COMPEX FITNESS TRAINER ELECTROESTIMULADOR (Back to product)

Home » Compex Units   COMPEX FITNESS TRAINER ELECTROESTIMULADOR Learn About Electronic Muscle Stimulation When a technique like electronic muscle stimulation is as widely used by elite athletes such as Jerry Rice, the San Antonio Spurs and the Houston Rockets, it's because it is effective. Compex Fitness is an innovative product, that improves sport training. By using Compex fitness the athlete can train more effectively and efficiently resulting in a true competitive advantage! The electrical impulses control the work of the muscles via the motor nerves. Programming these impulses enables the athletes to target their workout for power, endurance or resistance. The Compex® electronics give powerful contractions without pain. The microprocessor controls the work of the muscles while adhering to principles of traditional training physiology. Compex Fitness Trainer is for individuals interested in building muscles, toning and shaping to improve general physical fitness. The Compex Fitness Trainer includes two training programs and one special program. Electronic muscle stimulation is effective for muscle and fitness training and well as muscle rehabilitation.   Endurance program - Helps you cope with long-duration aerobic activities and increases muscle resistance to fatigue by building slow-twitch muscle fibers Resistance program - An all-around program for endurance and strength, building both slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers Active Recovery program - Facilitates relaxation of muscles and reduces muscle soreness and stiffness following competition or demanding workouts. This type of equipment has been used successfully in physical medicine for many years. It has nothing in common with the "gadgets" that can be found on the market. The CD-ROM based Training Planner details each stage of the work out and helps to create a truly individualized training program. Compex Fitness fits the athlete and fits their sport! To receive maximum benefit while using the Compex Fitness, please read and follow all instructions completely.   Compex Fitness has just launched in the US. It is based on Swiss design and technology and assembled in the USA. Compex products are used throughout Europe by elite athletes and sport enthusiasts to enhance their training and improve their sports performance. Compex Fitness is their 2nd product that are the only sports muscle stimulators cleared by the FDA for marketing in the United States to be broadly marketed to consumers. For more information, please email or call the Clever Training Staff. All of our staff members actively use and support electronic muscle stimulators. EMS will truly give you the competitive edge you're looking for. Compex electronic muscle stimulation equipment is among the best in the fitness training marketplace. Email Friend List Price: $599.99 Price: $475.00 327.27 GBP 576.18 CAD   « Previous | Next »

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HOW DOES IT WORK?

When you exercise, the brain sends the order in the form of electrical currents that travel at high speed along the nerve fibers. These electrical currents excite the motor nerve, which then passes the information to the immediate surroundings of the muscle, triggering a muscle contraction.

With electrostimulation, the excitation is directly produced at the motor nerve, rather than by the brain. Compex Muscle Stimulator produces powerful muscle contractions through "optimal", safe and comfortable electrical impulses delivered at the motor nerves. A unique training planner on CD-ROM guides athletes in customizing these electrical impulses to target their workouts for power, endurance, speed or resistance. This enables athletes to enhance their training and improve muscle performance for any sport.

WHO SHOULD USE IT?

Compex Fitness is designed for serious athletes and general fitness enthusiasts who wish to enhance their competitive performance and gain a true competitive advantage!

TRAINING PROGRAMS
Complete Training Programs Designed For All Athletes & Their Particular Sports!

A sprinter versus a marathon runner, a football player versus a basketball player, a cross country skier versus an alpine skier; all require widely different physical preparation to achieve peak performance. Strength, speed, explosive power, resistance, endurance…with Compex Fitness, you can tailor your training program to suit your personal needs. If you currently employ a variety of training methods, you can combine the following four training programs to enhance your athletic performance:

• Endurance
• Resistance
• Active Recovery

Each of these three training programs offers five different levels of work that can be gradually increased.

ENDURANCE Program (Levels 1-5)

Who Can Benefit?

Athletes competing in endurance events will see results with this program! It develops the oxidative power of the slow muscle fibers (i.e. their capacity to take oxygen).

Sport Usage:

Marathon, Swimming >400 m, Running, Triathlon, Rowing, Cross Country Skiing, Cycling, Skating, Soccer, Walking

Its Special Feature?

This is a long program of medium intensity. It increases the capillarization of the muscles and establishes a working regimen for developing the oxidative power of the slow muscle fibers, to achieve greater V02 capacity and endurance.

Program Profile:

The Endurance Program is a long program (45 minutes) that works slow muscle fibers (i.e. the endurance muscle fibers) required in endurance sports.

RESISTANCE Program (Levels 1-5)

Who Can Benefit?

If you're an elite or amateur athlete, competing in a sport requiring intense effort (i.e. "power") for more than 10 seconds, you will benefit from this program. This program increases muscle size, strength and density in the higher modes/settings, and improves muscle tone and firmness in the lower modes/settings.

Sport Usage:

Running: 400m, Running: 800m, Cycling, Body Building, Swimming >100m, Dance, Weight Lifting, Toning & Shaping, Mountain Biking

Its Special Feature?

The Resistance Program makes the muscle work very intensively. This enables you to train the muscle at an intensity seldom achieved through ordinary training. The Resistance Program builds muscle size, strength and density.

Program Profile:

The Resistance Program consists of long tetanic (fused or solid) contractions of the slow and fast twitch muscle fibers, alternating with short contractions in the "active rest" stages.

ACTIVE RECOVERY Program:

Who Can Benefit?

This program is for all athletes. Compex's Active Recovery Program is designed to speed your muscle recovery after an intense training session or competition.

Its Special Feature?

This program increases blood flow into the muscles, which helps remove lactic acid, thus enabling a faster recovery of muscle capacity. The result is increased relaxation of the muscles, thereby minimizing next-day muscle soreness and stiffness. This is what increases the speed of your recovery.

Program Profile:

In the Active Recovery Program, the muscles do not contract; they undergo a series of twitches like a massage. The frequency of the twitches gradually decreases over the 24-minute session.

TRAINER CD & PLANNER

An Essential Tool For Achieving The Best Results…

Compex® Fitness comes with a sophisticated and easy to use training program, in CD-ROM format. The CD features over 75 different sport alternatives so no matter what your sport, the Compex Training Planner helps you optimize your workouts and training regimen.

Numerous Criteria Are Brought Into Play:

Choice Of The Muscle To Be Stimulated

The muscles that work hardest in the specific sport should be stimulated first. For example, in Alpine skiing and cycling, the quadriceps are the primary muscles to be developed because they are used most intensely in these sports. However, Compex® Fitness also provides intensive work of the ancillary muscles that are often neglected in conventional training. By selecting your sport on the CD-ROM, you will see the muscles that will be worked and the order of priority.

Choice Of Program - Your Sport Determines The Appropriate Stimulation Program You Need:

• Endurance
• Resistance
• Active Recovery

Choice Of The Levels:

There are five different working levels for each of the three training programs: Endurance, Resistance and Active Recovery. The choice of the level will depend on how many hours of ordinary training you do. The Compex® Fitness CD-ROM will determine the best level suited to your training objectives and fitness level.

Frequency Of Training Session:

The number of sessions you should perform with Compex will vary depending on your competition season. Your muscles have to be stimulated at different rates depending on whether you are in a rest mode, in a maintenance mode, in a resumption of training mode or training during competition.

Cycles Duration & Session Planning:

The Training Planner helps you determine the number of weeks of muscle stimulation necessary to reach your goal. It also establishes the number of daily and/or weekly sessions to best meet this goal.

ENDORSEMENTS

Thousands of athletes and more than 30 pro-teams rely on Compex products as part of their training regimen, to get the Winner's Advantage. Compex Fitness is endorsed by Professional and World-Class Athletes including Jerry Rice, Herman Maier, Justine Henin-Hardenne, Joane Sommariba and other athletes who've discovered the benefits of Compex.

ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY

Neuromuscular stimulators from Compex Technologies are widely used by European athletes to enhance muscle size and strength, and improve athletic performance and physical fitness. Now available in the United States, Compex products use solid medical expertise and sophisticated electronic technology to provide powerful but comfortable muscle stimulation.

Electrostimulation

How Does It Work?

The operating principle of electrostimulation is very simple and faithfully reproduces the processes involved in muscle contraction under the control of our brain. When we decide to contract a muscle, the brain sends the order in the form of electrical currents that travel at high speed along the nerve fibers. At the end of the run, these electrical currents excite the motor nerve, which then passes the information to the immediate surroundings of the muscle, triggering a muscle contraction.

With electrostimulation, the excitation is directly produced at the motor nerve by means of 'optimal' electrical impulses that guarantee efficacy, safety and comfort in use. Thanks to this process, the muscle cannot distinguish between a voluntary contraction (caused by the brain) and an electrically induced contraction: the work that it produces is the same irrespective of the nature of the order.

The Optimal Impulse

The high quality electronic components of the Compex device generate optimal impulses. On the one hand, the impulses must fulfill efficacy criteria, since they have to be very strong to allow optimal recruitment of muscle fibers. On the other hand, the impulse must be safe and comfortable, with the power being perfectly controlled to avoid electrical pain or burns. Delivered by a current generator, the optimal impulses generated by the Compex device are perfectly rectangular, biphasic and symmetric, with duration depending on the muscle being stimulated.

Muscle Physiology

A muscle is composed of elongated, cylindrical cells: the muscle fibers. Several types of fibers are distinguished depending on their speed of contraction: slow, intermediate and fast. Within individuals, the disposition and the proportion of the various types of muscle fibers are genetically determined. The fast fibers will be predominant in a sprinter whereas a marathon runner will have more slow fibers. Consequently the type of physiological properties required to excel in a sport will vary from one sport discipline to another. The Compex training programs specifically take into consideration these physiological differences and the unique requirements of different muscular qualities that optimize performance within a given sport; i.e. strength, explosive strength, endurance and resistance.

In More Detail

With the 'Compex Fitness', electrical impulses are generated according to the program selected. Each of these impulses is intended to trigger action potentials (AP) on the motor nerve fibers (or motoneurons). In response to an AP, the muscle fibers belonging to the motor unit of the excited motoneurons carry out a mechanical elementary response, which is called a twitch. A twitch is a unit of work for a motor fiber in response to an AP. The twitch and the work it represents are entirely similar should the AP be triggered by an impulse or generated spontaneously by the nervous system. This means that muscle fibers always respond to an AP in the same way.

The type of working power generated by muscle fibers varies according to the frequency of the impulses (repetition of the impulses). For example, a low frequency of 10 Hz (10 impulses per second) imposes a low working power on the excited motor nerve fibers. On the other hand, a high frequency of 100 Hz imposes a high working power to the excited motoneurons. Therefore, the kind of work imposed on the excited motoneurons depends on the parameters of the stimulation program. In other words, work is controlled by the stimulation parameters.

We also know that the twitch duration responses depend on the type of muscle fibers. As mentioned before, we can distinguish between slow, intermediate, and fast twitch fibers, which obviously react differently. Moreover, differences in the twitch duration are associated with variations of the frequencies that are necessary to reach the maximum tetanization of the fibers. Slow twitch fibers have a twitch duration of +/- 100 ms and a tetanization frequency of +/- 33 Hz. Fast twitch fibers produce a twitch duration of +/- 30 ms and a tetanization frequency of +/- 70 Hz. Therefore, the frequencies used in a Compex training session will obviously vary and will have to be adapted to the type of fibers that have to be tetanized.

By using this knowledge of various physiological parameters relating to twitch duration, tetanization, frequency and regimen of working power for different types of fibers, as well as clinical studies and research, Compex has set up a complete complement of training programs for virtually any sport, each specifically based on the kind of muscle performance, maintenance or improvement athletes seek.

Practical Guidelines

Scheduling voluntary workouts and stimulation sessions.

• Stimulation sessions can be done outside of or during voluntary training. When voluntary training and stimulation are done during the same session, it is generally recommended that the voluntary training be done first followed by the stimulation. This means that the voluntary training is not done on muscle fibers that are already tired. This is particularly important for strength and explosive strength training.
  
  However, in resistance training, it can be very useful to train in the reverse order. By using the Compex device prior to training, a pre-fatigue of the muscle fibers is generated without general and cardiovascular fatigue. In this way the athletic training effort on "prepared" muscle fibers enables the glycolytic metabolism to be pushed faster and farther.
  
• Scheduling Stimulation Sessions: When scheduling more than one session of muscle stimulation a week, you should allow as much recovery time as possible. For example, if you want to do 3 sessions a week then you should do one day with a muscle stimulation session and one day without a session.
  
  If you plan on 6 sessions a week, you should schedule the stimulation sessions as far apart, from one day to the next, as possible. For 6 sessions in a week, you should do six consecutive days of muscle stimulation and then take one day off.
  
  If you plan on 7 sessions or more in a given week, you should group several sessions together on the same day in order to leave one or two full days off without muscle stimulation. For example, you should schedule one session each day for 5 days and two sessions on one day (separated by at least a half-hour's rest), leaving one day off. If doing 10 sessions a week, you should schedule 5 days with two sessions per day (with at least a half hour's rest between sessions); leaving two days off.
  
• Positioning Of The Subject & Of The Muscle Under Stimulation: Your body position will depend on the muscles that are being stimulated. The appropriate body position is indicated in a picture alongside the photos illustrating the placement of the electrodes (see the booklet or CD-ROM for the positioning of the electrodes). With regard to the muscle, it is recommended to work isometrically (i.e. it is necessary to fix the extremities of the limb in such a way that there is no movement of the joint). For example, when stimulating the quadriceps, you should be in a natural seated position with your knee at a 90° angle and your ankle in a fixed position. Working in this way has several purposes: it provides greater safety, restricts shortening of the muscle during the contraction and avoids muscle cramping.
  
  It is possible to work dynamically, for instance on a "leg extension machine" for the quadriceps. However, it is essential to carry out this dynamic stimulation against a significant load. As you increase the intensity of stimulation and the level used in the strength and explosive strength programs, you must perform leg extensions against a higher load. Do not, under any circumstance, work dynamically without resistance against the leg extension!
  
• Setting The Appropriate Level Of Stimulation: The general rule is that a stimulation level below 30 milliamps (mA) will not provide a trained athlete sufficient stimulation. The number of fibers worked in the stimulated muscle would be too low to allow for any significant improvement in the performance of that muscle.
  
  With the Endurance, Resistance and Strength Progams, the progress of a stimulated muscle will be greater if the Compex Fitness works a high percentage of its fibers. If only 10% of the fibers of a muscle work under stimulation, then there will only be 10% progress. If 90% of the muscle fibers are worked, then progress is significantly greater. In a stimulated muscle, the percentage of fibers that are worked depends on the level of stimulation . It is absolutely necessary to use significantly strong levels, in order to work the maximum number of fibers.
  
  For all programs, you should work with stimulation levels higher than 30 mA. An average individual tolerates a level of 50 mA and it is not rare on some programs to see some athletes go right up to the maximum.
  
  You obviously will not use a significant strength level right from the first contraction at the first session of the Compex Fitness. If you have never used this device before, start with a few five-minute warm-up sessions with first level resistance, at a current strength of 30 mA, in order to familiarize yourself with the technique. You can then start your first stimulation cycle with the program of your choice and at a level appropriate for you. After the warm up, which should produce very clear muscular twitches (at 20 to 30 mA), you must then raise the stimulation level gradually from contraction to contraction during the first three or four minutes of the sequence of work. It is also necessary to gradually increase the stimulation level from work session to work session, particularly during the first three work sessions of a stimulation cycle.
  
• Progression In The Levels :In general, it is not advisable to go through the different levels quickly with the intention of reaching level 5 as fast as possible. The different levels correspond to progress in training and you must provide the muscles with time to adapt, and time for the overcompensation to be put in place.
  
  The most frequent error is to change from level to level as stimulation occurs at increasingly higher stimulation intensities. The number of fibers subjected to stimulation depends on the stimulation intensity measured in milliamps. The nature and amount of work imposed upon the muscle fibers depend on the program and level. The aim is, first of all, to progress through the electrical stimulation energies and then through the levels. The more numerous the muscle fibers you stimulate, the more numerous will be the fibers that are going to progress. But the speed of progress of these fibers and their aptitude for operating at a higher rating depend on the program and level used, the number of sessions per week and the length of these sessions, and also on intrinsic factors particular to each individual.
  
• Warming-Up For Stimulation:All the programs involving significant contractions (tetanic contractions) of the stimulated muscles automatically start with a warming-up sequence. This is indicated on the screen by an animated rising convection symbol above the heater symbol.
  
  If no voluntary physical activity has been done in the minutes preceding the stimulation session, it is recommended that you do the warm-up. If the stimulation session is included in a voluntary training session and some voluntary activity immediately precedes the stimulation, it is unnecessary to do the warming-up sequence. You can therefore delete the rising convection symbol, and the session will start directly with the specific work selected without any prior warm-up.
  
  After the stimulation work sequence, a relaxation sequence starts automatically. This is to allow improvement in the recovery of a muscle after its work using Compex and to limit muscular aches to some extent. Unless you want to go on immediately to voluntary training stages, it is recommended that you let the last sequence proceed. It is also recommended that you do some stretching of the muscles that you have just worked with the Compex, even if the stimulation seems to improve your muscular elasticity.

CLINICAL STUDIES

"Electrical stimulation and swimming performance". Pichon F. Chatard., Martin A., Comett G. Med Sci Sport Exerc 27 (12): 1671-6, 1995.

"Maximal voluntary quadriceps strength patterns in Olympic overtrained athletes". Koutedakis Y., Frischknecht R., Vrbova G., Sharpe N.C. , Bugett R. Med Sci Sports Exerc 27 (4): 566-72, 1995.

"Effect of the frequency of neuromuscular electric stimulation of the leg on femoral arterial blood flow". Zicot M., Riguax P. J Mal Vasc 20 (1): 9-13, 1995. <

"The influence of electrical stimulation training on swimming performance". Pichon F., Cometti G., Petiot S.

"Effect of electrical stimulation training on the contractile characteristics of the triceps surae muscle". Martin L., Cometti G., Pousson M., Morlon B. Eur J Appl Physiol 67 (5): 457-61, 1993.

"Electrical stimulation of quadriceps femoris in an elite weight lifter: a single subject experiment". Delitto A., Brown M., Strube M. J., Rose S.J., Lehman R.C. Int J Sports Med 10 (3): 187-91, 1989.

"The effects of eletromyostimulation training and basketball practice on muscle strength and jumping ability". Int J Sports Med 21 (6): 437-43, 2000.

"Re-examination of training effects by electrostimulation in the human elbow musculoskeletal system". Colson S., Martin A., Van Hoecke J. Int J Sports Med 21 (4): 281-8, 2000.

"Neuromuscular electrical stimulation and voluntary exercise". Hainaut K., Duchateau J., Sports Med 14 (2): 100-13, 1992.

"Activation of Human plantar flexor muscles increases after electrostimulation training". Maffiuletti N. A., Pensini M., Martin A. J Appl Physiol (in process), 2001.