The body is made up of a numerous pairs of muscles; you have a bicep on each arm, quads on each leg, calves on each leg and even the right and left side of the lower back muscles. Muscle imbalances are when one side is stronger than the other. In some cases, this can be so much so that there is a visual difference between each side.

What can cause muscle imbalances?

Muscle imbalances are present in every single person, to some degree, but these imbalances can be bigger or smaller depending on various factors.

Day to day factors like habitual use of one side more than the other can slowly increase muscle imbalances. For example, which side you usually use to carry your child, your steering arm when you drive, or even which leg works harder when you walk.

Muscle imbalances are also closely associated with injury to the area, atrophy of the muscles and avoiding loading the injured area. For those with recent or previous injuries it is essential that, once healed, they look to reduce imbalances back to a normal discrepancy so that performance isn’t significantly affected.

When are muscle imbalances a problem?

When physical performance of exercises is negatively affected – When one side is much stronger than the other during exercises like the barbell bench press, one side can lag behind the other during the press, reducing the amount of progress you can make; during a bilateral exercise, two strong limbs are stronger than one strong limb and one weak limb.

When there is a visual difference – For body transformations or physique-based sports, like bodybuilding, symmetry is important, and when an imbalance becomes severe enough, one side can develop to be much bigger than the other.

How can you measure muscular imbalances?

An easy way to screen for imbalances, whether as a coach or an individual watching your training footage back, is simply to observe your lifts for if one side is obviously doing more than the other or if one side of the bar, in the example of a bench press, is raising faster than the other.

If you identify an imbalance, you can measure why this may be occurring.

In a clinical setting, imbalances can be measured with advanced equipment like force plates or dynamometers. In the gym you can simply look at how your muscles perform on single limb exercises. Whichever side performs better is the stronger side.

How to measure muscle imbalances in the gym

Use highly constrained movements like a knee extension or a hamstring curl – When we have a muscular weakness, during open, complex movements, we have a tendency to use different body parts to compensate. For example, if you have a weak left quad, your body may organise around using the leg glute more during fast paced movements like single leg jumps. We may therefore not detect an imbalance between the quads because of a similar performance outcome. Examples of high constraint single limb exercises include -

• Single leg knee extensions.

• Single leg hamstring curls.

• Single arm preacher curls

• Single leg seated calf raises

How can you reduce muscular imbalances?

Train more with your weaker side – This sounds simple, but that is because it is. Simply train a few extra sets or reps with your weaker side until it catches up with your stronger side.

Train unilaterally – Training unilaterally, alongside heavy bilateral exercises, is a great way to reduce imbalances, now and in the future, because you isolate individual limbs and muscle groups.

Always start with your weaker side – When training single leg exercises, always start with your weaker leg and then match the weight or reps with your stronger side so that you don’t increase the disparity of size and strength between your left and right side.

Do imbalances only happen with muscular strength?

No. Imbalances can occur with a range of motor qualities, be it balance, power or endurance. These imbalances can be very specific to the individual. For example, you may have a stronger right leg than left but better balance on your left than right.

To reduce these multifaceted imbalances in a long run, introducing a variety of unilateral exercises into your training that require various motor qualities, can be very beneficial.

Whether your training goals are related to unilateral exercises like running and throwing, or bilateral sports like Olympic weightlifting or powerlifting, adding unilateral exercises into your training is a great way to make you a more balanced and well-rounded individual.

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Tags: Exercise Type > Strength