BODY20 of Miller Place, New York, is a new player on the Long Island fitness scene, having first opened their doors for business at the end of January, 2024. Since then, they've been steadily building an outstanding reputation for whipping people into shape using a deft and unique combination of technology, intelligence, and plain ol' hard work.

BODY20 is a boutique-style fitness studio that utilizes a tech known as electro muscle stimulation (EMS) training. BODY20 is a small, intimate personal training facility, with clients getting one-on-one attention from their "coaches" who guide them through their one-of-a-kind training process, according to franchise owner Jim Carlson.

“Our coaches put on what we call a ‘super suit’ on our members, and that suit has 16 pads on it, and those pads will electrically stimulate 138 muscles throughout your body,” he said. “Over the course of a 20-minute workout, we can give you over 36,000 muscle contractions, which would take hours in a regular gym to accomplish.”

However, Jim notes that the customer will not simply be standing there doing nothing while receiving their electrical stimulation; instead, the coaches will put their trainees through a series of exercises while the current is running, consisting of functional, full-body movements along with some resistance training utilizing items such as light dumbbells and elastic bands.

“Mostly, we have you doing movements that you would do in traditional gyms, but without weights. What's really cool about us is that we can give you the resistance that weights do, we can give you strength training, but not give you any pain in your joints, ligaments, or tendons,” he said. “The electro muscle stimulation creates the resistance while you're doing bodyweight exercises, and when you get advanced enough, we start to hand you resistance bands and small dumbbells, but we never go above 15 pounds.”

Utilizing EMS is actually not a new science; Jim notes that Europeans have been using it for decades, but it was only approved by the FDA for use in the United States in the mid-2000s. BODY20 as a franchise was quick to jump on this technology once it was approved, and is a rapidly growing institution in the United States, with multiple locations already nationwide and dozens more set to open soon; Jim's Miller Place franchise is the second in New York state, and the first one on Long Island.

Jim himself was a former air conditioning contractor for 25 years; he eventually sold his business and settled into an early retirement, but after just two years he found himself becoming bored and in need of new challenges.

“Fitness has always been a passion of mine. I love to exercise and stay in shape, so I started talking to franchise brokers and a lot of them were offering me opportunities that didn't interest me,” he said. “However, one of the brokers said that he had a unique opportunity for me- BODY20.”

Jim first expressed a healthy amount of skepticism, but it wasn’t long before he became a true believer in the BODY20 concept.

“Honestly, at first I thought it was nothing but a gimmick. I always thought you had to put in the hard work at the gym, and that there was no way that this would work,” he said. “But the broker convinced me to talk to BODY20’s president, and he convinced me to fly down to Houston to their corporate headquarters. There I did the 12-minute introductory workout and I was blown away. I couldn't believe how it exhausted me. I felt I had worked out for at least an hour.”

“A couple days later, I was so sore,” Jim continued. “And that's what's so cool about the BODY20 workout...it's really good at mimicking your brain. When you exercise, your brain sends an electrical impulse to your muscle to make it contract, but the muscle can't tell where this electrical impulse is coming from. What we basically do is skip the brain sending the impulse…instead, we can send the impulse even quicker and contract that muscle thousands of times faster than the brain can.”

While this may sound somewhat disconcerting to the layman, Jim was adamant that EMS is actually incredibly safe, perhaps even more so than lugging heavy cast iron weights around. It's also more effective than traditional weights in many respects; normally, when you're working out, you are making micro tears in your muscle fiber, which then heal after rest to become bigger and stronger. But Jim notes that a BODY20 workout breaks down the muscles so much that a client can only do one 20-minute strength training session a week. This not only makes their training sessions more efficient, but ideal for individuals who normally don't have time to exercise due family or career commitments.

“If you’re really looking to transform your body, we can wait three days and give you another workout, but that one has to be cardio based only,” Jim noted. “For the cardio sessions, you still wear the suit, but we change the impulses to the muscles to help get rid of lactic acids and bring blood to the muscles, and a 20-minute cardio workout this way is indescribable. It's been proven to increase your metabolic rate by at least 30 percent, and a lot of cyclists and marathonists are using this technology now.”

Another cool piece of tech that BODY20 members have access to is a device known as the InBody, which delivers detailed body composition analysis of not only a client’s outside, but their inside as well, such as water weight, lean muscle mass, and fat content of specific areas of the body. This gives BODY20 the ability to show you exactly what kind of improvements you are making during your training sessions and what areas still need work, giving you positive reinforcement to continue on your fitness journey.

Since opening its doors for business earlier this year, Jim's BODY20 franchise has been packing in the clients, all of which have been extremely satisfied with the results of their training. But Jim noted that his goal is to help spread awareness of this still relatively new, technology-driven approach to fitness, and one day he envisions possibly opening up additional BODY20 locations if reception continues to be positive.

But in the meantime, Jim said that he remains steadfast in his business’ unique combination of tech and hard work to help his clients on the path becoming the best versions of themselves that they can be.

To find out more about BODY20 and to arrange a consultation with a coach, please call them at 631-683-3543 or visit their website at https://body20.com/miller-place.