Fat Man treated us well

Thanks Santa - things were good in the Reis household and we appreciate you swinging by and dropping off the goods.  The missus got me a Globus Premium Fitness E-Stim unit which I had been eye-balling as a curiosity for the past year or so.  I was reluctant to spend money on a unit without fully understanding the benefits.

The wifer pulled the trigger and I look forward to finding out about how it can benefit training.  It seems like the biggest bennie is as a compliment to existing workouts as either an active recovery where the muscles are stimulated just enough to pump blood into them and flush out some of the gunk out (which would speed up recovery), or to hook it up and fire up the muscle group so more fibers are engaged than what you would usually engage via normal activity.

Unfortunately there is not a ton of information out there so it will be a learn and build as I go.  I had to see what it felt like though so I hooked up the sensors to engage the quads.  The first order of business was to shave the hair off the spots where the sensors would go...result: hairy legs with a few patches of skin.  I hooked up the sensors and felt a little bit like a science experiment.  There was a moment of anxiousness before turning it on as I wondered just what would happen and if it would take on a mind of its own and start shocking me without me being able to control it.  I probably should have figured out the off switch before firing it up, but nah....As it turns out, the stimulus starts out very very low and you adjust according to what levels you want to spasm your muscles with.  I slowly cranked up the stim unit until my legs were no longer twitching at their choice, but rather controlled by this unit.  It was bizarre at first.  Once I got used to it, up up up went the stim action...to the point where the contractions were powerful enough that it made my legs extend and straighten out.  After a re-adjustment so that I put my knees in a bent position and did not allow my legs to straighten, I realized that the muscles were actually getting fatigued!  It was as if lactic acid was building up just like a hard effort on the bike, or squatting, etc...it felt weird to feel the muscle burn from something that was not a true athletic endeavour.

I have barely scratched the surface on any of this and look forward to doing additional research and experimenting to see just how to incorporate it into training - although the 'training' has been put on the back burner as of late...speaking of, time to go sit on the trainer for a bit.

Happy Stimming....