Does your program contain UNILATERAL training?

If you don’t already, I would highly recommend adding this to your training program. If you are unsure what unilateral means I’ll elaborate.. unilateral simply means we train each side of the body separately. For clarity the photo below features our clients performing a unilateral floor press, meaning they perform their presses with one arm only,then repeat on the other side.

So, why does it matter if we train unilaterally?

Movements like this help correct compensations that we make when we are using both sides of our body together.

Doing a one arm press, a single-leg RDL, a single-arm row, or any other unilateral exercise will help to determine if their are any imbalances from one side to the other.

Performing a unilateral exercise is where we might discover our left side is weaker than our right, we have no balance on our right side compared to the left, we feel less coordinated with a drill leading with our non-dominant side, etc. This is vital information to learn about our body that we can apply to our training and correct these imbalances and become a more balanced individual.

The biggest benefit to being more balanced is our body endures less physical stress on a daily basis. Let me give you an analogy to elaborate this point. Imagine your body as a car that is in bad need of an alignment, always veering towards the left. The longer you drive it without repair the more wear and you are going to see on the left side of the vehicle, tires experience much more wear and tear compared to the right, and you may even experience flat tires more frequently on the left until the misalignment is repaired. If we think of our bodies as we would any other piece of machinery it becomes clear we need to be ‘aligned’ to run properly.

So take care of your ‘machinery’ and TRAIN SMART!