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For my project I decided to focus on how using an EMS (electrical muscle stimulation) machine helps in improving muscle and endurance. It also helps in the long term with recovery.
Electric Muscle Stimulation
For my project I decided to focus on how using an EMS (electrical muscle stimulation) machine helps in improving muscle and endurance. It also helps in the long term with recovery.
In his essay, Matsui explains the process and benefits of electrical muscle stimulation. He combines research data and personal experience to describe the advantages of its implementation in the sports world and for surgical recovery.
Electrical muscle stimulation, he explains, imitates the brain’s action of sending electrical signals to contract muscles. How is this helpful? He refers to a study showing strength increase in the affected area from 17-31%. According to another article he addressed, this is due to the fact that electrical muscle stimulations cause muscle contractions over 60% their maximum strength during voluntary contraction. In correlation to muscle strength, electrical muscle stimulation works to reset muscle tone, making muscle contraction and relaxation much more efficient. As a hockey player, Matsui expounds, electrical muscle stimulation on fast-twitch muscle fibers is advantageous to “Get down the ice as fast as possible and react to a hit.” As far as recovery goes, Matsui speaks from experience – after breaking his fibula the doctors declared an eight week rehab process. Every night he slept with an electrical muscle stimulator on his ankle, and by week five he was back in the game.
Matsui hopes his experience in connection with new research will positively influence training techniques and sports medicine.