Something was taken from you — by injury, surgery, or time.
We give it back.
The Foundation Program is Le Sommet's clinical approach to functional strength and mobility restoration — using FDA-cleared technology to rebuild the muscles, the stability, and the physical confidence that chronic pain, surgery, and age have gradually taken away. For everyone. Without surgery. Without downtime.
The Body Loses What It Isn't Asked to Use — and Can Rebuild What It's Given the Right Signal
Muscle loss, functional weakness, and chronic pain rarely arrive suddenly. They accumulate — through a surgery that required weeks of immobility, a pain pattern that caused years of compensation, a gradual decline in physical demand, or an injury that healed incompletely. By the time the impact on daily life becomes undeniable, the underlying deficit has been building for months or years.
The conventional path forward — physical therapy, exercise, time — is valuable, but it has limits. Atrophied muscle may not respond to voluntary exercise alone, especially in older adults or post-surgical patients whose neuromuscular signaling has been disrupted. Pelvic floor dysfunction doesn't resolve reliably with Kegel exercises for most people. And the cascade of compensatory patterns that builds around a weak foundation — tight hips, strained lower back, unstable gait — can persist even after the original injury is addressed.
The Foundation Program applies FDA-cleared electromagnetic technology directly to the muscles that need rebuilding — producing contractions at an intensity and depth that voluntary exercise cannot achieve, restoring neuromuscular function, and rebuilding the structural foundation that everything else depends on.
After surgery or prolonged immobility, atrophied muscle can lose the neuromuscular signaling pathways needed for voluntary activation. EMSCULPT NEO® bypasses the nervous system entirely — contracting the muscle directly, rebuilding its capacity from the outside in.
A weak pelvic floor and core don't just cause incontinence — they destabilize the entire musculoskeletal chain. Tight hip flexors, chronic lower back pain, poor movement patterns, and reduced mobility all trace back to a compromised foundation. You cannot fully fix the top of the building if the base is unstable.
When one muscle group is weak, others overwork to compensate. This is how a quad deficit after knee surgery becomes chronic hip tightness. How pelvic floor weakness becomes chronic back pain. The Foundation Program addresses the root — not just the symptom that drove you to seek help.
Two FDA-Cleared Treatments. Infinite Combinations.
The Foundation Program is built on two proven BTL technologies — each targeting a different aspect of functional strength, applied to the areas your body specifically needs.
EMSCULPT NEO® combines radiofrequency energy with HIFEM+ electromagnetic stimulation to simultaneously build deep muscle mass and eliminate residual fat tissue — all in a single 30-minute session. It contracts targeted muscles at roughly 20,000 supramaximal contractions per session — an intensity no voluntary exercise can match — directly rebuilding atrophied or weakened muscle regardless of the patient's ability to perform that exercise voluntarily. This makes it uniquely valuable for post-surgical rehabilitation, recovery from injury, and addressing muscles that have been compensating for so long they've lost their ability to fire correctly.
EMSELLA® uses HIFEM energy delivered through a seated chair to stimulate supramaximal contractions throughout the entire pelvic floor musculature — fully clothed, completely non-invasive, in 28 minutes. It reaches the full spectrum of pelvic muscles, including the deep stabilizers that voluntary Kegel exercises cannot adequately engage. Beyond incontinence, pelvic floor dysfunction contributes directly to lower back instability, hip flexor tightness, and impaired core function. Restoring pelvic floor strength through EMSELLA® often produces functional improvements — better stability, reduced back pain, improved gait — that extend well beyond its primary indication.
"Muscle doesn't simply decline — it declines because it hasn't been asked the right question. HIFEM technology asks the right question, at the right depth, with a force the body has no choice but to respond to."
This Is Not a Program Just for Athletes.
It's a Program for Everyone.
The Foundation Program was built for people who have lost something — through surgery, injury, age, or chronic pain — and need more than exercise to get it back.
Most chronic lower back pain is not a spinal problem — it's a muscular one. The deep spinal stabilizers, glutes, and pelvic floor that support the lumbar spine have weakened over time, forcing superficial muscles and passive structures to compensate. EMSCULPT NEO® rebuilds the deep stabilizers directly; EMSELLA® restores pelvic floor tone that directly unloads the lumbar spine. Many chronic back pain patients report meaningful improvement in pain and mobility within a single treatment series — often without any other intervention.
The months — sometimes years — of deterioration before joint replacement surgery produce significant atrophy in the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and hip stabilizers. Surgery itself and the recovery period compound that loss. Even with physical therapy, many patients plateau well short of the strength and mobility they had before the decline began. EMSCULPT NEO® applied to the quads, hamstrings, and glutes directly rebuilds the muscle mass that makes a replaced joint truly functional — shortening the rehab timeline and producing a more complete recovery than exercise alone can achieve.
Tight hip flexors, a restricted pelvis, and hyperactive pelvic floor muscles are the flip side of weakness — the body guarding and bracing around instability in a way that produces its own pain and limitation. Pelvic floor dysfunction doesn't always mean weakness; sometimes it means a floor that is chronically overactive and cannot relax. EMSELLA® works on neuromuscular re-education — restoring the pelvic floor's ability to both contract and release appropriately — while EMSCULPT NEO® addresses the hip and glute weakness that is often the root cause of the bracing pattern.
Age-related muscle loss — sarcopenia — begins in the fourth decade and accelerates significantly after 60. The result is reduced strength, reduced stability, reduced confidence in movement, and an elevated risk of falls and injury. EMSCULPT NEO® can target any major muscle group, rebuilding mass and neuromuscular function in ways that complement resistance training for those who can exercise, and substitute for it in those who cannot. For patients recovering from illness, extended hospital stays, or prolonged immobility, it provides a reliable path to rebuilding strength from the ground up.
Whether the injury was a fall, a sport, a car accident, or a repetitive stress pattern, the common aftermath is the same: muscle atrophy around the injured area, compensatory patterns that spread pain beyond the original site, and a recovery ceiling that physical therapy approaches but struggles to breach. EMSCULPT NEO® rebuilds the atrophied muscle directly, at clinical depth, without requiring the patient to perform movements that may still be painful or contraindicated — making it a uniquely valuable complement to rehabilitation protocols at any stage of recovery.
For women dealing with the specific constellation of postpartum core loss, pelvic floor dysfunction, and urinary incontinence — or with the pelvic health changes of menopause — the Foundation Program includes Core to Floor: a dedicated women's restoration program that combines EMSELLA® and EMSCULPT NEO® in a structured, sequenced protocol designed specifically for the core-pelvic floor connection. Core to Floor is the women's chapter of the Foundation Program.
From Assessment to Restoration
Every Foundation Program begins with a thorough assessment and ends with a custom treatment plan — because no two patients have the same deficit, the same history, or the same goal.
A thorough review of your symptoms, surgical history, movement limitations, and functional goals. We listen before we recommend — and we ask questions your previous providers may not have.
We identify which treatments, which muscle groups, and which session sequence best addresses your specific deficit — not a preset package, but a plan built around you and your body's actual needs.
Sessions are typically 28–30 minutes, scheduled 2–3 times per week. You leave each session with no downtime — back to your day immediately. Results build progressively across the series and continue developing for weeks after the final session.
A follow-up assessment at 8–12 weeks measures your outcomes objectively. We review what changed, what additional work may benefit you, and build a maintenance schedule that protects your investment long-term.
Core to Floor: The Women's Foundation Program
for women's restoration.
For women, the intersection of pelvic floor dysfunction and core weakness carries a specific history — childbirth, hormonal change, and the particular demands of the female musculoskeletal system. Core to Floor addresses this intersection directly: EMSELLA® rebuilding the pelvic foundation, EMSCULPT NEO® rebuilding the core structure above it, in a sequenced protocol designed specifically for postpartum recovery, menopausal pelvic health, and the return of functional strength and continence that motherhood and time can take away.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Foundation Program appropriate after joint replacement surgery?
Can the Foundation Program help with back pain?
How is this different from physical therapy?
I'm a man. Is this program for me?
How many sessions will I need?
Will insurance cover any part of this?
Strength is not something
you had. It's something
you can rebuild.
Book your Foundation Program assessment at Le Sommet. We'll listen to what happened, evaluate what's been lost, and build a plan to get it back.
The Foundation Program uses EMSELLA® and EMSCULPT NEO®, registered trademarks of BTL Industries, both FDA-cleared devices. All Foundation Program consultations and treatments are conducted under the medical direction of Joan Shelley, NP. The Foundation Program is a wellness program and is not a substitute for medical care or physical therapy. Patients with orthopedic hardware, cardiac implants, or active medical conditions are assessed individually for candidacy.
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