History of EMS Training

SPEED.FIT is an aspiring and innovative company, set apart by the high effectiveness of SPEEDtraining. The foundation stone was laid by the spiritual father of a whole body workout based on electric muscle stimulation (EMS or SPEEDtraining). Without his incredible energy and enthusiasm for trying something completely new in the realm of training and for continually optimising it, this innovative technology would never have come to fruition.

Karl-Heinz Rippe

Born in 1944 near Minden, his career was diverse and shaped by fateful events. His hunger for knowledge knew no limits – he was always keen on developing new ideas, putting them into practice and optimising them. Starting out as a baker apprentice, then a nightclub owner and finally owning his own dental technician lab with more than 50 employees – there was hardly an area he wasn’t interested in and didn’t want to learn about. This infinite desire for perfection and development was the basis for SPEED.FIT.

You might wonder how to put this all together. In 1986, after having suffered a number of heart attacks at the age of 42, Mr Rippe set the milestone for what would later become the brilliant achievements of this revolutionary training technology. In order to lose weight and thus become healthier, he started out with a fitness programme in a conventional gym. But the slightest exertion was enough to make his pulse race. This led him to the idea of creating a whole body workout. An earlier project which involved treating facial muscles with a stimulation current for cosmetic reasons served as a cornerstone. Neither forensic specialists nor doctors or internists gave his ideas a chance and he was predicted a short lifespan.

Countless self-experiments later, not only had he lost weight and improved his body shape, he also felt a lot healthier. Just half a year after his last heart attack, he showed sensational results during a check-up in a cardiology centre. There was hardly anything left from the heart attacks, the degree of muscle tissue had improved significantly, and also his creatine kinase values were significantly above par – in fact, they corresponded to those of a top athlete.

Furthermore, lateral coronary veins had developed at his heart which largely supplied the blood flow – these were his first personal achievements of his self-developed whole body workout.

He has always been particularly dedicated to the development of the crucial part of the system: the electrodes. Due to the special electric and skin-compatible qualities of carbon, his aim had always been to use this material. However, it took a few more years before this innovative material was available in a workable form to use in electrodes.

When this eventually was the case, the conductive part of the electrode equipment was manufactured from carbon. In 2005, a patent application was filed for this technology, and two years later, the patent was registered. Today, SPEED.FIT Technology produces the electrodes for the SPEEDtrainer based on this patent. Thanks to this patented technology, which has been developed and tested for more than two decades, our electrodes are some of the most advanced and efficient electrodes available.

Following a few more development steps, we are – thanks to Mr. Karl-Heinz Rippe’s inexhaustible drive for discovery – not only successfully using our innovative and revolutionary SPEEDtrainer in our SPEED.FIT Premium Clubs, but are also offering this incredible muscle building technology to everyone.