I meant I was stimulating the quads of one leg for testing.
I played with rep ranges since posting this. I felt fatigue at 15, and the next day was quite sore (maybe too high level??) for up to 3 days afterwards. Trying 10 reps at 3 seconds now.
Mortac8, unless you used medical type pads (5"x8") or more than one pair of pads/channels, it’s impossible to stimulate all four quads:[ol]
[li]Vastus lateralis
[/li][li]Vastus intermedius
[/li][li]Rectus femoris
[/li][li]Vastus medialis
[/li][/ol]I believe no.3 is the only one attached to your hips thereby lifting your thigh.
Charlie, do you recommend stimulating all four?
ESTI, I believe you were the victim of DOMS (Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness). If you used Active Recovery (AR), within a couple of hours from your training, you would not be as sore, and certainly not for 3 days. AR is a program specifically conceived to neutralize DOMS, present in the Compex and Globus machines but not in others to my knowledge. There is research (click here on relative article) and anecdotal proof (click here and read message 1526) that it works.
Charlie, I started digging in the subject of central fatigue, but the feedback I got so far is that it takes shorter than muscular fatigue to recover. Will dig further.
Gciriani, I was using two channels and four 2.75" pads on the anterior thigh of one limb. I believe all four quads were being activated.
Is there a scientific correlation between very frequent electric stimulation and speeding up of the menstrual cycle in women?
I am asking because I have noticed something both with the use of ARP and now the Compex.
Recent studies show that electrostimulation increases the secretion of hGH (human Growth Hormone) more than exercise and supplements: GH responses to two consecutive bouts of neuromuscular electrical stimulation in healthy adults - Eur J Endocrinol; Mar 2008 - Sartorio et al. Talk to a doctor and ask if hGH interacts with progesterone or any other hormone involved with the timing of the menstrual cycle. Report what you find in here please, I’m interested in what you find.
mortac8,
It seems to me you are using small pads (not that it has anything to do with leg position). Would you be able to test a set of 4 larger pads and report the difference? Granted you’ll need a higher current intensity level, to generate the same contraction force: the current gets dispersed over a larger area. But you should be able to go higher if you have a decent machine.
In addition your stimulation will be more comfortable, because the nerves that pick up discomfort, are more superficial than motorneurons. Therefore current dispersed over a larger area will be more gentle on you. Overall you should be able to get a better stimulation: either stronger, or more comfortable or both.
The pads I normally use are large 2.75 inches in diameter and round. I also have some 2x2inch square pads and 1.25x1.25 inch round pads. I prefer the 2x2 inch pads in general (maybe because they are of higher quality)…still doesn’t change the fact that quad stim for max strength isn’t happening with my knee flexed 
I will try some large pads and compare to the small pads now that I have my new Compex sport (which is much more comfortable in general to my vitalstim 4000) and a good assortment of pads. Thanks.
This is what I was told:
’ HGH raises the levels of testosterone and dopamine. These two are opposite of progesterone and estrogens, so as the first two increase, the other two decrease.
For the release of ovum you need estrogens at a specific concentration, hence the noted results. ’
(translated from greek, so if anything sounds funny let me know…)
There you have it! A mechanism of interaction. Look at this chart in Wikipedia. You can see that for a new cycle to begin, estrogen has to go down (end of the cycle. My interpretation of the possible mechanism then is that, after the body causes an initial increase of estrogen, electrostimulation through hGH brings it down much more quickly, thus shortening the cycle. As a corollary, if you are trying to get pregnant I would stop electrostimulation for a couple of cycles to let it come back to regular.
Could you please tell me what acceleration you noticed? Days?
What do you think the “intensity level” would be here. Maximum toleration? I’m thinking it would make a good recovery session, provided you could use a lower setting and not accumulate much muscle fatigue.
Thank you gciriani
I can give you more accurate stats with the EMS after more prolonged use.
For now I can just tell you that when I used the ARP the cycle started immediately on the second day of treatment (2 weeks before it was due), and also much lighter than usual, and if I remember correctly, menstruation length was 2 days shorter, so only 3.
Now with the EMS, it started about a week before it was due (on the third day of extensive use), also lighter than usual. I’ll let you know about days later.
Since I have my own EMS now, I can keep note of prolonged use stats if you’d like.
But I am suspecting that this effect happens with EMS-abuse… because when I was using it in a more “sane” way two weeks back, for a period of 1 week, nothing really changed.
Raffiki,
For recovery, the best program is Active Recovery, a program that can be found in machines like Compex and Globus. It is by design very different from strength and explosivity programs: much lower frequency, almost a massage that cycles between 2 Hz and 10 Hz approximately. Most people who do strength (and explosivity) training on the above machines at the usual high frequencies, then go through Active Recovery and their muscles are in much better shape the day after.
Charlie,
Since we are talking recovery, the feedback I got so far is that CNS recovery is in general much shorter than muscular recovery. Hours for CNS recovery vs days for muscular recovery.
I wouldn’t say days for muscle recovery. That would be for CNS recovery which goes along with very high intensity voluntary exercise as oposed to EMS of any intensity. EMS recovery could be as short as 4 hrs or so.
In reference to EMS stimulating GH, the cliic I worked with found that growth was stimulated in CP children treated with extremely low intensity EMS overnight for prolonged periods. These children on average moved from the 20th percentile to the 50th percentile of growth in about a year.
These effects could be systemic as above or localized on a treated area in some cases.
I started 4 weeks ago stopped 2 weeks ago as went to Portugal warm weather training. My leg strength and top speed increased a good amount. I injured my achilies so worked in the gym and managed to increase my bottom position dead stat by 50 kg to over 300. Going to keep the ems going for sure
Not sure if thi has been asked before but was wondering would really fast contractions cranked up be useful
Would really fast contractions but power cranked up be of any use
Ok would like this clearing up so thought the theory thread best place for this. What’s more important the frequency used during the contraction or the strength of the contraction? Because eas expensive units can have some pretty good contractions, I say this has we talk about activating as much fast twitch as possible and in the gym on a squat to do this we increase the weight! Which of course means stronger contraction. We don’t have the option to change our frequency lol
For explosive strength, you want high frequency (100-120hz+) and high “strength” of contraction.
Once you are using the appropriate frequency, it’s more important to increase the strength of the contraction. The current intensity level (or voltage if you have cheaper machine), is able to reach deeper in the muscle, thus recruiting more fibers.