My dissertation looked at electrical stimulation of paralyzed muscle in persons with spinal cord injuries. Always interested when someone finds a way to put electrical stimulation of muscle to good use.

Agreed. We did a lot in grad school as well. Motor nerve stimulation post stroke or SCI was very beneficial. Not this feel good estim crap, or shocking your muscles for recovery.

Once or twice I've tried to engage with a guy in the main forum pushing it for this or that, and quickly realized he was a salesman who didn't really understand the physiology, etc.

Are you saying that sticking electrodes on your abs won't give you a 6-pack? Shocking! (pun intended)

bullshit! it worked for this guy!

Side effects may include shitty hair.

Oh it can work, but typically it becomes painful to get to the sort of electrical current levels* and muscle forces necessary to effectively strengthen and cause hypertrophy (unless the muscle is highly deconditioned). E.g. Most of my work has been with the quadriceps muscles and most people can't even tolerate 50% of their max force generating ability with electrical stimulation, less force than you would even just use to warm with in the gym. My take on it is, if you can strengthen voluntarily there's very little reason to use electrical stimulation to do so.

*Most commercially available electrical stimulators limit the maximum current so people don't hurt themselves, so they are often not even capable of eliciting the sort of high forces necessary for strengthening/hypertrophy.

Are you one of those jerks who recruit participants and do muscle biopsies? I got caught once...

No, I generally just hurt people with electrical stimulation, although now doing blood flow restriction in conjunction with estim, so it's a new kind of hurt.

 


i'm pretty sure that's liposculpture. Big square blobs of flubber