Unilateral Strength Balancing

[Ghost]

You're doing curls (or something), you've just hit a new max with your right arm.

Yes! You think, but then you try your left arm. Uh Oh, 10kg less. Is it just you or is your right arm bigger than your left?

Chances are at some point in your life, one arm/leg was/is stronger than the other.

But what do you do about it? Do you wait for the weaker one to catch up and hold back the stronger?

Jump ahead with the stronger, and if the weaker catches up all the better?

I'm clueless about it. And now that I am actually doing unilateral training, it matters a lot more.

Any tips?

[Photobrandon]

I'd recommend taking some time to try and even them out...having them uneven can lead to injury when doing heavier bilateral lifts. I'd recommend working the same weight with both arm, but doing a higher volume with your weaker arm until it catches up. Also throughout the day when you have to lift things (groceries, pets, whatever...), try to use your weaker arm, as favoring your primary arm is probably what leads to the strength imbalance most of us have in the first place.

Another option is to do bilateral lifts now, and supplement with weak arm only dumbbell exercises. This is what I'm doing currently and I've had a lot of success. When doing the bilateral lifts I also do my best to focus on my weak arm, to make sure its carrying its share of the load.

Hope that helps

[Tim S]

Definitely don't move up on the right and leave the left behind, that will only make the difference greater. Unilateral training is great for the exact purpose of balancing sides out, but only if you don't use different loads for each side that is.

The two main ways I see of approaching this are:

1: Train your weaker side first and only do as many on the strong side as you can do on your weak. Yeah, your stronger side isn't going to progress as fast as it possibly could, but it's much better to be balanced. This is where you've got to be careful that your ego and desire to up the weight doesn't get in the way.

or if you want the challenge,

2: Train your stronger side first and just keep going on your weaker side until you complete the same amount of reps, even if that means breaking a set down into smaller sets. But doing it this way, I would only increase the load when the weaker side is ready.

[aj_rock]

Your dominant hand will always be stronger. It takes a lot of patience and slowed progress by your dominant side to let your non dominant catch up. Advice so far is solid, but just saying that true symmetry is difficult to achieve.

Personally, the biggest difference I usually see is biceps: chest, legs, back, triceps, all that is usually much closer.

[Ghost]

Funny thing is, my dominant hand is my weak side.

[rtalencar]

lift-run-bang has a lot of info about this. A lot of it has to do with setting up a routine to avoid this big a discrepancy in the first place.

For both legs and arms you *should* be doing single limb stuff to avoid imbalances on top of the joined variants.

Dumbbell anything

Single leg leg press

Lunges

etc

EDIT: Almost forgot, I think leading the lifts with your weak side is best, although it will stall your strong side.