Electronic Muscle Stimulators (EMS) can give anyone great abs, and the way they do it, in essence, is by keeping abdominal muscle active.

EMS devices have been used long before they became commercially available to the public. They were used by medical and health care professional in order to keep patients’ abdominal muscles from wasting due to disuse. That is why you will often see electronic muscle stimulators used in medical rehabilitation and physical therapy situations. Indeed those places were where ab-belts were first introduced to the general public. Nowadays, people realize you need not be in a medical crisis to benefit from electronic muscle stimulators, and so they’ve become available without medical supervision for general consumer use.

To learn more about one of the most popular and FDA approved Electronic Muscle Stimulators, read our Flex Belt Review.

Also known as electric ab belts (or just ab-belts), electronic muscle stimulators function as muscle contractors, creating definition via a simulated workout. In other words, the electronic muscle stimulators cause the same muscle contractions as working out your abdominal muscles, such as through sit-ups or crunches, and therefore produces the same effect on your body as working out those muscles. You could almost say that the electronic muscle stimulators trick your body into thinking it has been through a workout, except there’s no trickery involved. Only muscle contractions.

The muscles don’t care how they’re getting contracted. In fact, they don’t care at all. They just respond to the stimulus they’re given. And in this case, the stimulus they’re given is tighten, firm, tone, and strengthen. It’s everything a regular, sweaty, grueling workout does to give you great abs without needing to go through the sweaty, grueling workout.

The way that electronic muscle stimulators function to cause the abdominal muscles to contract is through a physical pulsation that occurs once the electric ab belt is strapped on and powered on. Those pulses are little low-level electric impulses being transmitted through the stomach from the electric ab belt to the abdominal nerves. When these abdominal nerves receive that pulsing electrical current they respond by triggering the abdominal muscles to flex (or contract) and then to release (or relax).

When abdominal muscles contract, fat is more easily burned as, just like when working out, heat is produced in the body which serves to burn up calories. Because of this, electronic muscle stimulators are one of the preferred non-surgical devices for flattening tummies, far preferable to most people than surgery, like an actual tummy tuck, or liposuction.

Besides the obvious ease-of-use and convenience, one of the other main benefits of electronic muscle stimulators in obtaining great abs is that you don’t risk straining other, supporting muscles, which often happens unwittingly when performing a strenuous workout. Rather than engaging multiple muscle groups, electronic muscle stimulators only stimulate the ones that will reduce and firm up abdominal muscles.  There are most certainly benefits of using an ab toning belt.

For most effective results getting great abs with electronic muscle stimulators, it is recommended that they are used in conjunction with a larger overall health and fitness program that includes regular exercise and a nutritious diet.