Suit Up, Get Zapped: Inside Santa Barbara’s EMS Workout Studio, EMS Body Atelier

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I first read the pitch for EMS Body Atelier. “EMS [Electrical Muscle Stimulation] delivers a highly efficient, low-impact, full-body workout in just 20 minutes,” it promised. “The technology safely tones and tightens muscles, builds lean strength, and supports recovery from pain, injuries, and childbirth.” I thought back to the ads that used to run in The Independent in the ‘80s, showing the bare back of a buff blonde woman, promoting a “passive electronic muscle stimulation” program of European provenance and pledging similar benefits. The name of the business, Body 2200, seemed to portend a future in which working out would involve simply applying a few electrodes and having your muscles zapped into definition.

But like jet packs and flying cars, that vision of the future is not here quite yet. When I arrived for my first workout at EMS Body Atelier, my trainer, Amit Solway, ushered me into a converted storage closet to change out of my work clothes. For an EMS workout, you don’t wear electrodes; you wear a special “slim suit” — similar to a wetsuit but made of spandex, not neoprene. Devotees end up purchasing their own, but the studio provides them in a range of sizes, along with all-cotton undergarments that are worn underneath. The undergarments were very close-fitting — Solway told me they were supposed to fit like a second skin. 

She selected a suit for me, wetted it down with warm water, helped me into it, and then tightened the adjustable fasteners all over the suit. And tighten, and tighten them some more. Solway said this was supposed to provide a corseting effect. Luckily, no whalebones were involved, but it was plenty snug.

Since I’ve never been skydiving or bungee jumping, cinematic metaphors for the suit kept coming to mind: Did I resemble the cyborg-like Seven of Nine from the Star Trek franchise, in her corseted catsuit? Even at my fittest, I’ve never looked that va-va-voom. I decided I more likely resembled a harnessed Tom Cruise in his Mission: Impossible suspended-from-a-wire stunt.

The warm-up and exercises in an EMS routine are typical of other workouts — squats, lunges, bicep curls. The equipment is mostly familiar as well: handheld weights, Bosu balls, resistance bands, and an adorable weight that looked like a large magnet. What’s different is the electrical current that starts running through your body while you’re doing the workout. EMS doesn’t feel like an electric shock; the technology is similar to TENS units, which are staples of physical therapy. I felt the intensity as pressure on my muscles, not the joints. Solway, a former collegiate soccer player, kept complimenting me on my form, but I think I used my poker face too much, because she kept dialing up the current. A few times, when she really cranked it up, I actually felt immobilized. (This, I later learned, meant the electrical stimulation was making my muscles contract so rapidly that they couldn’t move anymore.) As the session went on, I learned to tell Solway when the intensity felt too much, and she dialed it back.

EMS Body Atelier is a project of the wife-husband team of Colleen Ferguson and Andy Maser. Ferguson, a former ballet dancer, owns a Pilates studio and learned about EMS from a couple of her clients, who urged her to try it. She initially shared my skepticism of EMS, but for different reasons. Although she swims, surfs, and plays tennis, Ferguson hadn’t done much strength training. But after giving birth to the couple’s two young children only 16 months apart, Ferguson had experienced pelvic floor issues that nobody had been able to help her with. The first time she did EMS, she told me, she felt immediate relief from her symptoms. “That felt like a miracle.” 

Ferguson went from trying EMS to deciding to open her own studio as a companion to her Pilates studio. “We felt like we had to do it,” she recalled. She and Maser did their research, bringing people from Los Angeles to demonstrate different EMS systems and suit types (wet vs. dry). The couple ultimately selected a wireless system to give clients more mobility. 

In search of a dedicated space for the new venture, Ferguson kept noticing a storage room down the hall from her Pilates studio in downtown’s historic Julia building and got the go-ahead from building management to remodel the space, with Maser, a filmmaker, doing much of the work himself. The tile floor has been replaced with cork, and the dropped ceiling is gone — the studio has an airy, spacious feel despite its basement location. Now the couple is building a small cadre of trainers to work with their clientele.

Ferguson patiently answered my many questions, starting with the dumb one I had to ask: I was wearing a damp suit and receiving electrical stimulation. Why didn’t I get shocked? The moisture, she explained, is specifically to promote conductivity. The suit is designed so that the electrical impulse makes the muscles fire, rather than shocking the wearer. 

Ferguson went on to describe the many benefits of EMS: it stimulates both slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers simultaneously, reaches the deepest layers of muscle tissue, and addresses muscle imbalances by strengthening weaker muscles. 

That may be why I was soaked in sweat and very tired after my first session, even though the active workout is technically just 14 minutes (plus a 3-minute warm-up and a 3-minute recovery for the promised 20-minute workout). I felt the effects immediately, especially in my hamstrings and quads. After the workout, Solway helped me out of the suit. Then it was back into the storage closet to peel off the wet undergarments and change into dry clothes. Although the muscle soreness lingered for days, I hadn’t even been parked in the city lot across the street long enough to incur a fee.

EMS Body Atelier, located at 924 Anacapa Street, Suite G4, Santa Barbara. For more information, see http://www.emsbodyatelier.com.