Electricity into your muscles

I hope it sends electric impulses ONLY to your muscles and nothing else…

https://ariupolar.com/new-ai-smart-cycling-shorts-emit-electrical-currents-into-riders-muscles-to-improve-performance/?fbclid=IwAR1_cqLwZ3PzqlJq7PEhGa95LD15Q4Fg6_6eFILxUMzyX5JCAsib_eOGN_0

"We have a limited ability to control our muscles naturally,’ Mr Lewis told The Times.

‘You can control them more precisely, get more from your muscles and contract them more strongly if you stimulate them directly with electricity.’"

Mr. Lewis should share his secrets with all the folks out there trying to restore ambulation in individuals who have been paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury. I mean, if it’s that easy and effective, he should be able to have people up and walking in no time, right?

Okay, enough snark, this is pure BS. Setting aside the first bogus claim above and even accepting that a computer algorithm could adjust “on the fly” to better actuate pedaling muscles, you’re still faced with several major problems:

  1. It requires a very high voltage to elicit powerful muscle contractions;

  2. Stimulating your muscles this way is painful, because you also activate cutaneous pain receptors; and

  3. Electrical stimulation reverses the usual orderly recruitment of motor units, meaning that it preferentially activates fast-twitch fibers, leading to premature fatigue.

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Agree with all your points, never said it was good idea.

Not necessarily, I can get my quads up to cramping very easy with a PowerDot :blush: With that said, I have doubts about the shorts though :thinking:

If it was a high enough voltage, it would be very effective, for about 30 seconds, then you would be dead :roll_eyes:

Just because you feel a cramp doesn’t mean that your muscles are producing any significant force.

With percutaneous stimulation, it takes a bit over 200 V on average just to achieve 50% of MVC.

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Sure, but what would my FTP be at second 29? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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