Point taken Angela! And I would have taken Charlie’s advice over the science community’s advice anyday. I do have a history of lower back pain, and have heard Stuart McGill say before that low back issues can be caused by strength/muscle imbalances in left vs. right hip muscles. This was the only reason why I’m curious. I will continue to do some legitimate experimentation before mentioning it again.
I want to make sure you understand I am not criticizing proper scientific methodology or saying that a muscle imbalance is not creating a problem. My leg differential created a lot of issues for me along the way but I was also compensating really well for this likely do to my competitive gymnastics background which gave me lots of flexibility going into the first stages of my development.
I have no doubt that low back issues can be caused by muscle imbalance but how you decide what to do as a result of this is what I am concerned about. As I was just telling tb2010 in another posts, Charlie was always talkin about the idea of addressing the entire body and to be careful to address bits and pieces of it in isolation.
Not sure what you do and likely getting into this would be a long email… but do you do many drills such as seated side to side with a med ball? ( you are sitting down, feet up and knees bent and you take a med ball and touch ( barely) each side of your hip back and forth…). Or trail leg forward and or backward? ( also called the hurdle drill, when you stand up against a wall or post and look straight ahead and rotate one leg at a time as though you have trying to clear a hurdle? . Or how about donkey kicks and leg swings front to back either from your knees or standing up against the wall? ( I am doing all of these exercises in some of the bike workouts/ basement tempo series… = to summerize these exercises are meant to mobilize, strengthen and specifically build work around the hip joint. I used to do and continue to do a great deal of these exercises as a basis of general mobility but specifically to keep this region loose and moving .
The whole muscle imbalance and structural asymmetry issue is quite fascinating from an entrepreneurial point of view. If you go to the chiropractor or physiotherapist and say your knee hurts, 99% of the time it will be due to a muscle imbalance or asymmetry. “You need to strengthen this muscle.” I work as a strength coach and 99% of the time I’m trying to loosen up muscles to enhance performance and movement, not provide unwarranted isolated strengthening protocols. Frankly, I’m tired of physiotherapists providing strengthening and exercise programs. Just like Ange said, loosen up the region and provide general mobility, and 99% of the time when the athlete returns to sport, the strength required will also return. Tightness creates restriction and inhibition. Remove the restriction, eliminate the inhibition and guess what - people get stronger.
When Usain Bolt breaks the 200m world record, no one checks his leg lengths, finds a 1.5 cm discrepancy and then declares, “The slightly longer leg contributed to his fantastic performance!” But he pulls his groin and guess what! “It’s his leg length discrepancy that’s the problem!”
In the case of EMS, I would always try to train bilaterally even though one side may be less strong. In most cases, the weaker side will be upgraded (because it is well below its potential) and the healthy side won’t be made disproportionately stronger (because it is likely closer to its potential ceiling). Remember, as Charlie often mentioned, EMS provides improvements in Raw Strength. It does not provide the coordination required for specific movements. Thus, there will be a transition period where coordination must be restored through specific movements (i.e. sprinting) to gradually integrate the strength improvements achieved through EMS. I believe only training one side with EMS may create a disparity that could create problems when reacquiring a skill.
Great job,congratulations to both. EMS world did need a next step in productive sophistication,as Kots would have said!
Exactly. Well put.
(Of course the only problem with the above post is that it isn’t as commercial as the other BS options promoted by the usual suspects)
Good Discussion!
Please consider this… the degree and severity of the issue(s) whether it be a limb length discrepancy or strength or mobility issue is most commonly rooted in the weak or inconsistent neural innervation, strength or amplitude of the signal and inter / intra-muscular coordination. That is not to say there can’t be other contributing factors though such as trauma, structural defects and psychological hurdles. The advice given by Ange was solid… mobility and range of motion performed in a dynamic fashion increase neural activity and coordination. Dysfunction is the stepchild of coordination and is usually seen in close company. No.2 - I agree 100% the entreprenurial model of “sports performance training” is indeed an interesting one. The degree to which information is disseminated is tightly governed by what science says is valid and not based on pure result. I am often reminded of a quote by Ian King “I do it now because it works, I will let the scientists figure out why.”
Angela, because of the differences in leg lengths, did you run with a lift in one shoe?
Dr’s told me I compensated extremely well due to my flexibility and that if I was to avoid issues moving forward I would need to stay flexible, loose.( seems like a fairly obvious piece of advice but this idea does not really become an issue for most until post athletic career … you hope;) Mike Forgraves who has been making my orthodics since I was University ( Mike studied under the guy who originally did my orthodics in high school) told me in his opinion it was best to narrow the difference but in a careful way and maybe increase this over time. In general terms the lift does not make both legs the same. To what degree I am not sure. My trail leg ( my right leg) happens to the longest one as well ( almost one inch) and greatest difference is in femur. I wear orthodics ( with a small lift) in all my shoes, most of the time and did also in my spikes most of the time
Ange,have you ever noticed direct correlations between flexibility and general fitness levels (both ways)?
I have noticed this in general.Certainly this is my opinion not supported by hard research. The more fit someone is the more likely they are looser and more flexible. The idea of " move it, or loose it" I believe is true and positively correlates with what I have seen from coaching kids and adults.
The fitter you are the fitter you can be. Those who have, get more ( and therefor are able to get more. ( two of Charlie’s fav sayings about playing to your strengths and doing what can be done opposed to complaining about how it can’t be done. I keep this in mind constantly especially when training circumstances go off kilter. This is a general principle I learned a long time ago and it has served me well both personally and professionally.
Very fit athletes might temporarily lack flexibility depending on the training phase thru the year but I think once an athlete prepares to compete adaptation has occurred and range of motion is restored. ( I also think there is a wide range of people in this regard and likely fitter and more flexible people end up in sport due to some of these born attributes )
Thank you,Ange. Interesting point you make linking ROM and adaptive state. This is in my experience very seldomly considered,and nevertheless a key indicator of where an athlete is in his/her training process,as it underlies both output and fitness potentials. I wonder how traditional EMS,in any of its forms addresses this. N2,and Giovanni,how does your new product address directly or indirectly?
I need some reactions to this:
(First of all I know EMS is only complementary to max speed etc, but not having worked much on max speed this season …) What would be the effect if I introduced high intensity EMS 3-4times/week on hamstrings (explosive strength setting), 1 month prior to indoor competition? Fitness levels are very good, and we’ve done a good amount of lactic work (not optimal though, since indoor season is not a target).
Oh: 400m .
Thank you!
Why would you do that?
I experimented with it 2 summers ago for outdoors, but under different conditions… (little training preparation and much work-stress a month prior). Not being as fit and trained as now, I had an impressive (for my records) 200m split (pb of 25.6") during the 400 preliminary round, but being unprepared, I cramped up everywhere at 260m and didn’t finish the race.
For this winter, I wonder if it could help with the missing speed training and explosiveness. (My instinct says I should just stick with the plan, but curiosity and past experimentation won’t let it out of my mind… )
For the famous CF 10s ON 50s OFF protocol, I have just bought a Genesy 1200pro that enable me to program my own set-up
this is what I have for now…
Warm-up
Total duration: 5min
Frequency: 25hz
Width: 400μs???
Stimulation MaxS
Total duration: 10min
Frequency: 90Hz
Ramp up: 2s
Contraction time: 10s
Width:400μs
Ramp down: 1s
Rest: 47s (4Hz)
Active Recovery
Total duration: 5min
Frequency: 9Hz
Width:400μs???
It would be very helpful If someone know which width I should go with
I think the wider the pulse width the better for the lower body, from what I recall from the thread that Ku2u#2 heavily contributed to about a year back. I think 450μs is the recommended pulse width for the quads. Here is the thread:
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?22253-Buying-an-EMS
I think you also want to decrease the ramp-up time to under 0.5 seconds- a 2 second ramp time is too long. I have mine set at 0.1 seconds on the programmable unit I have. Perhaps you could start at 0.5 to be conservative, and lower it by .10 each session.
Also, does the ramp time count as contraction time? Because if it’s at less than full power for 2 full seconds of the 10 second contraction time, that’s 20% of your potential work time not being optimized.
As a folluwup to the earlier thread, I bought a Compex Sport, and it is indeed less painful to use on the quads than my Neurotrac Sport XL. The additional power of the Compex is noticeable and welcome. If you have the dough, go for one of these or the Compex units. The only annoying downside is the lack of a “10 on 50 off” Max Strength program.
The Neurotrac XL remains a great el-cheapo option for Active Recovery.
thanks for the answer T-Slow,
I was wondering If the width would be the same for the warm-up and the active recovery phase?
I would suspect so. If you read through the thread carefully there may be an answer. I’m sure gciriani can answer your question. He usually seems to monitor EMS threads.
I would like to touch on a characteristic of EMS that is often (if not always) neglected: the maximum voltage provided by an EMS machine.
A customer who had bought [u]this machine[/u] from one of my competitors, found that contractions were not as strong as he wanted. After trying one of my machines and experimenting the substantial difference in intensity contraction, ended up returning the former. But why the big difference? In a nutshell, understand what the specs are really claiming.
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If you scroll through the link of that machine it says (below the video): 120 mA. We know after all that the most reputable brands claim 120 mA, and that it’s almost impossible to get to that level. Well let’s read further: peak to peak, which means they have 60 mA positive and 60 mA going in the opposite direction when the waveform flips over to the negative side.
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They claim 500 Ohm is the load under which the current was measured. Ohm’s law says V = I x R: voltage equals current intensity times resistance (or impedance). With the units of measure we deal with in EMS it’s easier to use the following units V (volts) = mA (milli-amps) x kilo-Ohms. So we have now learnt that that machine from that web-site reaches a maximum 60 mA x 0.5 kilo-Ohms = 30 Volts.
The problem is that when one puts the pads on quads the resistance of the quads is much higher: in the neighborhood of 2-2.5 kilo-Ohm. So if you do the calculation again, but solving for the maximum current this time, you obtain V / kilo-Ohms = mA you obtain 30 V / 2 kilo-Ohms = 15 mA. This is not enough to obtain appreciable results!
So that machine is limited by the maximum voltage it is able to provide which equals 30 V. You can rest assured that if they had been able to provide a higher current they would not have used the trick of giving the peak to peak and to specify 500 Ohms for h=the load under which that maximum current had been calculated.
EMS is wonderful. If only I had someone to pad me up on my glutes, hamstrings and other difficult to reach areas of my fabulous ( and getting better all the time) body.
Technology is wonderous. I love it and I use it and I know lots about it but these days doing hot and colds, baths and ensuring I am properly heating myself up and staying strong with some basic core lifts is what I spend time doing.
When i have had to solve my hip issues regarding tightness and extended leg length due to whatever caused that, I had to turn to whatever I had. When Charlie was no longer around to perform ( I will leave it at that LoL) i had to figure stuff out on my own and how I would replicate message and frankly we rarely did EMS except on others for $.
In a perfect world we pull out all the stops. In the real world we make shit up and figure it out. I live and have resided in the later. There are many things we can do to replicate some of the effects of EMS.
increase your bodies ability to function optimally. No matter who you are, it will be an uphill battle doing EMS or any performance hack if you don’t address and start working towards improved sleep, nutrition and the natural world.
Free habits performed in yoru home routinely are worth TONS more than trekking to some well meaning expert who likely will be amazing but expensive and time consuming. FANTASTIC if you can make that happen but once a week anything is NEVER as good as practicing several times a day habits which translate ON the track with electric timing ;).
Sustainable habits accumulate over time and will translate into speed acquisition if and when you add up each and every carrot and celery stick. Ben came over to see my new home not too long ago and we were talking about Desai and Charlie. Long before I met Charlie Ben said his nutrition was terrible. “Anyone who does not drink something green or eat green stuff every day has to realize it’s going to be an issue some place not too long down the road for them”. BEn had his mom cooking for him most of his life / no all of his life until she passed. I have seen him fat and out of shape and in much better shape and it made me laugh listening to him talk about diet and nutrition.
Yeah, if wishes were fishes I’d have a entire room with a table set up 24/7 and have someone on staff to hook me up 30 minutes each day to start and finish my day. Guess what I do instead? WATER, contrast temp, fasting for healing and nutrient reload and specific targeted diet for reduction of all things that create inflammation.
My reliance on others and therapy and training is less because what I do is effective and efficient and I am LOOSE and strong and agile. Each of those things are needed for run fast or run. You have to be able to jog and run before you can be a world class sprinter.