Electrical Muscle Stimulation Therapy

As many of you readers/followers know, for the last 4 months I have been dealing with 2 serious injuries that I have been recovering from; both left and right arm distal bicep tendon ruptures. I am now roughly 19 weeks post-op on my left arm, and 12 weeks on my right arm. Throughout this recovery process I have been going to physical therapy each week at Balance Physical Therapy in Monterey, California and working with John Farahmand for about 2 hours each session.

(Note: if you’re in the Monterey/Salinas, California area….hell, the entire CA central coast for that matter, go see Balance Physical Therapy. Best therapist choice I made, after not being satisfied with my original therapy group. If you’re an athlete, they will fix you, and not play games or beat around the bush with your time.)

Each session, as I have stated in a previous blog read here, we go through tendon stretching, scar tissue break down, flexion work, weight training, mobility work, strength training, knowledge of the body and how muscles/tendons/joints/ligaments all work (knowledge is very important to me, so when I get a chance to ask John specific questions, I do it.), and to finish it all off at the end of each session electrical muscle stimulation.

These are electrical pads that are placed on the motory points on the targeted muscle region, in this case my biceps, and they are placed where the short head and the long head of the bicep nerve points. When the machine activates, it started to send electrical signals to the targeted muscle to start feeding blood into the area, without the help of the nervous system. Since my nerves are still healing (1mm per day) from the surgery, this method of therapy has been most helpful in reteaching my nerves to activate, and also push blood into my arms when they were insanely atrophied (the worst part of it all to me personally haha). The impulses mimic the action potential coming from the central nervous system, causing the muscles to contract.

This process takes about 15min at most, and afterwards the muscle pump is pretty substantial. I keep joking with John that  I should come in for 50min of this, and there will be no need to lift another weight again; I can just eat, come in for a stim and go home haha. Wish it were that easy, but it isn’t.

Why would I recommend this, well it has high potential to serve as a strength training tool for healthy subjects and athletes, a rehabilitation and preventive tool for partially or totally immobilized patients, a testing tool for evaluating the neural and/or muscular function in vivo, and a post-exercise recovery tool for athletes. When I saw my arms, after the cast came off, I could not believe how severe the arms atrophied. Mentally I felt totally crushed, and not being able to lift more then 5-10lbs for atleast 4-6 weeks, didn’t help. But this method really helped rid the physique of that atrophied appearance dramatically, and as a bodybuilder….appearance is everything.

So, if you’re going through a similar injury, I highly recommend you ask your physical therapist (you better get one if you have a hardcore post-surgery injury to recovery from) about this method of therapy. The road to recovery should not be limited, and make sure you pick the CORRECT THERAPIST; not all of them practice the same. If you are an athlete, find yourself a therapist that works on ATHLETES, and is an athlete himself. Thankfully my therapist John is an athlete, and did bodybuilding himself, so he understand me. Find one that understand you, your needs, your goals and the outcome will be more then you bargained for.

Balance Physical Therapy & Human Performance Center
2260 N Fremont St, Monterey, CA 93940 | (831) 372-4782
143 John St, Salinas, CA 93901 | (831) 422-4782
http://www.balancept.com/