El'Johnson

Thanks for the responses! The advice is a huge help.

Thanks for the advice. I'll switch to dumbells for 6 weeks and continue till I feel things are even and then go back to barbells for a bit.

Hey, So recently I've noticed a bit of an imbalance with the left side of my body. My right side does most of the work on my exercises (deadlifts, pullups, squats, push press). I've been reading up on unilateral training and decided to try it out, I incorporated it into my workouts but found that it extended my workout times from 45-50 min to almost 2 hours plus I found that after doing the unilateral exercises I was so tired that I had trouble lifting my usual weight on the other stuff. My question is two-fold, A) Should unilateral moves be incorporated into a program with fullbody movements or should I set aside a day for them or for a time strictly focus on unilateral movements? and Does anyone know of a program that's worked for them or if there is a criteria for building a program around fixing imbalances? Now I have done some research, I found one method which broke down exercises into a upper body day and a lower body day. Before finding NF I did a similar program with minimal gains, and what I tried on my own was to do one unilateral movement and follow it up with a corresponding barbell exercise. What I'm aiming at is if anyone has any hands experience with unilateral training that can give a bit of advice. Thanks in advance.

Hey Everyone! Jonathan here. I found NF a few months ago when I read an article about an EVE Online player who wanted so badly to look like his character he took up weight training and went a 3000 calorie diet and changed dramatically. NF was mentioned in one of the links so I took a look at it and after reading about Star Wars and Fitness in the same article I knew I had found my galaxy! I have been into fitness i'd say for the last year and a half, but never got much results. I would hit the gym everyday with no real plan other then run, go up upstairs work out random muscles that I didn't the day before and ironically enough leave the gym and down 3 double cheeseburgers from McDonalds (I kid you not I had some warped mentality that if I left the gym sweating and barely able to move I could eat whatever I want). Then later on I found another free blog website that emphasized a low fat diet with massive amounts of protein with disregard to anything other than how much fat it had. I went on my own high carb low fat diet and a consistent work out plan, I made some progress got a bit stronger but for the life of me I could not get rid of much flab. Then I found NF and the months since have been nothing but progress. I have been following the beginner work out plan, beginner stretches and warm ups. I also cook my own paleo breakfast and lunch now which I've never done before, I keep carbs out as much as possible (other than veggies ofcourse) and I've ditched soda, fast food, and dairy but I've made a choice to keep my coffee...I LOVE COFFEE! But I'm switching to decaff to lower my dependence on caffeine. I just purchased the Strength guide so I will be following that. I am not great when it comes to recording results I'm pretty good about going off my gut feelings, if i look and feel better I know I've made progress plus the fact that I'm down to medium shirts and a 36 waist is AMAZING. This is beginning to sound like a commercial for NF I know, so now I'll get to what I suffer with and the main reasons why I really came to NF. I'm 23 right now, and pretty much up until I was 19, I was always depressed, got down on myself, hated who I was and would bury everything deep and just play video games all day hoping that I'd magically turn into am imperial agent (yes when I was younger i would cheer on darth vader). I was also really socially awkward, I had trouble making a friend much less talking to girls. When I hit 19 I met my current girlfriend who I've been with for 4 years and she really picked me up, supporting my positive decisions and really motivating me to get my act together. I found that through fitness everything fell in place, I looked and felt better and I wasn't ashamed of being the guy who knew what rolling a D20 meant and that I knew that Han shot first (WOOT!). A BIG issue I still suffer with is my academics I've been holding off on college and education altogether, sitting down and studying is really difficult for me and so is self management, I tend to focus so much on one thing I totally forget everything else. Those and working on a positive outlook on life is still a slow process that I am working on. Holy crap that is a LONG post so I'll just stop now. Im looking forward to becoming more involved, Rangers I'm looking at you!