Infomerical Making Me Stupid

I was watching tv the other morning and I saw the advertisement for the abtronic. It’s the electric stimulators, it’s the equivalant to doing 600 sit-ups, just by wearing it for 10 minutes. Well I watched the ad for about 20 minutes and got to thinking if it worked. I’m not looking for an easy way out of ab work because I’m a huge fan of janda sit-ups.

In the commecial they said you would wear this thing on your stomach for 10 minutes, three times a day. It will increase the muscle tone/mass of the abs. Is this possible? Would that do anything for you? I feel that I already know the answer but I did do a search on the mag and the forum and I didn’t find any info on the electrical stimulus on the muscles.
I’m sure all those infomercial ab products are shit but like I said, this one informerical is making me stupid, I started to believe. Let me know the real deal.

Charlie Francis did a whole article for T-mag on EMS. So search again.

I’m sure they can even quote “scientific” studies to prove it!! Of course, if you read closely, you’ll find that those studies were done on bedridden 80 year olds, and they only proved that EMS can have a positive effect. Extrapolating those results to the exercising population is just meaningless.

Issue #159 - The Truth about EMS. Check it out. If my memory serves me correctly, those things can be helpful for strength, but not so for hypertrophy.

they flat out lied in the commercial. For one, sit ups have 3 components, isometric, concentric and eccentric. Using an EMS machine you only get an isometric contraction. Soley isometric muscular work has very different adaptations than the concentric/eccentric method.

Ah, EMS, that’s exactly what I didn’t search the first time…thanks guys.