By Henri Schmidt, CEO & Founder of VBTec/Visionbody, Muscle Expert
If you’re looking to find more information about EMS training vs normal gym training, you have landed in the right place. I am a little bit of an expert in both fitness-related issues and in EMS technology.
I have spent most of my life studying and working in the fitness and wellness industry, and then a lot of years ago, I added EMS technology to the mix. All of it started with my fascination with the human body. I am especially fascinated with how important our muscle mass is in fighting disease, in helping us live longer, feel better, and, of course, look better. As I always say, muscle is life. And I think everyone should know it.
But enough about me, if you’re here, you’re probably wondering, „Should I stick to the gym, or is EMS training the secret weapon I’ve been missing?”
My answer is simple: you don’t have to choose! And I’ll explain why.
Traditional Gym Training
We all know that the gym is the holy land of iron, cables, machines, grunting, and sweat. When you do exercises like squats, dumbbell rows, bicep curls, deadlifts, cable exercises, and so on, your brain sends electrical impulses through your central nervous system to your muscles, telling them to contract. This process is called voluntary muscle recruitment.
The challenge with traditional training is that during a standard gym set, your body is lazy. If you are lifting a weight that isn't your absolute maximum, your brain only activates about 30-60% of the fibers in that specific muscle to get the job done. This means a significant portion of high-threshold (power) fibers remain dormant unless you push to absolute failure. But training to failure is limited by genetics, recovery, and your ability to push yourself that far, and it can also be limited by performance fatigue, and constantly pushing yourself to your limit can lead to injury risks or overtraining.
If you pair it with movement, EMS training allows you to recruit almost all your muscle fibers at the same time, essentially to reach that training to "failure" intensity internally, within the muscle tissue itself, even if you are performing simple low-impact exercises.
The EMS Difference: Working Smarter, Not Just Harder
Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) is a training method that delivers precise, low-frequency electrical impulses directly to your motor nerves using a special suit.
What does this do differently from normal gym training? Well, EMS helps you bypass the body’s natural energy-saving mechanisms. An interesting tidbit of information is that your body is designed to be efficient, meaning it doesn't want to use every muscle fiber if it doesn't have to. EMS says, "We are using all of them." With VISIONBODY’s EMS+EMA technology, for example, we target up to 98% of muscle fibers simultaneously, including those deep-seated muscles that are notoriously difficult to reach when training with a barbell.
The most striking difference is the intensity of the muscle contractions. In a short 20-minute EMS training session, your muscles experience work equivalent to several hours of traditional gym training, but without the heavy loading of your spine and joints.
The Perfect Pair: Why You Don’t Have to Choose Between EMS and the Gym
EMS, in my opinion, isn’t meant to turn you into a couch potato or replace functional movement. It is not a lazy way out; we still want you to live a healthy lifestyle and stay active. That’s why it is called EMS training and not EMS sitting. It is simply a tool for you to work out more efficiently, save time, lose weight, improve your recovery, help you gain muscle mass faster, and improve your neuromuscular pathways. So, always integrate your EMS suit into your existing (or new) training routine. You can go out for a run, do some simple exercises, or use it for your pilates class, play golf, basketball, or take it with you to the gym.
Fitting Fitness Into a Busy Life
Because the gym requires a massive time investment: the commute, the changing, the 60-90 minute workout session, and the shower, many people find it hard to stay consistent or make the time to actually go to the gym. This is where EMS comes to help: busy professionals, tired parents, elderly people, every day people with little free time, or people who can’t perform high-impact exercises can benefit from a 20-minute whole body EMS training session. With an EMS system, if you can’t go to the gym, you can bring the gym to your house.
The Science Simplified: How Your Muscles Wake Up
When you do your training, the old school way, your body follows Henneman’s Size Principle, which in simple terms means your body recruits small, slow-twitch fibers first, only moving to big, powerful fast-twitch fibers when the load gets heavy, or the muscle gets tired.
EMS helps you achieve optimum muscle activation without pushing yourself to your limits, regardless of the weights you are lifting when training.
Common Questions:
Is It Too Good to Be True?
When people hear about EMS, at first, they think this is just another tool that promises body goals results without them needing to put in any effort.
I have said it a thousand times, and I will say it again, EMS isn’t a magical tool, and it is not something that promotes an unhealthy lifestyle; you still have to pay attention to sleep well, eat healthier, and be active. It is simply a helpful tool that can get you to your desired results faster, a modern way of training, and a tool that, when used properly, can also boost your body’s health levels.
Does EMS create „fake muscle”?
No, the hypertrophy (growth) achieved via EMS is real, functional tissue, because your muscle tissue doesn’t know the difference between an electrical signal sent from your brain or one sent from a suit, and only knows tension (muscle contraction) and recovery. However, and I am going to stress this again, for that muscle to be useful, you need to build it by combining EMS with functional movement.
Final thoughts
EMS isn’t here to replace the gym but to evolve it, and to make the way we train more efficient and targeted.
Whether you are looking to lose weight, build muscle, keep your body fit, or simply move without pain, the combination of voluntary movement and Electrical Muscle Stimulation is the most potent formula I have found in my decades of experience. That’s why I created Visionbody, because I want to give you the tools to understand your body better and achieve results that were previously reserved for athletes or only for people who could spend four hours a day training.
References:
- Henneman's size principle – Wikipedia
- Effects of Whole-Body Electromyostimulation versus High-Intensity Resistance Exercise on Body Composition and Strength: A Randomized Controlled Study
