#72: How PowerDot Can Help You Improve Speed and Agility

#72: How PowerDot Can Help You Improve Speed and Agility

Agility and speed play a role in a number of sports and physical activities. When you’re darting back and forth on the tennis court, light and nimble on your feet, you’re testing your agility and speed. The same goes for a functional fitness athlete who’s busy knocking out rope climbs and burpee box jumps. Taking time to focus on your agility and speed training is beneficial to your overall fitness, and PowerDot can help. 


Here’s how.


Agility and Speed Training + PowerDot: How it Works


There are a few reasons why the benefits that an electric muscle stimulation device like PowerDot can offer can improve your capacity to be quick and agile. 


Increased Muscle Endurance


When you’re watching sprinters race around the track, eventually, some start to fall behind. When a track and field athlete starts to struggle, they might begin missing their hurdles. As soccer players start to fatigue, they have a harder time covering the field. 


It’s not because they lack skill or even speed but rather, their endurance starts to suffer as exhaustion and fatigue set it. It stands to reason, then, that if an athlete can improve their endurance, then their ability and speed training will progress. 


Because PowerDot improves your circulation and strength, almost by default, it also boosts your endurance. This makes it an excellent companion to your speed training drills and agility exercises. Furthermore, we can’t forget that since it aids in faster recovery, the next time those same athletes hit the track (or court or field), their performance will enjoy the benefits of muscles that healed faster than normal, aren’t as sore, and are carrying less inflammation. 


Recovery used to seemingly be so out of our control. With PowerDot, we’ve put ourselves back in the driver’s seat. Instead of passively waiting to feel better, you can actively move your body toward recovery.


Faster recovery plus improved circulation plus greater strength equals better endurance. And muscles that can perform at optimal levels for longer make for an athlete with better speed and agility.


Slow- and Fast-Twitch Muscles Doing Their Jobs Better


Just like your skin is made of many different components, so are your muscles. 


Within your muscles, you have different types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch (Type 1) and fast-twitch (Type 2). Slow-twitch muscle fibers, perhaps unsurprisingly, contract more slowly. They support strength and endurance. 


Fast-twitch muscle fibers, on the other hand, contract more quickly, and they’re responsible for faster, more sudden bursts of energy. Think of activities that involve weightlifting, sprinting, jumping, gymnastics, or quickly changing directions.


This helps explain why the lower body has more Type 1 fibers, while the upper body has more Type 2. Our lower half is designed for endurance (like walking, something human beings of earlier times did much more than we do now), while our upper half is designed for quicker, more forceful actions.


PowerDot can circumvent your central nervous system, and its limits when it comes to strength and power, and directly impact both types of fibers by sending electrical pulses every two to three seconds. The device accomplishes this by using different Hertz ranges to target one of the two muscle fiber types, forcing them to contract. 


Lower frequencies like 18 Hz target slow-twitch fibers, whereas higher frequencies (think 100 to 120 Hz) target fast-twitch fibers.


Your fast-twitch muscle fibers play an especially important role in your agility and speed training drills — really, anything that involves explosiveness or moving at a higher intensity. Yes, you can train these muscle fibers yourself, simply by doing the activity you want to perform better or some sort of related accessory exercise. 


For example, any kind of all-out sprint training will get your fast-twitch muscle fibers in better shape. If you want to jump higher or further, you can spend more time jumping. If you need help on the tennis court, footwork drills are your friend. 


However, most of us are looking to gain that extra edge, and that’s where electric muscle stimulation comes into play. By using PowerDot to target these fibers, you’re essentially teaching them to perform better. It’s like training your muscles even when you’re not actually training.


Precisely Targeted Assistance


It’s not often that you come across something that can give you as customized of an experience as PowerDot can, but that’s the potential of electric muscle stimulation.


Maybe you’re trying to improve your golf swing or your tennis stroke but your shoulders don’t have the spring that they need. Or maybe you’re a sprinter or track and field athlete needing help getting your quads to fire. PowerDot can help.


PowerDot’s 10+ Smart NMES programs (neuromuscular electrical stimulation) work to stimulate both Type I and Type II muscle fibers. Utilize these programs both during training or post-session. Not only does our NMES stimulate the fibers, but it actually recruits more muscle fibers than standard warmups and training. 


TO be clear, this isn’t to say that EMS is better than training. Nothing replaces hard work. However, it does make it a smart complement to your programming.


If you’re wondering how to get faster as a runner, or how to be quicker in your speed training drills, or how to add more whip to your softball pitch, the answer is simple. Use an electric muscle stimulation device like PowerDot to improve your muscle endurance, encourage better recovery, and target your different muscle fibers to achieve the desired results.


Remember that beyond improving your ability and speed training, PowerDot is an all-encompassing electric muscle stimulation device that’s also good for muscle soreness and swelling, maintaining healthy circulation during long flights (or long periods of sitting), and encouraging mobility and joint health.


Furthermore, there’s plenty of overlap. It’s not just about getting better at your sport. It’s about living a healthier, happier life.


Learn more about how muscles contract, along with Type I and Type II muscle fibers.


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