By Henri Schmidt, CEO and Founder of VBTec/Visionbody, Muscle Expert
If you’re looking for more information about EMS training versus traditional gym training, you’ve come to the right place. I’m an expert in both fitness and EMS technology.
I have spent most of my life studying and working in the fitness and wellness industry, and many years ago, I incorporated EMS technology into my practice. It all began with my fascination with the human body. I am particularly fascinated by how important our muscle mass is in fighting disease, helping us live longer, feel better, and, of course, look better. As I always say, muscle is life. And I think everyone should know that.
But enough about me—if you’re here, you’re probably wondering, “Should I stick to the gym, or is EMS training the secret weapon I’ve been missing?”
My answer is simple: You don’t have to choose! And I’ll explain why.
Traditional Gym Workout
We all know that the gym is a place filled with weights, cables, machines, grunting, and sweat. When you perform exercises like squats, dumbbell rows, bicep curls, deadlifts, cable exercises, and so on, your brain sends electrical impulses through your central nervous system to your muscles, telling them to contract. This process is called voluntary muscle recruitment.
The challenge with traditional training is that during astandard gym set, your body is lazy. If you’re lifting a weight that isn’t your absolute maximum, your brain only activates about 30–60% of the fibers in that specific muscle to get the job done. This means a significant portion of high-threshold (power) fibers remaindormantunless you push to absolute failure. But training to failure is limited by genetics, recovery, and your ability to push yourself that far, and it can also be limited by performance fatigue; constantly pushing yourself to your limit can lead to injury risks or overtraining.
When combined with movement, EMS training allows you to engage nearly all your muscle fibers at the same time, effectively achieving that "failure" intensity internally, within the muscle tissue itself, even when performing simple, low-impact exercises.
The EMS Difference: Working Smarter, Not Just Harder
Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) is a training method that delivers precise, low-frequency electrical impulses directly to your motor nerves using a special suit.
How is this different from regular gym workouts? Well, EMS helps you bypass the body’s natural energy-saving mechanisms.
If your goal is to better understand how EMS promotes muscle growth and activation, check out Visionbody’s EMS muscle growth guide.
An interesting fact is that your body is designed to be efficient, meaning it doesn't want to use every muscle fiber if it doesn't have to. EMS helps activate a significantly higher percentage of muscle fibers simultaneously. With VISIONBODY’s EMS+EMA technology, for example, we target up to 98% of muscle fibers simultaneously, including those deep-seated muscles that are notoriously difficult to reach when training with a barbell.
The most striking difference is the intensity of the muscle contractions. In a short 20-minute EMS training session, your muscles work as hard as they would during approximately 3–4 hours of conventional training, but without putting heavy strain on your spine and joints.
The Perfect Pair: Why You Don’t Have to Choose Between EMS and the Gym
In my opinion, EMS isn’t meant to turn you into a couch potato or replace functional movement. It’s not a lazy shortcut; we still want you to live a healthy lifestyle and stay active. That’s why it’s called EMS training and not EMS sitting. It’s simply a tool to help you work out more efficiently, save time, lose weight, improve your recovery, build muscle faster, and enhance your neuromuscular pathways. So, always incorporate your EMS suit into your existing (or new) training routine. You can go for a run, do some simple exercises, or use it for your Pilates class, play golf or basketball, or take it with you to the gym.
Fitting Fitness Into a Busy Life
Because going to the gym requires a significant time commitment—the commute, getting changed, the 60- to 90-minute workout, and the shower—many people find it hard to stay consistent or make the time to actually go to the gym. This is where EMS comes in: busy professionals, tired parents, older adults, everyday people with little free time, or those who can’t perform high-impact exercises can all benefit from a 20-minute full-body EMS training session. With an EMS system, if you can’t go to the gym, you can bring the gym to your home.
Science Made Simple: How Your Muscles Wake Up
During traditional resistance training, your body follows Henneman’s Size Principle, which, in simple terms, means your body recruits small, slow-twitch fibers first, only switching to large, powerful fast-twitch fibers when the load gets heavy or the muscle gets tired.
EMS helps you achieve optimal muscle activation without pushing yourself to your limits, regardless of the weights you're lifting during your workout.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Is It Too Good to Be True?
When people hear about EMS, their first thought is that it’s just another tool that promises to help them achieve their fitness goals without having to put in any effort.
I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again: EMS isn’t a magic solution, and it doesn’t encourage an unhealthy lifestyle; you still need to make sure you get enough sleep, eat healthier, and stay active. It’s simply a helpful tool that can help you achieve your goals faster, a modern approach to training, and a tool that, when used properly, can also improve your overall health.
Does EMS create "fake muscle"?
No, the hypertrophy (growth) achieved through EMS is real, functional tissue, because your muscle tissue doesn’t know the difference between an electrical signal sent from your brain and one sent from a suit; it only responds to tension (muscle contraction) and recovery. However, and I’ll emphasize this again, for that muscle to be useful, you need to build it by combining EMS with functional movement.
A Note on Safety
Visionbody is FDA-cleared and TÜV-certified, featuring built-in ECG monitoring and customizable intensity settings. EMS training is safe for most healthy adults. It is not recommended for people with pacemakers, pregnant women, or those with certain neurological conditions. If you have any medical concerns, consult a healthcare professional before starting.
Final thoughts
EMS isn’t here to replace the gym, but to take it to the next level and make our workouts more efficient and targeted.
Whether you’re looking to lose weight, build muscle, stay in shape, or simply move without pain, the combination of voluntary movement and electrical muscle stimulation is one of the most effective training methods I’ve seen in my decades of experience. That’s why I created Visionbody—because I want to give you the tools to understand your body better and achieve results that were previously reserved for athletes or only for people who could spend four hours a day training.
References:
- Effects of Whole-Body Electromyostimulation versus High-Intensity Resistance Exercise on Body Composition and Strength: A Randomized Controlled Trial
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The resilience of the size principle in the organization of motor unit properties in normal and reinnervated adult skeletal muscles - PubMed
