As women put greater focus on muscle, longevity and strength, BODY20 is positioning its 20-minute EMS model as an accessible way to make resistance training part of the routine.

For many women, fitness priorities are shifting from losing weight to building and maintaining strength and muscle.

BODY20 is seeing that shift firsthand.

Roughly two-thirds of the fitness brand’s members are women, most between 35 and 55 or older. Sydney Maddox, director of fitness at BODY20, says their priorities are evolving.

“The language has changed,” Maddox said. “Fewer women come in talking about getting smaller or burning calories, and more come in talking about staying strong, protecting their joints, keeping their bone health in mind, and being capable for the long run.”

Maintaining muscle becomes more important with age, particularly through perimenopause and menopause. The growth of GLP-1 use has added another reason to pay attention to muscle preservation during weight loss.

For BODY20, those trends point to a growing need for strength training that women can realistically incorporate into their routines. 

“Muscle is increasingly understood as something to build and protect rather than avoid,” Maddox said.

How BODY20 Approaches Strength

BODY20 uses whole-body electrical muscle stimulation, or EMS, to create a strength-training stimulus in 20-minute coached sessions.

Members wear a suit equipped with electrodes positioned over major muscle groups. As they perform movements such as squats, lunges and rows, electrical impulses stimulate muscle contractions while a coach controls the intensity for individual muscle groups.

Traditional resistance training creates much of its stimulus through external load. EMS uses electrical stimulation to recruit muscle fibers while requiring less external weight.

“When you contract a muscle on your own, your nervous system recruits motor units in order, starting with the smaller ones and calling on the larger, more powerful fibers only as effort rises,” Maddox said. “EMS stimulates muscle fibers directly, including the fast-twitch fibers that are hardest to reach and the first to decline with age.”

Research into whole-body EMS has expanded over the past decade, including studies involving older adults and postmenopausal women. Maddox points to controlled trials that have found improvements in muscle mass, strength and body composition, with supervision, appropriate intensity and recovery playing important roles.

Accordingly, supervision is part of BODY20’s model. Every workout is coached, and intensity can be adjusted independently across different muscle groups based on the individual member. Exercises can also be modified for range of motion, balance and experience.

For women who don’t regularly strength train, finding the time, lifting heavy weights or concerns about joint impact can make it difficult to start. Maddox says BODY20’s 20-minute format gives women another way to incorporate resistance training without requiring a traditional gym-based strength session.

“Strength adaptation is driven by how many muscle fibers you recruit and recovering from it, among other mechanisms. Not by how long you spend in the gym,” Maddox said.

That schedule leaves room for other activities and training regimens.

“EMS can work as the strength anchor in a routine that also includes walking, cardio, mobility work or the activities someone already enjoys,” Maddox said. “Two short sessions a week provide a meaningful strength stimulus without displacing everything else. For women who already lift, it can complement that training. For women who don’t, it can be an approachable, coached entry point into strength work.”

GLP-1s Put a New Focus on Muscle

GLP-1 use has added another reason to pay attention to maintaining muscle.

“The first thing is that weight loss is not the same as fat loss,” Maddox said. “When people lose weight quickly, from any cause, part of that loss can come from lean mass, and clinical trial data on GLP-1 medications show that a meaningful share of weight lost can be lean tissue.”

Muscle plays an important role in strength, metabolism, balance and the ability to function well with age. For those using GLP-1 medications, Maddox points to consistent resistance training and adequate protein as two commonly emphasized strategies for preserving it, alongside guidance from a physician.

For women in midlife, preserving muscle also supports strength, balance and long-term function.

BODY20 sees its short, coached format as one way to maintain a resistance-training habit during a period when energy and appetite may be lower than usual.

BODY20 also encourages members to look beyond the number on the scale. Body composition scans are part of how members begin with the brand, providing information about lean mass and other measurements.

“Seeing lean mass on a report tends to change the conversation from the scale to strength,” Maddox said.

Strength as the Foundation

Maddox expects women’s expectations of fitness programs to continue evolving as understanding of strength, longevity and women’s health grows.

“I think women will increasingly expect fitness programs to reflect what actually happens in their bodies across different life stages, not a one-size-fits-all class,” Maddox said. “That means strength as a foundation rather than an add-on, programming that accounts for midlife and menopause, guidance that works alongside medical care when relevant, and a format that fits a full life.”

She also expects women to become more discerning about how and why they train 

“Efficiency and personalization will move from being perks to baseline expectations,” she said. “Women are time-constrained and well-informed, and they want to know why a program works, not just that it’s hard.”

For BODY20, that aligns closely with the model it has already built around coached, personalized EMS training.

“Coached, measurable strength training that respects both their time and their physiology is where we see the category heading,” Maddox said, “and that is what we have built BODY20 around.”

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