Is This The World's Most Efficient, Biohacked Workout? The New Full Body Electrostimulation Science by Katalyst (& How To Build Muscle In 20 Minutes).

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Generally, when people are injured, they're not working out in a certain area. They stay stiff, they stay tight, and you never get out of this vicious circle. What we want to achieve is we want to achieve a stronger body. We want to give you access to your muscles, but we also want to ensure that you are flexible and you have full range of motion. The Ronaldo's of this world are just so much more in shape than soccer players have been 20 years ago. And it's partially because of full body electro muscle stimulation training help performance, nutrition.

Longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, folks, so in a recent weekly roundup, I, I reported on what I, I think I called in the roundup possibly the world' efficient new way to work out. And I told you to get ready for the next frontier of something called electrical muscle stimulation, which is also known as ems. And I've done podcasts on electrical muscle stimulation before. I've done articles on it, I've used it for muscle retraining, I've used it for recovery, I've used it for building strength. But it's always been an issue because you gotta like get all these electrodes and put a bunch of gel on them and put them in different areas of the body and precisely place them according to where the manual instructs you to. And then they all have a bunch of wires hanging off of them that you get tangled up in while you're working out. And don't get me wrong, like those units work. But by the time I get set up for a workout, it's like 10, 15 minutes. And by the time I take everything off, it's another like five to 10 minutes. And so I was, I was. Well, my ears perked when my friend Martin was over at my house and he had this suit in a bag that he'd brought with him and he pulled it on and it looked like a suit that I'd worn in New York City once for an electrical muscle stimulation workout. But that suit I wore in New York City still had a bunch of wires coming off it. This thing he just pulled on flipped open his iPad and it automatically stims your body like full body workout without you doing anything except pulling this suit on. And so I got one and I've been using it and it's a total game changer. You literally just pull on the suit, you select from any of the workouts on the app, and this personal trainer walks you through the whole workout, which. Which is actually like a functionally athletic workout, like squats and side lunges and presses and cardio movements and power movements. But the intensity gets automatically adjusted as you go. So the trainer's kind of like making it harder as you go, even though if it's super too much stimulation for you, you can kind of adjust it. And it is one of the coolest time hacks for exercise I've discovered in a long time. Like, this is like as seen on tv, get six pack abs while you're sitting on the couch. This is like full on, like athletic functional training that you can do with a full body electrical muscle stimulation suit. And I would say my only complaint about it is that it makes you sore because you're using all these muscles that you haven't used before and you're overriding some of your brain's tendency to hold back a little bit. And all of my guests on today's show fill you in more on why that's happening because he basically came up with this whole harebrained idea. So his name is Bjorn Wolterman. Bjorn Wolterman. And he is the founder and CEO of this company called Catalyst, which developed this full body electrical muscle stimulation technology. He has been in kind of the industry for a while and initially used EMS to rehabilitate a back injury, but now has developed this thing and. Holy cow, it's amazing. Now, Bjorn, I do have a confession to make. I was going to get up this morning and do a Catalyst workout and I actually hit the sauna instead. I wimped out. I do have to get myself. I gotta get my coffee and breathe up and get ready for that thing. And this morning I was just like a little tired. My heart rate variability was a little low. And often when I interview someone about cold thermogenesis, I'll go do a cold soak beforehand. Or if I interview someone about psilocybin, I'll microdose with shrooms beforehand. I like to get into the same space as my guest, but in this case, I did not yet stimulate myself. So I apologize. Apologize about wimping out this morning.

I also didn't want this morning. So we're in the same place.

You didn't do one this morning?

No, I didn't do one this morning.

Oh, my gosh.

I did one yesterday. I was on yesterday. I'm disappointed in you.

You're not even drinking your own Kool Aid. Sheesh.

Not every day. Every second day.

Yeah. No, I've actually, in all seriousness, for Me, the sweet spots. I've been doing it Wednesday and Saturday because it does give you an appreciable amount of delayed onset muscle soreness. And that's probably why I've been able to maintain strength with that thing so effectively even without lifting heavy weights. But yeah, for me, twice a week is the sweet spot. I do the 20 minute kind of like full body strength routine and then I finish it up with the 10 minute cardio routine. And for me it's a perfect like 30 minute back to back workout. So anyways though, let's lay the background out behind this thing. How did you get interested in using electrical muscle stimulation in the first place?

I found out about full body electromaster stimulation in 2012. At that time I had a corporate job with teams all over the world world and I amassed roughly 150 flights a year which was the second time I spent a lot of time sitting and my lower back was blowing up. I was in pain, in constant pain. I tried different beds and you know, planks and here and there, but nothing really helped. And then my physician, actually my orthopedic physician said, you know, you have to massively strengthen your core and your lower back and you either quit your job and stop flying all the time and sitting in planes all the time or you're going to end up with a herniated disc very, very quickly. At that time was early 30s and you know, didn't really want to give up my job. So he said I have this thing, I'm going to the studio twice a week, it's down the road and I totally love it and it totally will fix your abs and your lower back and you know, strengthen them so that your, your spine isn't going into like, you know, extreme positions and it's only 20 minutes. And I was like okay, now you lost me because this is too good to be true. He said no, no, go, go. So I went down the street and there was the studio back in the days and very modern, empty looking personal training studio. And there were just two people in black suits, totally wired up like cables everywhere and the cable towards two standing machines, a personal trainer in between them telling them what to do. Both of them were like nothing. Have like nothing l lifting or nothing. Having holding in their hands and they were dripping like crazy. There was a puddle of water in front of them and I was like what I'm seeing makes no sense. It totally makes no sense.

Trust me, I, I get it because like my, my kids come down and I'm like dripping with sweat. When I pull that suit off and I, I'm wearing it literally for a total of a half hour.

No, absolutely. And I walked in and this second personal trainer, you know, greeted me and said, like, hey, how you doing? And I said, what are you guys doing here? And he said, like, full body Ms. And. Yeah, I said, can I try this? And, sorry, we're booked. And. But you can come tomorrow. So, like, you know, I made a appointment for the next day. I was, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I think like four or five minutes into the workout, I was like, completely sweating and it was very intense. I felt my body like never before. The 20 minutes can be long. I don't know how you feel about it, but the last minutes of the 20 minutes can be long.

I feel like the last minute when they, when they kind of like do a final sprint and the, the EMS intensity is jacked up pretty high. Like, sometimes the last minute I gotta breathe my way through. But for me, like, both the cardio session and the strength session go by really fast. Like, faster than most workouts that I've done. And I don't know if it's because it's switching exercises throughout. So over 20 minutes you have like 10 different exercises. I don't know if it's the breath work that they kind of coach you through, so you're staying in the zone throughout, but for me, it goes by pretty quick.

Yeah, like, we have these like two different, Two different reactions in general. They're like, oh, this is really hard. And people have to do a lot of breathing and people who are not really used to it first have to learn it. You obviously, you know, have probably done a lot of breath work in your. In your life previously to Catalyst. But the thing is, like, your, the system really helps you engage your body and work you out. So the mental load is relatively low. That's my perception, where if I have to, like, you know, do like, whatever other like, classic workouts, like, the mental load I think is quite higher. So I did this workout, I did a session, and then two days later, like you say, you get quite sore, especially the first time, because it hits all these muscles and muscle groups that you basically totally have neglected over years and decades.

Yeah, remarkably so, as a matter of fact, I like to do it especially on like a Friday before I know I've got like some weekend trip with the family where I'm not going to get any workouts in or anything. I'll kind of like save a session for that or for like a really long plane trip where I'm, you know, I just want to do something super hard. And so sometimes I'll do a hard session and really jack up the intensity when I know I've got a couple days pretty much off anyways.

No, absolutely. And I had this experience and I was like, wow, I just spent 20 minutes in the studio, which in my super packed schedule back in the days, I mean, it's still super packed but, you know, very different because there was a travel involved, a lot of travel involved. I felt like this could be really something. So I became a member at this club or at the studio. And Every Monday at 6pm I had my session, which was my non travel day. After six weeks, I woke up a Sunday morning. For context, at that time I was probably like 15 to 20 days a month on painkillers because I was in pain. I woke up and I told my wife, like, I haven't taken anything in a week and I'm not in pain getting out of bed. And she was like, what? How long have you been doing that? And literally I did it for six weeks and I did one session a week at that time, kept doing it, and I'm pain free ever since. I never had surgery and just became a big fan. I told everybody about it and a lot of my friends and colleagues became members in these kind of studios.

And at these studios, like, if it's like the one that I went to in New York City, you have the trainer standing there with like a pad, then the wires are connected to the suit and they're kind of like telling you, do this, do this, do this. And then they're kind of adjusting intensity and asking you, okay, do you feel that? Do you feel that? You know, what's that one feel like for you? And this was just like a studio where they had multiple people using these suits and working out like that.

Yes. So it was, it was a chain called Body Street. It still exists. I think they now have like roughly 300 studios in Germany. And it's generally the format is two people with one personal trainer. And that still is the format. And I mean, Covid gave it a big hit because you're very close with people and you have a suit that you share with other people and so on. It's not like didn't really work. But pre Covid, Germany grew up to like two and a half thousand studios just offering EMS training. It's massive outside of America.

Okay, so with EMS training, has it been around a while, like in terms of these type of facilities, just EMS training in general. And the reason I ask is I think I first came across it when Jay Schroeder, who actually wound up interviewing for my podcast like this, was I believe almost 10 years ago at one of Dave Asprey's first bulletproof conferences. We had a very small group of people there and all, all of us were trying out this electrical muscle stimulation unit that was like a Russian E stim unit. Far different than kind of like these wimpy little stims that you'd seen up until that time. And there were full blown athletes in there just literally getting destroyed on this thing. And again, big clunky device with a bunch of wires and electrodes attached. But that was, I think that was like 10 years ago that Jay Schroeder was using this with a lot of NFL athletes. But I don't know how far back it actually goes.

The science was discovered actually by the Russians in the 60s, late 60s, and like courts like Russian Moscow Institute of Physiology, like, you know, those were the first to figure it out. We can simulate or replace what the motoric nervous system is doing to the muscle and we can intensify that and just, you know, increase the muscle work. They found out about this for the first time. And you know, you see then certain athletes, sprinters and so on and so forth from Russia getting up to the scene and we were like, you know, we didn't have sprinters before from Russia, like where are they coming from? And in the 80s and 90s it became just big and rehab. And I mean everybody has. A lot of people have used E stim before, but just for rehab and very local. Like, you know, if you had an injury.

And to clarify real quick, a lot of people think they've used estim, but in many cases have used transcutaneous nerve stimulation like the TENS units, which TENS units, those are different. Those just stimulate kind of like superficial nerves to kill pain. Whereas electrical muscle stimulation is actually stimulating the muscle?

Exactly 100%, yes. They think they have used it and it's kind of like related. It's still a stim, but the frequencies are very different, the intensities are very different, also the locations and the application. So a lot of that is pain treatment, which we're not doing. We're actually stimulating the muscle. And then in the early 2000s, actually a German engineer said, you know, all these sticky pads are just just very, you know, cumbersome and it's very hard and you need a cable per sticky pad. And if you want to do the whole body. It takes you half an hour to set up an athlete that's not really usable. And they started to put these electrodes into a suit. You still had a million wires, but, like, getting in and out of a suit was much easier than before. There was a device called the Body Transformer, which was kind of like the first of its kind. And it literally looks out of a, you know, emergency room medical thing. The Klitschko's were heavy users in the early 2000s, and then, you know, later, like famously, Usain Bolt and these guys used it. The first real commercial device was around 2007. Still tons of wires, and that's probably something that you have used in New York. Then in soccer, it became a staple. So German's national soccer team, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, and so on and so forth. They started like, seeing the benefits for their athletes. And rumor has it that even the first applications of the teams, like all the athletes, had to sign NDAs that they didn't tell anybody because it gave them such an edge. We see kind of a change in the physique of soccer players over the last 15, 20 years. I mean, the Ronaldo's of this world are just so much more in shape than soccer players have been 20 years ago. And it's partially because of full body Electromaster stimulation training.

That's interesting. I mean, I mean, well, like I told you, my friend Martin, who's a invests in a lot of health and fitness companies and tries out all these new devices and often introduces me to many of them. He was looking really fit and really trim when he came over to my house and he said he was just doing two or three of the Catalyst workouts per week and had put on something, it was pushing something like 20 pounds of muscle over four months of using it. So I actually wanted to ask you about that, though. It's one thing to kind of pull out anecdotal examples of friends or random soccer players, but is there actual good science or research on what currently exists surrounding EMS for something like strength or hypertrophy? Have they actually compared it to, say, traditional weight training?

So, first of all, maybe to lay the groundwork a little bit, we are here in the United States and we're kind of talking about this as like, you're saying it's relatively new to us, but somewhere else it hasn't been. So in the US it's an FDA regulated category where the US treats it as a medical device. Technically, it's the same thing as other devices that you can Buy on Amazon, Amazon. But for the manufacturers that are building these things, the hurdle was just so high that they didn't bother coming to the United states for like 10 years or 15 years. So in Europe there are actually like for example in Germany two universities, one in Cologne and one in Nuremberg with physical medicine chairs and departments. And they are basically conducting like two, three full blown studies every year on different things so on, on specific use cases and on rehab and, and they use like for example, counter movement jumps or like, you know, squats and like eccentric physical strength of certain muscle groups. Then do control groups and they have a physical exercise group, traditional personal training or like, you know, physical training group. They have an EMS group and then they have combined group and then they have like EMS training with like, you know, nutrition changes or like, you know, increase the protein intake and like all these things like there's, there's tons of science around it. And what we have created is we created like kind of like a mini knowledge base around this. I think now it's like 85 medical studies or something like this that we take and we generally analyze them and say what are the general categories and outcomes? It's pretty crazy. So for example, they took hockey players and then they were testing skating speed before and after a six week exercise regime and they were like 1.5% faster than before. And they had basketball players on jumping height and they had like, you know, single digit percentage increases, although they were like perfectly in shape. And because it's, it's a new way to, to activate your muscles, it's a more complete activation. And what we probably get to that later a little bit is, is we can specifically target fast twitch muscle fibers which are normally really, really hard to work out.

Yeah, I've noticed that. By the way, the difference between the strength and the power and the cardio workouts, there's definitely something different in terms of the frequency of stimulation and the way it's delivered. I wanted to ask you about that later, but when it comes to a lot of these improvements in hypertrophy or strength, I'm certain that a big part of it is due to the increase in muscle damage that occurs. I was able to find one study back when I was kind of noodling over why I was so sore after these workouts, sore than I' and it appears there's a lot of histological alterations in muscle fibers and connective tissue, a ton of creatine kinase activity and basically with an isometric because actually multiple times during, for example, as you know the strength training workout in the Catalyst app, there's I think maybe six or seven different strength training options on there, but most of them include almost in between your functional range of motion exercises, what they call a base, where you're just like in this full body isometric contraction. And this one study looked at said that like an electro stem evoked isometric contraction was comparable to a maximal voluntary eccentric contraction, which for anybody who lifts weights, knows that, you know, maximal voluntary eccentric muscle damage is a huge amount of mechanical stress on the activated muscle fibers. And the other interesting thing I noted when I was looking into that study was that the more that you train with electrical muscle stimulation, the faster you actually recover from that type of eccentric damage. So I don't know if it's stepping up endogenous production of antioxidants or what, but, you know, that it's interesting and what I wanted to ask you was, you know, in, in terms of why that amount of muscle damage occurs. You know, my theory was that, you know, maybe you're recruiting muscles that you haven't used before. But then again, the muscles that I'm already using, that I know I'm using also get sore. Maybe it's overriding the central governor in the brain. Right. That would normally kind of like hold you back when you're going to do a maximal contraction now that the iPad is in charge or your brain isn't able to break you as much. Like, have you looked into why it is that it induces such amount of soreness?

Absolutely. And I think two of the three things that we found or that our theories are, I have to say, because science is still not 100% sure what soreness actually is. I don't know what they actually haven't looked at it in a year or so. But the exercise science world is generally discussing what is soreness in the first place. No, so to your point, the first thing that we find is it's unused muscles. So you get sore in areas like in the lower back or on your abs or like upper glutes. What we have a lot, or traps and so on and so forth is generally like where some people are either working out or not working out, but they have a really hard time activating them. So especially like, you know, around female athletes and, you know, customers, we see a lot of like, hey, I can activate my glutes much more than I was able to do without Catalyst. So unused muscles is one thing. And if you have dormant muscles and you're waking them up, you know, they.

Have to Adapt it actually is a good thing. I discovered that way back with ems, that I could retrain myself or people came over to my house who say had a lot of, let's say external rotation on foot strike during the run, we just slapped those electrodes on retrain areas like the glute medius and the external rotators of the hips that weren't firing properly, they kind of turn back on after the electrostim. And then when not using the electrostim and engaged in daily activity or sport, they actually. They've been woke, right? They remember.

Yes.

And so, you know, I was already familiar with that concept of grabbing muscles using ems, that your brain has kind of almost lost the ability to be able to recruit efficiently. But of course the, I guess the side advantage, slash drawback of that is that you're able to build those muscles very effectively using electromuscle simulation. But you also feel soreness as those muscles that haven't been used in a long time are being used.

Yes, absolutely. And because the catalyst suit is like it's a 13 areas of the body, each muscle group gets its own channel. And we can talk about this a little bit later and like, you know, you can dial in all of these, but it's literally like we leave no muscle behind. There's no cheating around this. There's not. You know, when we're lifting or even when we're squatting, like, you know, we have our favorite muscle groups and then some we neglect and, and then those are like underused and they are then prone to injuries when they're actually being used. So it's, it's literally making sure all the muscles are being in all the relevant late major muscle groups are being targeted. The second thing is definitely a much more complete muscle activation and it goes in two ways. So the first thing is, yes, we activate a larger percentage of the muscle fibers simultaneously than normally you would do in a workout. Even if you are really well trained athlete and you have access to a lot of your muscle fibers and proportion of your muscle mass, you only can activate a subset of the fibers simultaneously. That's just physically given. And this is what you called, there's kind of like a function that makes sure the endurance of the muscle and the replenishment of nutrients is actually possible so that you don't immediately fall asleep after full exhaustion. It's a survival mechanism from the old days. Like if you run from the saber tooth, you don't want to fall asleep, sleep like two minutes later. However, what we know is that to train a Muscle, we need to really exhaust it and create some damage and have like progressive overload. So we, we generally in bodybuilding and in fitness, we need time to do that because we can only activate a certain amount of muscle fibers. So then we need to have a short rest and then we have a second set and we have a third set and potentially we have a fourth set. And like again, is that good to have a fourth set or not? Like, it's all like to be discussed, but we are doing these things with multiple sets because we can't activate the complete muscle simultaneously during the first one. What we are now doing, we are increasing the recruitment of muscle fibers during each rep. So we are really increasing that. So what we're doing is first of all, we are getting to an exhaustive state of the muscle faster. We're activating more muscle fibers at the same time, which also gives us a feedback, just a sensory feedback, or this is like, kind of like subconsciously this is how it's supposed to feel. Similar to what you were saying around like waking up certain muscle groups and then you're able to use them in general, you know, general exercise or in a daily, daily routine as well. And on top of that, what we are able to do based on impulse parameters is we can say do we want to get the slow twitch muscle fibers, so the efficient muscle fibers, so to say, which the, you know, body tries to use as much as possible, add on an activation of the fast twitch muscle fibers which counterintuitively come in very late in a progressive, you know, strength development of a muscle. But then they kick in very quickly. It's kind of like a, a kick down in a car or something like this. Like you're, you're, you're adding, you're getting down a gear and like, you know, just get more power in. But it goes like only when you really need that, that power in the car. The challenge with that is a, you need to do extreme loads to naturally activate these fast twitch muscle fibers. But also you need to, you know, do either extreme loads or very quick movements, which both.

You mean, you mean if you're using conventional weight training equipment?

Yes, exactly. If you're using conventional weight training, you need either extreme loads or very quick movements, which you know, are also from a training perspective, are very injury prone. So what we are now able to do is we are able to shape stimulation parameters in a way that we're activating either one, the other or both at the same time.

You mean either slow twitch, fast twitch or both at the same time.

Absolutely. 100%.

Okay, so if I'm understanding correctly, I might be getting ahead of you here, but I would imagine that for one of the cardio workouts, you're more stimming slow twitch. For a power workout, you're really focusing purely on fast twitch. And for the strength training workouts, maybe a slow twitch, fast twitch combination, something like that.

Yeah. In the, you're right around strength and power. With cardio, it's a little bit different. With cardio, what we're actually doing is we're not causing a full tetanus, we're not causing a full contraction of the muscle. It's more like twitches because we want to be able to have the body like you're either walking while you're doing it.

Right. It's continuous motion. I noticed that like with the strength training, it's like.

Yes.

With the cardio, it's like kind of like the whole time.

Exactly. So what we are causing in cardio mode versus strength training is in cardio mode, we're causing the muscle to be active and burn energy and like, you know, transfer. You can't burn energy, but like transform energy into motion, like, you know, chemical energy into motion and have a, have a calorie burn effect and have a cardiovascular load on the body. But we don't want to cause a certain direction of motion. So your arms are not going in a way and you're trying to do a squat or whatsoever. You are continuously either walking or running. And my new favorite is get on an air bike. Total killer. Do this interval with an.

I haven't done it yet. That's actually the one I was going to do this morning because you can literally just have the suit on the whole time stimming you and be riding the aerodyne simultaneously.

Yes, it's. It's the total killer.

So that's that. That's gonna be all right. My family has a drive to seaside on Sunday morning, which is a six hour road trip. I'm gonna get up in the morning and go out and jam on that bike with the, with the full suit on before we take off and see what that feels like.

Yeah, totally. And, and if you really want to get like your, your cardiovascular load up, like, you know, wear a beanie and you know, keep your core temperature high. Your body is gonna like, totally.

Why, why does the body get so hot in that thing? Like, like surprising amount of sweat when. Because you're wearing the full body suit or is there another reason it's coming.

Back to like how much muscle activation is happening during a given time? We are basically. So I don't know if it's going like too mathematical, but let me try this for a second.

That's okay. You're the right accent for getting really mathematical.

A German mad scientist. Yeah. So let's say you're doing biceps curls, just isolated biceps curls. Let's keep it really simple, just one muscle group. And let's say you're doing 15 reps and you do three sets. So with during each biceps curl, you have the time under tension of one second and then you relax and you have another second and you relax. So you have 15 seconds time under tension with your biceps times three. So you have 45 seconds time under tension and you're walking to the next station. And now you train a different muscle. We're doing all this. Basically you spend two hours in the gym working out all the different areas of your body. And we basically squeeze this into a 20 minute session. Because what you now have is you have an electrode on your arms and a set on your arms and you're working your biceps and your triceps. So 4 seconds, you're working 4 seconds, you rest 4 seconds, you're working 4seconds. 50% of the time. You're working 50% of the time. And now you take 20 minutes, divide by half your biceps is working for 10 minutes. So within a 20 second, you have a 10 minute time and attention of what's up alone. Now you add up all the other muscle groups. So the excess heat that's being generated by muscles working is now not evaporated by your body over a two hours period of time. It has to be evaporated over 20 minutes.

Yep, yep, that makes sense.

You're squeezing so much work in such a short amount of time, your body needs to cool off. Off. That's really it.

Yeah. And I mean, you do, before you pull the suit on you, you have this like sexy little spray bottle that comes with it that you just spray down. And I was actually surprised you can just use pure water because I thought you'd have to use a conductive gel or some kind of like, you know, sodium chloride dissolved in the water or something like that. But what water provides enough conductivity?

Totally. Yes, absolutely.

All right, so. So you spray it down, you pull it on and you know, once you're actually in the suit and you flip it on. One thing that I noticed was that of course you start with all these isometric contractions, especially if you're doing the, the workout that walks you through how to use the suit. But then most of the workouts, you're not just standing there statically and letting the unit stim the muscle as you stand there statically, which is a method of training I've used in the past with electrical muscle stimulation, just isometrics, but the trainers are having you move through a range of motion, like an overhead press or a squat or a lunge or a row. And of course, it's very difficult to move through that range of motion while you're being stimmed, but you feel, as they're recruiting, a lot more muscle.

Muscle.

I'm curious, is that the case, or what's the reasoning behind moving through different ranges of motion versus just standing there and letting it just, you know, stimulate your whole body while you stand there?

We always start with, why? At Catalyst, it's like, you know, why are we doing this workout? What's the ultimate goal? What's the ultimate outcome? So what we want to achieve is we want to achieve a stronger body. We want to give you access to your muscles, but we also want to ensure that you are flexible and you have full range of motion function. What we don't want to add up is end up, is with, you know, muscle mass that only works between like, 20 and 50% of its, like, state of, like, lengthened state. Basically, what we want to teach the body is, hey, you can. You can activate these fibers, but you could do it from a total contraction. You can do it from a almost like extreme stretching state. And you're basically teaching your body how to activate these while you are doing these movements. Because with this way, we don't have shortened muscles. We don't have tension. We get rid of all tensions. Like, one of the big things is like, you know, back pain and, you know, tightness around the neck, and then a lot of, like, headache that is being caused. People have a lot of problems with this. What we hear very quickly, this goes away after like, two, three sessions. Because now your neck and your shoulders and your traps and all these muscle groups.

Just to interrupt you, I was thinking about this. One of my clients got one because I emailed some of my private training clients once I'd done a few workouts and said, you guys, you gotta get this thing so I can begin to work it into your workouts. And he had a knee problem. He did three workouts. And I realized that there's a pretty big endorphin and adrenaline response that results in kind of like a painkilling, like, effect, almost like a runner's high within. Gosh, for me, within the first five minutes of the workout.

And then.

And it sticks with you like I can't do it any closer than three hours prior to bedtime or else I'm wide awake from that big dump of excitatory neurotransmitters and hormones. But this fellow, it wasn't like for the next 20 minutes after the workout, his knee didn't hurt as you would expect from that painkilling effect. I mean his knee pain disappeared. So I'm guessing there must have been a trigger point or something along his quads or adductors or something that thing actually of broke up or introduced more. More oxygen or blood flow to or something.

Yeah, what we're seeing in general is so a lot of our unused muscles are very tight. So generally unused muscles are in a tight state. It's kind of like a protection mechanism of the body because they all like we're not used to using them so they don't want to be elongated. So they're in a really tight state. So now what's happening is, is with full body electromasser stimulation and catalyst training, you're actually training this muscle and you're getting the muscle into an exhaustive state and now you have a relaxation in it. The muscle is actually exhausted and you feel a little bit wobbly after a really good workout. Right. No matter what you're doing now, what we're making sure is these muscles actually can relax and get into this state without the injury risk of the workout before. Because generally when people are injured, they're not working out in a certain area. They stay stiff, they stay tight, and you never get out of this vicious circle. So what we now have with like this kind of training, electro muscle stimulation training, we can work out in areas that have been injured that had issues before and they just like soften up and then the cramps and the tightness goes away, which also is probably a disposition of the knee because the knee is a very open joint. Now if you have tightness in certain muscle groups, it gets into the wrong position, which causes other issues like ACL and so on and so forth. We basically relax the muscle, get back to a natural function.

The other thing I wanted to ask you kind of regarding injuries is there's a recovery setting too. And that's another one I haven't used, I would imagine, let's say I do that. That workout on the Airdyne with a catalyst on in cardio mode on Sunday morning before we head out to the coast does the recovery mode kind of involve something where I could pull it on and sit in the car and it'll do kind of like low end EMS or what's going on with the recovery setting. I haven't even messed around with that one yet.

So first of all, never use it in a car really. So no. When you have someone overriding your muscles, you don't want to be steering?

Oh, no, no. I, I ride passenger. My wife and I make a great team. Usually she drives and I write books and articles and posts and you know, I do all the DJ and the AC and the heat. She loves to drive. I don't like to drive, but I love to like manage and plan and map out as we're driving. So yeah, I would be in the passenger seat.

Great. So yeah, disclaimer here. No, same thing. My wife and I, we do the same thing when we go, go overland and have longer drives. I'm just working and like she's driving and yeah, we have the same divide and conquer approach. What the recovery mode generally does is it promotes blood flow. So it's a very low frequency. It's about one mini contraction or one twitch a second. And it's kind of a pumping effect to the muscle. So the muscle gets that like moved and the blood in the, in the rest time has then basically the, the chance to like keep flowing. So basically it's kind of like a, a pumping massaging effect that's just promoting nutrient and, and lactic acid movement. So that's what the intention of this mode is.

Got it, got it. Has, has any research been done on this for anything regarding longevity or anti aging? You know, such as, you know, we, we know that for example, pulsed electromagnetic field stimulation can cause stem cell mobilization, especially if you use it kind long bone of the femur or hyperbaric oxygen therapy can decrease the rate at which telomeres shorten to a certain extent. Has anything like that been researched for electrical muscle stimulation?

Indeed it has. Yes.

And I'm not, I'm not throwing you a softball there. This is one I actually haven't looked into.

No, no, no, no, no, no. And we haven't talked about this before. I totally know. So one of the things in general that I was so fascinated by when I found this technology is the breadth of application. It's literally a solution for a lot of different problems that we have in this day and age. Like people don't have time to work out out even if they are fit and healthy. And then over time people just amass certain injuries and then they just like drop off the bandwagon of like working out in general. One of the longevity aspects that has been studied is Nuremberg took I think 100 women 75 and above years, 75 years old and above through a year long, long term study. They worked out, I think like, don't, don't quote me on this, but I think they, they worked out 16 minutes every four days. I think that was the, the regiment on a light full body e. Think about it, they're 75 years old. Right. So you're not doing crazy stuff. You're just, you know, doing like light movements and mobilization. But you put them in that. The first interesting thing for me was two individuals dropped out of the study. Two out of 100, which is. And they moved away. One went on a cruise and the other one moved away. So those were the reasons. So they kept using it. So that's the first thing that I, that we see a lot with full body muscle stimulation is people see results and they stick on it. They don't drop off after six weeks after their New Year's resolution. So first of all, they gained muscle mass again. So they totally reversed atrophy and basically went back and gained muscle mass again. They increased walking speed by I think between 10 and 20% something that number.

Which is directly correlated with longevity actually grip strength and walking speed and being able to get up off the floor are three good metrics for longevity.

Exactly. So they really tried these standard metrics. But then what totally was a surprise is they gained bone density again.

That's interesting because the muscles aren't actually being loaded.

Yes. However, and the muscles are loaded because you're always like to some extent they're not externally loaded. But let's say if you do a biceps curl, your biceps is working against your triceps. So now both biceps and triceps are pulling on your upper arm.

Yeah. You are getting loading from the muscle pulling your Right. So there's some amount of an axial load. So wow, that's super interesting. You're covering a lot of bases with this thing. But I'm curious, could one theoretically, instead of doing what I do, like doing a strength, then a cardio workout, do you think that you'd be able to use it more frequently if you did something like strength one day cardio one day power another day a day off, something like that. Have you experimented with anything like that?

Yeah. So what we recommend and what we found works the best is do a strength or power workout day one. Let's say it's not day one, like, you do a strength and power workout and now you're already in the suit. Right. You're already suited up, you're already there.

That's why I do the back to back workouts, because I don't want to take the suit off yet.

Yeah, yeah. So do another 10 or 20 minutes of cardio towards the end. So 10 minutes is totally fine. Do it towards the end. And we can, we can talk about cortisol levels and whatsoever as well, but generally do this and do this kind of like as an active recovery. So you have a cardiovascular level, kind of have an active recovery. You still have, like, additional blood flow. The cardio workouts don't cause a full twitch, like a full tetanus, they just cause twitches. So there's a lot of blood flow and that. So basically now for day one, you have that covered. Day two, just do a cardio session. Give your body some time to recover. And then day three or four, you can do strength again. So when you're starting what we generally see, people start with two sessions a week. And also the question is, like, what's the rest of your fitness regime look like? So people who are already doing a lot, right, who are running, who are rowing, who are like, you know, weightlifting, do other things, they integrate it like twice a week into their exercise routine. But for example, one of our customers, he's like 62 years old and he's a commercial airline pilot. He's always traveling. Also, during COVID all the gyms are closed. Nothing is working. He's using the thing every day.

Yeah, because there's pretty much nothing to pack. It's just like your. It's like your iPad and your. And your suit.

Yeah, it's three pounds. Like, the suit is three pounds. Like, the big versions are like three and a half pounds. Something like this. It's totally packable and you can just travel with it. And this is what he does to your question is strength training should have some distance in between them. And then the cardio sessions, you can add in every day.

So another question I have for you is, you know, in terms of things you found to combine well with this, I mean, you know, for example, when I interviewed Jeff Spencer, who was a physician who helped out, or he was actually a Cairo who helped out a lot of Tour de France cyclists with recovery and with injuries, especially between stages, he would apply electrical muscle stimulation, but then before he would apply the electrodes, he would apply a topical. This is usually for an injury like Traumeel or magnesium or a CBD topical, and then use the electrodes or the electricity to drive that topical transdermal normally deeper than it would normally go. And he would often also combine that with ice, meaning he'd have. And I still do this sometimes with these smaller units that have the electrodes coming off them, like if I'll use a Mark Pro or a compact or something like that. These small portable electrostim devices all use that strategy. Topical anti inflammatory plus electrodes plus ice. And it got me thinking about catalyst. Have you ever looked into, for example, like a topical L carnitine or some type of. Of lactic acid buffer to be used against the skin while you're using the suit? Or perhaps even introducing something like cold packs over the top of the actual catalyst suit? Have you guys experimented with any of this type of stuff internally?

No, we haven't yet. I have to say, I had always knee issues in my life and I used something with a physiotherapist called yontophoresis. And basically it's putting gels on your knee and then using E stim to basically, basically move it through the skin and transport it. These type of stimulation pulses are actually unidirectional. So you're trying. So basically the compound that's being put on your skin is basically ionized and you're then using the directed currents to actually pull that through. It's kind of like using a magnet on something to pull it over a table or something like that. Right. So that's possible. We haven't used that. And we are also very, we're very focused on like the one thing that we're doing. And also from a, you know, just pure practicality perspective, we haven't, we haven't tried that yet. No.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I will keep you posted because I've got a lot of little experiments I'm going to run with it. And you know what? I've probably done a total of 12 actual workouts with it. And I'm kind of ready and, you know, wanted to throw a few questions at you before I really start. Start hacking with this thing and wearing an oxygen mask or putting a transdermal on or even applying cold wraps around it. But I feel like there's a lot of directions that you could go with something like this or even combining it with something like my Vasper machine, which is cold and compression, put on the suit and go out and do a workout on that with it. In cardio mode. There's a lot of fun ways that I think One can go with this. Another question is in terms of the actual usability of this device. I know that for me, with the iPad, I can get it. I like to have wifi off. So I just downloaded all the workouts to the iPad and then I'll bring it outside in the sunshine, or if it's raining or whatever down in the basement. You pull up the workout, it connects to the suit, and then the trainer walks you through the workout. You guys have this internal team of trainers who are coming up with these routines or who's actually developing these.

When I decided. So, first of all, I fell in love with it, like roughly in 12 I was in 2012, and then did all the research, like, is this true? Is this a fad? Does it actually work? And so on and so forth. And then when I decided in 2015 to actually quit my job, my parents were like, you're totally crazy. You know, you quit your job, like, which is awesome, and you want to do something that no one has ever done before in a different country and like, move continents and so on, so forth, forth. I knew that I needed the experience of what works in full body EMS training and what doesn't. And I actually asked my trainer, who was a former soccer player in Berlin, has been doing this, like, for five years already. Are you going to join me and are you also going to move to the US and figure this out? Max, who's our lead trainer and master trainer, who's been doing this now for over 10 years, started building a catalog, which we have in our society. So the Catalyst system has a back end, obviously, and we have a catalog of exercises, and it's constantly growing. There's like 160 different exercises on it. And we then combine them into these workouts. The trainers basically do this. They script them, and then while they are working out and while they are being filmed, they basically follow the workouts that they create from their own. It's not that easy, I have to say. So. So we know that some trainers, when they first did it, there's a lot to do because you have to run the tech and you have to talk to the camera and you have to figure out how your form is right and you're working out at the same time. It's actually quite challenging for the trainers. But we are developing these and we continue to experiment with them, especially because our system is completely wireless. You can move around with it and there's nothing hanging off it. What we're learning now is we, because of our freedom that we have there are a lot more things that we can do than traditionally could have been done. So, for example, I was at IMG Academy a few weeks ago down in Florida, and one of the trainers immediately was like, okay, so can I go and like test and try sprints? And I'm like, okay. So he was on this inside blow up hall and he was starting doing sprints. Underscore him and he was like, oh, that's interesting. And I can do this.

Yeah, you can do just about anything functional. And another one of my buddies who works with the ufc, he contacted me after like a week after he got the unit and said he wanted to get it on some of his fighters. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways that it can be used. Is there ever a plan to basically allow for like a detach mode where you could not have an actual workout by a trainer on there and just say, okay, I'm going to, to go for a walk. I don't want to mess around with the iPad or something like that and just put the stem on and go for a walk.

Yes, cool.

But ping, ping me on that feature comes up because for me, I'm a minimalist. The less equipment I can have, the better. Plus I like to make up my own workouts too.

So think about this, especially outside or with other equipment, there's going to be, we have things in the book that, or like on the roadmap that's going to make it, for these specific use cases, much more usable and even more free. For now, it's really like introducing this kind of technology and teaching the general public about this exists and how to do it. And then for the more advanced users, there will be like a lot of additional ways to use this.

Awesome. Now one thing I was wondering was like, when the trainers are walking you through the workout, are they actually getting stimmed themselves? Because I can't tell if they're just like pretending.

No, they are. Okay. So they actually.

It's like a spin class where the person's actually riding the bike. You don't, you don't know what intensity they're at.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, but they're actually riding the bike. No, so what we wanted to. And it's by the way, the, the first time this has ever been done. And, and the whole like, you know, content creation, there's no EMS training with content in the rest of the world didn't exist. So it's basically a trainer doing this and the trainer is running the, the device. I always compared this to you going to a club and someone is playing DJ or someone is playing the violin in a concert. You can play the violin in the concert, but dancing at the same time doesn't work. So the roles of the customer and the trainer are very distinguished, very separated. And what we wanted to create was literally an experience that you think the trainer is with you and he's training with you in the same room. And I don't know if we mentioned this already, but the moment the trainer on the screen is touching his own iPad and saying, like, hey, let's take it up a moment, your suit reacts to that, like, in real time. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Like, was probably, like the first time. It's a bit surprising that this is happening because, you know, normally you have to adjust your bike yourself or whatever you're doing. But we wanted to get this really immersive experience because we want the customer to totally focus on their body and the exercise. We don't want them to to having to play around with the tech. So the only thing you do as a customer is like, I want a little bit more than the trainer is telling me. I want a little bit less than the trainer's telling me. Everything else is just taken care of.

Yeah. Because what I like is you can reach over and not only say, hey, I want more stim on my legs or more stim on my chest or more stim on my arms and select a certain body part that you might feel like. For me, my legs are pretty strong and they have a lot of endurance just from all my years of triathlon and running and cycling, things like that. So. So when I fire up a workout, I typically, first thing I do is I select legs and I turn up legs higher than upper body, and that kind of evens things out for me. And then I'll launch into the workout, and if I need to adjust along the way because the trainer's adjustment isn't high enough, I'll adjust along the way. But I have to admit, I am often, like, especially towards the end of the workout, cursing those darn trainers because you feel like you're giving it your all. And they're like, and I go up one more time. And then. And it goes up. And you're like, I don't know. And then you're like, okay, I can handle this. I can handle this. And then they do it again. So by the time it sneaks up on you, by the time you finish the end of the workout, you know, I've been above like 420 before in terms of the stim level. And you know, you're definitely robbed.

Wow.

So.

Wow. Yeah. So, yeah. So that might explain why you're very sore because you're really taking this to the. To the high levels.

I get kind of extreme. I jack that thing up just about as high as it can go. So yeah. And honestly, I like it. I like to feel like I'm worked.

So just on levels in general. So first of all, the system always remembers what you've been doing and then next time applies it. So it's learning over time. The other thing that I have to say is the levels are always individual to a person. So someone could start in the hundreds and is already sore and like, you know, likes a certain aspect. And what we see a lot is like people working out between 100 and 200 and then some who is taking it high and like in the 200s up to 300, 400. Like when you're really taking it far, the max output is like 480 is the max for each channel that can be given out. But I have to say that that's already a very extreme thing. But the nice thing about this is it's kind of like you're going to the gym and there's a weight for everyone. If you want to go very high, you can do it. And if you want to do a light one and that's the right one for you, you can do it as well. That's what I like so much about this technology.

I have all the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com KatalystPodcast Spelled a K though, so KatalystPodcast BenGreenfieldFitness.com Catalyst Podcast Now I also have a link at BenGreenfieldFitness.com catalyst and that basically gets you access. I don't even know what that means beyond when you say you get access to it. Do you guys have like a wait list or what do people get when they go to my special link?

So in general, what we have is, you know, we're hardware and we have to start production and ramp it up over time. So we have limited supply at the moment. Like everyone has limited supply in these days. So we want to be able to say like, you know, hey, if someone actually orders, we're like shipping and not want to have like 10 weeks or like 12 weeks or whatsoever. You get it. So we basically have a wait list and people can sign up when they go to Catalyst Fit. They can sign up to the waitlist. What we have with your audience and with your link is people basically skip the waitlist. So we have reserved a certain set of, you know, equipment and yeah, that's, that's what people get right. So they can.

So we're removing the velvet rope for folks getting you. Hey, so I want to pop in here and tell you about something new. I've created this brand new coaching opportunity. It's unlike anything I've ever offered before. It goes above and beyond to keep you motivated and accountable and supported. It's a six week long course. It's called the Transformation Challenge and the purpose is to help you reach your body composition goals as quickly and safely as possible. Whether that's lose fat, gain lean muscle, you name it. Because body image is something a lot of people struggle with, I know that. But what I want to do is to provide this supportive resource that cuts through the confusion and doesn't rely on fad diets or anything. Endless hours in the gym, which can be more harmful than helpful as I hope you know. But anyways, each week you'll get tasks, you'll get to explore all these resources I give you. We get a group call with one of my expert coaches, all while tracking daily meals, workouts. Got an easy to use app to help you stay accountable along the way. And all of you who engage with this transformation challenge, you get a one hour consult client call with one of my trained coaches to get set up for success before you even begin. And then they give you a nutrition and a fitness blueprint. All the challenges from the last run we did which was incredibly popular, like it was crazy. How many pounds of body fat that were lost, how many people started working out less but following the script that we gave them and getting way better strength and body comp goals. Balanced training caused a ton of people to be sleeping better. HRV scores went through the roof. We even worked on gratitude, spirituality and then there was this whole community aspect which was a huge success factor. A whole bunch of like minded individuals around cheering each other on the whole time and interacting through a private feed that we make available. So anyways, at the end of the six weeks, the top two grand prize winners, one male and one female, get a ton of cool prizes. A free coaching consult with me, a fitness nutrition plan, a book bundle including my new boundless cookbook book, a kion supplement bundle, a shout out all over my social media to celebrate your transformation. And that's it. And it starts very soon. Our last round sold out super quickly. You got to get on this one by June 30th, which is coming up in just a few days. BenGreenfieldCoaching.com Transformation Challenge that's BenGreenfieldCoaching.com transformation challenge and I hope to see you on the inside. All right, so, so it's BenGreenFense.com catalyst thank me now and then curse me later after you do your first workout. It really is as hard as you make it. You don't have to be a glutton for punishment like me. And you can, you can ease your way in if you want, but I've done some electrical muscle stimulation in the past. So I was, you know, I was like, all right, let's see what this thing can do. And so since my first few sessions were like that, now if I bring the intensity down, I'm like, eh, I'm used to the high intensity stuff, but it's, it's really amazing. I'm going to take it down to seaside on this next trip and use it when I'm down there on the beach. So I'm to hunt down a gym or anything and I'm super stoked. So again, the shownotes are at BenGreenfulFlaments.com Catalyst podcast where I'll also link to other podcasts and articles I've done about electrical muscle stimulation. If you want to take a deep dive into the science, leave your comments. If you have ways that you've used something like this or questions for Bjorn or me and we'll reply. You go to BenGreenfulFitness.com CatalystPodcast for that. That and then you can get a unit for yourself and straight to the front of the waiting list@bengreenfieldfitness.com Catalyst with a K. You don't need a code or anything, just BenGreenfieldFitness.com Katalyst with a K Bjorn, thanks for coming on the show, for sharing all this stuff with us and for giving me an idea for a crazy workout this weekend.

Thank you, Ben. Thanks for having me.

All right folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Bjorn from Catalyst signing out. Have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance and plenty more. Please also know that all the links all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.