything overlays each other but you take, like, an electric signal and your fascia like gets too clubbed up, you get a giant knot that can help prevent. Like, let's say, if it's in your trap, your trap does get locked out, but if the signal is traveling down, it gets stuck because the trapezius is totally locked out and the fascia is all wonky. And then you're not firing your trap muscle correctly and you're going to get mobility issues. Or you're trying to lift something, your trap traps locked out. Same exact also going to overcompensate with other muscles and ultimately create overuse with other muscles and injury, because your body's going to be a lot of disproportion. So if you're able to go around that right and say, hey, we're going to skip that and we're holy shit, what about people that don't have nerves? Take patients that had nerve severed and let's say, I can't feel my quad whatsoever it's. Can you work the quad?
Speaker 2:so it depends, it depends. I've worked with people with neuropathy and like they don't feel their, their toes and so on and I use the, the um, basically I've used the armbands on their calves and then for an afternoon they're like, wow, I could feel my feet again, I could right. Like it stimulates the, the nervous system and so then it's a little more activated and they're able to move a little better. Uh, is it permanent? Maybe if we had trained more regularly and more often and so on, maybe, but at least I know that on a temporary basis it was helpful. There is research going on, I know, with these suits and Parkinson's disease. But the FDA, for now, like on a commercial level, is saying like anybody with severe neurological disease, they cannot do EMS, they don't know what it's going to do to it and blah, blah, blah. But under doctor supervision and research settings, like they are doing research and it is kind of promising so far.
Speaker 1:So I had a client of mine years ago that couldn't walk, 42-year-old male. They severed a bunch of nerves in his back from lepidectomy and he lost feeling to his right oblique, his right quad, his right hip flexor Couldn't even sit upright. And this isn't like a practicing theory. This is Anthony theory, Full disclosure here. But it worked for one patient. And this isn't like a practicing theory. This is Anthony theory, full disclosure here. But it worked for one patient.
Speaker 1:So maybe it worked. For the other patient Was, even though those nerves were severing Don, the idea I had was to activate the muscles. Lower than that. So if it's a spot activate the gas, the gastrocnemius, you could say or the aterotubialis, and get the body used to firing down below it, and then force the body, through the range of motion, to work that particular muscle that isn't activated did it work yeah, the body finds a way right, like, like.
Speaker 2:it's very interesting, I've not had that circumstance.
Speaker 1:It took three years, don't get me wrong. Oh my God, all of a sudden like he's moving. But like you would see it, it was crazy, like after over it, like we would do some things to try to activate the muscle and it would be all me moving the legs in of the range of motion. Right, he's not helping at all for about four months and then all of a sudden, like one session, the body sends an electric signal and the quad spat the out and moves. It's like it misfired, but it moved.
Speaker 2:I mean I'd be incredibly interested in trying EMS with someone that has that issue and see if it can accelerate the process, if it can because you could. You're doing basically having them move passively. You're moving it for him, moving his passively right like you're. You're moving it for him, moving his limb for him, and but I had to move it. The key was he had to think about moving the muscle yeah, exactly like he had to connect there and be like you're moving my leg.
Speaker 1:Great, but no, yeah, I want to like, I want you to pull, or imagine you're pulling as hard as you can from that muscle, yeah, right, and then you could tell when you hit, when you pay attention. It never worked, yeah, but when he concentrated like you would get a signal shot through the muscle and it was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life the whole training. It's fascinating.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating and uh, listen, if, if there's a listener that has a condition and can can do it with me.
Speaker 1:I'd be glad to to try it yeah, I'm really curious to see like how because that's way more of a convincing argument like no offense, like that, that's where this research should be. It's with people like that that really truly like I'm gonna try anything, like I want to be like for him. He didn't want his wife to wipe his ass anymore, he wanted to go to the bathroom on his own, which we got him to do. But like that's someone who's like I'll try anything at this point Instead of. Our issue like this is you and me both, and even the guy I talked to last week and the week before that it's so much easier to convince my doctor that I need a shot of Ozempic because that takes about three seconds. Right, I don't have to get into. Okay, now you're gonna lose weight, and that's the only outcome of persons thinking about not thinking about all the crazy side effects that come with it, but just weight loss. I have three seconds, I don't have to sweat yeah, but you lose.
Speaker 2:you lose muscle, and so I have clients on a Zempik, and this helps maintain and build muscle when they've maybe had a lifestyle that doesn't include going to the gym, doesn't include lifting weights, doesn't include right, and so where do these people go? This is just one more ideal option.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, man. I appreciate you coming on and talking about.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me Fun, very interesting topic. Got two final questions for you. If you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take on message?
Speaker 2:I would say fun. I mean you're, you make things fun and you have stories too. They're awesome. So I would say fun and take home, Be open-minded to trying new things.
Speaker 1:I love it. And an easy question how can people find you, get a hold of you and learn more about EMS training?
Speaker 2:So you can find me on ConradEMSFitnesscom and on Instagram is at Conrad Fitness.
Speaker 1:I love it. Conrad, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you dealing with me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the listeners.
Speaker 1:And please don't forget share, subscribe to the show. It's the only way that this show grows. And don't forget fitness is medicine. Until next time, thank you.
