Do any of these sounds familiar?
You do an exercise but aren’t sure exactly what muscles you should be feeling.
You have muscles that don’t seem to show any progress no matter how hard you work them.
You have old injuries and the muscles around it have never recovered causing pain or weakness.
I’ve worked with hundreds of people and every single one of them has experienced at least one of these.
You see, it takes more than just a well-planned exercise to target the correct muscles. Muscle contraction is reliant on your nervous system and signals from your brain, and that connection does not always run perfectly. Injuries, posture, and movement habits can all lead to certain muscles becoming overactive, leaving the partner muscles weak and inhibited.
Muscles generally work as a tandem, the muscles on one side of a joint must relax while the muscles on the other side contract. This happens automatically, but for efficient movement these muscle pairs need to be working together optimally. If one side becomes overactive, we end up with things like rounded shoulders from a tight chest, tilted hips from tight hip flexors, and as many athletes experience, torn hamstrings from tight quads.
Strengthening the opposing muscle groups is vital in correcting these imbalances, but if the neuromuscular connection is weak then it can be tough improve. Without your brain signaling the muscles to contract fully we cannot create the mechanical stress needed to make a change. If you’ve ever tried to correct your posture with different exercises, you know how difficult it can be!
With EMS training we can circumvent the poor signaling from your brain by stimulating your motor nerves directly, and target any muscle with ease.
XBody builds neuromuscular control and neuromuscular efficiency
Neuromuscular control is how well your muscles react to a signal to stabilize a joint. Picture you’re walking on a sandy beach (sounds nice huh), all the muscles in your lower extremities have to fire correctly in response to the uneven footing. If they don’t, you fall over.
Neuromuscular efficiency refers to the percentage of muscle fibers that you can recruit in each muscle. The more muscle fibers you’re able to recruit, the stronger that muscle will be.
If you have a poor neuromuscular connection to a muscle, then both suffer.
During traditional strength training the brain sends impulses to stimulate certain muscles to contract. If this connection is underdeveloped than those muscles are not activated as easily.
EMS training sends electric impulses directly to the motoric nerves, helping to develop the motoric nerve connections relating to muscle movement. Instead of relying solely on signals from your brain to fire a muscle, we now have external impulses helping to fire those motor nerves allowing for a stronger contraction. Firing the correct muscles becomes easy and we can specifically target underdeveloped muscles.
That means we can strengthen those muscles more efficiently and begin to improve their neuromuscular connection, improving your ability to contract those muscles outside of the training suit.
Not only will you be able to fire more muscle fibers simultaneously, but your brain will better react proprioceptively because of the improved connections.
Instead of the muscles around a joint pulling unevenly, everything works together synergistically allowing for efficient, stable, and pain free movement.
Now walking on that sandy beach is a breeze, your posture improves, and you move pain free.
Want to try XBody for yourself?
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