Why We Need To Do Unilateral Training
Are you trying to create balance in your body?
Make sure you are doing uni lateral training!
We MUST train our bodies one side at a time if we want to be symmetrical, especially if you have suffered an injury of some kind. Besides that most of us tend to favour or have a stronger side naturally, so training both individually is important. Unilateral training helps prevent and rehabilitate imbalances, and prevents overtraining the dominant side.
When we do uni lateral training, we must get out of our head on the fact that we are doing a lower total weight. When we lift, doing heavy weight to get stronger/ bigger muscles usually means doing big movements like squat, bench, deadlift. All movements involving the entire body and using both sides at the same time. Even when we do these types of movements we tend to favour a side or have one that feels like its doing more work. Heres where the unilateral training can come in handy and help you lift more total weight.
When our body moves in the correct movement pattern we avoid injury and can also optimize our performance. Having proper technique allows us to lift heavier, become stronger, and do more advanced exercises. Working on our less dominant side and fixing imbalances will allow us to move more efficiently. When we do an exercise that only uses one side of the body at a time we must further stabilize ourselves with our core and use other muscle’s we don’t normally use. Having a stronger core is also very important when doing bigger heavy movements like the squat, bench, and deadlift as well as for preventing injury and living a good quality life. Good posture, good form, and proper technique all come naturally when we have a strong core. Think of a building that doesn’t have a strong core or centre, they collapse and fall over. Our bodies work in a similar fashion, so training this type of resistance can also help our balance and daily movements.
I’d like to give a shoutout to one of my lovely clients, Jen Buda:
Jen is a wonderful example of that, here we are doing some bird dogs with an isometric hold and a marching glute bridge. Jen developed a bakers cyst and had trouble with her SI joint post pregnancy, it was extremely “sticky” and allowed her little to no movement within the hips. She had an extremely tight and weak lower back, and could hardly do movements like a step up, which we tried on our first session together and decided to leave out for the first bit.
Now Jen is able to do movements she once couldn’t, and we focus on core and glute uni lateral training every time, but it’s not all! Before this superset Jen did barbell deadlifts and lunges.. we work in upper body too twice a week and now Jen does workouts on her own confidently without worrying if she’s going to hurt herself! We touch base once a week for a full body workout and to do harder new things, while she does her own workouts 2/3 times on top of that that I’ve designed specifically for her.
Way to go Jen!
Check out her video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd7WMv70jGU