It is common for one side of our body to be stronger and more powerful than the other. What is less common? Doing something about it. Listen up, ignoring this imbalance and keeping-on driving through your workouts is not the answer. Levelling up that imbalance will improve performance and make your training more sustainable and even more rewarding.
But how do you do that? That’s where single sided exercises come in. Let’s look deeper into why single-sided exercises warrant a place in your workout and how you can introduce them into your fitness routine.
Catching the Imbalance
Imbalances can be experienced in different ways. See if any of these sound familiar:
- You are running up a hill you notice your left leg is doing all the hard work, powering into extension and driving you up the hill, while your right leg moves you less. You can feel the difference.
- During bicep curls, your left arm reaches failure several reps before your right arm at the same weight. You can quantify this difference.
- You do a barbell overhead press and one side lags behind the other leaving the bar on a slant. You can see this difference.
- You are kayaking down a river, but you keep going left as your right stroke is more powerful than your left one. You observe this difference.
- When you are doing chin ups, as one side tires, the other side does most of the pulling and you move your whole body to create momentum. Your body makes adjustments for this difference.
- When it is your left leg's turn to move all the weight in a split squat, you can’t do as many reps and you start to lose balance. You struggle with this difference.
Frustrating? Definitely. What do we do about it? Most of the time we just carrying on through. We are busy, we do not have time to do double the sets, there is always something else we need to be doing.
But by not addressing these imbalances, you are short changing yourself. You are not maximising your workout potential and could be risking injury further down the road. This next part will hopefully leave you wanting to include single-sided exercises into your next workout.
The Benefits of Fixing Muscle Imbalances
There are 3 main benefits of getting to grips with imbalances in your muscle strength. Here is why it can make such a difference.
1. Achieve Your Strength Potential
You may have experienced those frustrating plateaus where your progress seems to stall. Muscle imbalances could be contributing. When one side is weaker it holds back your overall performance.
If one side of your body starts to fail first, you correctly stop so that you do not compromise form or risk injury, even if the other side could carry on for longer. This means the stronger side has stopped before it has experienced working harder than it is used to and so no muscle adaptation will occur. By equalling things out, every muscle will get a full challenge and will need to adapt. You are unleashing power you did not even know you had.
2. More Sustainable Training
Developing a symmetry in your muscle strength will mean that each side takes an equal share of the load. This will result in less strain on the joints and a reduced risk of injuries, including ones from over use.
3. Improved Form
Both sides working equally prevents those compensatory movements needed to pull the weaker side through to complete a rep. Think of that wriggle of the body to get the momentum to complete a chin up when one side is tiring. Or leaning to one side towards the weight and becoming off balance when one side of the core is weaker than the other. This will translate into life outside the gym, for example, picking up shopping or other heavy loads.
The Single-Sided Approach
But how do you fix muscle imbalances? This is where making single-sided exercises part of your training routine comes in. Let's explore how they could work for you.
What Are Single-Sided Exercises?
Single-sided exercises target one side of your body at a time, with each arm, leg or side of your core working on its own. They give each side of your body a ‘personalised’ workout, so each side can get into the spotlight and not hide behind its stronger partner.
How Do Single-Sided Exercises Address Imbalances?
Working on one side at a time means that you can adjust the intensity of the exercise so that both sides get just the right amount of challenge to achieve your muscle fitness goal, whether that is increased strength, power or muscle mass. You want to give both sides equal chance to work hard, adapt and progress. With consistent single-sided training, you will give your weaker side the chance to catch up so that you will develop more balanced strength and a greater total body strength.
Training With Single-Sided Exercises
Include single-sided exercises in your workout routine by:
- Choosing one or two exercises that focus on areas where you have noticed differing muscle strengths. Perhaps the grip bar is coming down unevenly when using a lateral pull machine or one leg is doing most of the work in a squat.
- Applying these exercises consistently over a training cycle.
- Choosing the sets, reps, recovery time, weight, intensity and number of sessions per week that match your specific muscle fitness goals and that are suitable for your current level of fitness and your experience with strength training.
- Choosing a weight for your weaker side at which you can match the reps of your stronger side.
- Alternating between both sides or completing all of one side’s reps first.
- Achieving progressive overload by gradually increasing the exercise intensity.
- Doing the movements smoothly and under control.
- Focusing on form at all times. Adjust the exercise intensity and simplify the move in order to maintain form and reduce the risk of injury.
- Start the workout with a thorough warm up and end with a cool down (see the blog 'Unlock Your Workout Potential: 4 Key Tips For Strength Training' for more on the importance of the warm up and cool down periods).
Here are some single-sided exercises you could consider including in your workouts.
Upper Body
Single Arm Dumbbell Row
Muscles targeted: Latissimus dorsi, trapezius, posterior deltoids and biceps
- Place the knee and hand on one side on a bench with the arm straight and the hand in line with the shoulder and the knee in line with the hip.
- Line up the foot on the floor with the knee on the bench and create a tripod position.
- Maintain a neutral spine and a level back. Engage your core.
- Pull the dumbbell upwards towards the armpit.
- Lower the dumbbell until the arm is straight and the elbow unlocked.
Tip: Keep your elbow by your side. Do not twist your body to raise the weight.
Lower Body
Bulgarian Split Squat
Muscles targeted: Gluteus maximus, hamstrings and quadriceps
- Stand with feet hip-width apart, core engaged and neutral spine.
- Place one foot on a bench behind you.
- Hinge at the hips and bend the front knee to lower into a squat, getting as close as you can to the front thigh being parallel with the floor and the back knee towards the floor.
- Ensure the knee of the front leg travels in line with the toes.
- Push through the thigh and glutes to extend the leg upwards to the starting position.
Tip: Keep the front leg knee moving over the toes at all times.
Single Leg Deadlift
Muscles targeted: Gluteus maximus and hamstrings
- Holding a weight in one hand, stand with your feet hip-width apart.
- Hinge the hips back and at the same time raise the leg on the weighted side and lower your upper body towards the floor.
- Move into a slight bend on the standing leg.
- Straighten the standing leg and return to the upright position by engaging the glutes and hamstrings.
Tip: Engage your core throughout to maintain stability and keep a neutral spine.
Core
Side-Plank Hold
Muscles targeted: Obliques
- Lie on your side with your elbow on the floor and in line with your shoulder and one foot stacked on top of the other.
- Raise your hips off the floor until there is a straight line between your ankles, hips, shoulders and ears.
- Hold for predetermined number of seconds.
- Repeat the hold.
Tip: Focus on maintaining the alignment of the joints and avoid tipping forward. In this exercise, the oblique muscles do not change length under tension. You could try a standing side bend as a dynamic single oblique challenge where the muscle is extending and contracting under tension.
So as well as having the key points for including single-sided exercises in your training, these examples have given you a flavour of how asymmetries across your body – upper, lower and core – can be addressed.
The Path To Strength Symmetry
Remember, addressing muscle imbalances with single-sided exercises is an effective way to increase your total body strength, improve your form and to develop a sustainable and rewarding workout routine. When including single-sided exercises in your training, keep these essentials in mind: adapt the weight to each side so that individually they can work at the intensity needed for adaptation to occur, be consistent in your training, follow a plan to achieve progressive overload that is appropriate to your fitness goals, experience and level of fitness and focus on form over intensity. Including single-sided exercises is a smart way to train and will reward you with sustainable fitness success over the long term.
