Post: #1

Ive been looking out for new things to try out other than the basic supplements (protein, creatine, amino acids, etc) to improve my overall performance.

I started with supplements about a year ago and it gave me a huge boost initially, but I plateaued after some time. Recently I bought knee wraps for squatting and it improved significantly my posture and made me more confortable.

Now I've been looking out for something else and found out about EMS and/or TENS units. Compex is one of the biggest brands around, and according to them you can "create muscle" and recover from a good training with this device.

Has anyone tried this thing? is it worth it? In Colombia they cost around 3=4 times the american price so I want to know if its worth all the trouble of buying and importing it.


I would use it as a replacement for stretching, since I am the laziest person at doing so. Nothing better than a few minutes while browsing the web or watching a movie.

pd. I used this thing in a tournament a few weeks ago. It seemed pretty cool and all but i don't know if it actually worked.

Post: #2

I knew a guy who used one of these things religiously.

Over the course of 12 months of using this torturous device he went from a chubby mildly strong but lazy guy to a chubby mildly strong but lazy guy with nerve issues.

I understand that they're now marketed for ongoing muscular pain associated with scoliosis, so any time now we can expect to see geriatrics looking like this...



Then again. I'm no expert.

Post: #3

When i was a kid a friend of mine talked his mom into buying "Dr. ho" for him. It was what the OP is describing. He thought it would make him have bigger muscles. In the end he wasted alot of money and looked silly sitting in a chair getting zapped for 30 minutes a day.

Post: #4

I'm no doctor and I'm certainly not an expert on this stuff but I have used EMS in physical therapy, to help recover from significant muscular atrophy in one of my legs after a serious injury.

I got much more benefit out of actually lifting and stretching, and the EMS stuff is pretty unpleasant in my opinion. It doesn't hurt really, it's just very uncomfortable (though I do have a sky high pain threshold). My recovery would've gone a lot faster if the PTs hadn't dicked around with dumb shit like that and just put me under a bar to lift instead of making me figure it out on my own.

Just my experience.

Post: #5

I feel like EMS is best left for restarting muscle growth in heavily atrophied muscle. And by heavily atrophied, we're talking about someone who has been in a coma for a month+.

Anything less than that, do some air squats, add in a light dumb bell, and work up from there.

It's almost startling depressing how most medical professionals can't scale their treatments. What works for a crippled desk worker is underkill for a power lifter.

Post: #6