Lizzo Is Using This Abs-Stimulating Treatment to Prep for Festival Season

Lizzo is headlining at Bonnaroo and Outside Lands this year, and she's already working on getting prepped for festival season. She shared a peek at a recent treatment that she tried as part of her plan to get stronger in time for her upcoming performances. (

The singer posted a video on her Instagram story showing her lying down with a device wrapped around her waist while receiving a treatment that appeared to target her core. "Oh my gosh, we're back again," she said in the clip. In a caption on the video, she tagged EllEve Medical Spa in Los Angeles and revealed that she was doing the core-focused treatment before a workout. "@ellevemedspa pre workout ab flex Gotta get strong for festival season!" she wrote.

The treatment that Lizzo was trying appeared to be the Cutera truSculpt flex, which is one of several devices on the market that employs electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). EMS treatments involve placing conduction pads on the body that deliver high-frequency electromagnetic energy in order to cause muscles to contract. EMS is incorporated in the category of in-office "body contouring treatments," but it's also sometimes used during physical therapy to loosen tight muscles or during workout classes to amp up the intensity of the exercises. (

Lizzo isn't the only star who's a fan of EMS. Chrissy Teigen recently shared on The Kelly Clarkson Show that she's been doing intense workouts with in-home training company EMS Concierge. "I've been doing this crazy EMS workout, and my whole butt hurts," she said on the show. Teigen went on to describe what the training involves. "You're hooked up to this moist wetsuit with electronic stuff stuck to your muscles," she explained. "And then you do little movements through it, and then [you're] just dying," she joked.

Drew Barrymore has spoken about her experience with the EMS treatment EMSCULPT as a spokesperson for the brand, sharing that she relied on it to help build up her core strength after giving birth. Kim Kardashian also tried EMSCULPT on an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. "It feels like you're doing stomach crunches, but you're not," she said in the episode. "I'm into it." (

Studies suggest that EMS can in fact boost strength, although research to back that up is still pretty limited. At least for now, experts tend to view it more as a supplemental tool than a complete replacement for exercise. "I think a person doing an EMS workout needs to have realistic expectations, especially if they're using it to cut down minutes on the gym," Jaclyn Fulop, M.S.P.T., founder of Exchange Physical Therapy Group, previously told Shape. "EMS can temporarily strengthen, tone, or firm muscles to some extent, but it likely will not cause long-term improvements in health and fitness alone, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)."

That seems to be Lizzo's outlook as well, judging by the fact that she referred to her treatment as a "pre workout ab flex." Clearly she doesn't take festival season prep lightly.