How to correct muscle imbalance

What is muscle imbalance

Almost all skeletal muscles in our body are paired and are located symmetrically - to the right and left. Muscle imbalance is a violation of symmetry, a mismatch in the size and strength of paired muscles or muscle groups.

In some cases, the imbalance can be noticed, for example, when one arm or pectoral muscle is noticeably larger than the other, in others the difference is not so obvious, but it is felt during training.

For example, if one hand is stronger than the other, the bar may tilt to one side during the bench press because the stronger hand will push it up faster.

Imbalances can also occur between major muscle groups such as the back and chest, triceps and biceps, upper legs, and calf muscles.

This not only looks bad and lowers athletic performance, but it can also lead to injury. For example, if an athlete has a pumped chest and poorly developed back muscles, this increases the risk of injury to the shoulders.

In addition, muscle imbalance leads to poor posture. For example, weak back extensors and stiff abdominals are characteristic of slouching posture, while stiff hip flexors can cause excessive lower back flexion.

What Causes Muscle Imbalances

There is no perfectly symmetrical body. Genetics influences muscle strength and susceptibility to hypertrophy, but other factors play a major role in causing the imbalance.

Poorly written program or lack of it

Men often prefer to swing their chest, shoulders and arms, while forgetting about the back and legs. Women pay all their attention to the legs and buttocks, being afraid to do exercises on the arms and shoulders, so as not to become a jock.

As a result, both those and others get muscle imbalance and an asymmetric body, which is far from ideal.

Lack of attention to technology

If the correct technique is not followed during the exercise, the load may shift to one side.

Let's say you have more developed back muscles on the right side. When you do a bent-over row of dumbbells with your right hand, your back muscles withstand the load, you are using the correct technique. On the left side, the weak back muscles quickly give up, the load is transferred to the shoulders.

If you ignore this, the muscles on the right side will get stronger, there will be a noticeable muscle imbalance and the risk of injury to the shoulder.

Lack of joint mobility

Many people spend all day at their desks, maintaining the wrong body position. From this, the muscles become enslaved, become stiff and limit the mobility of the joints.

The body compensates for the lack of mobility with the wrong technique. As a result, some muscles receive too much stress, while others practically do not participate in the movement.

How to tell if you have muscle imbalance

The easiest way to determine the presence of asymmetry of paired muscles. Take a tailor's tape, measure the muscles on both sides and compare the numbers.

Measure the volume of the limbs in flexion. This will prevent you from squeezing the muscle with the tape and downsizing.

It is much more difficult to identify imbalances between different muscle groups because your judgments are subjective.

Try to soberly assess the correspondence of different muscle groups. If you have an obvious imbalance, you will probably notice it.

How to prevent muscle imbalance

Do multi-joint exercises

There are isolated exercises that work only one muscle group, and complex multi-joint exercises, during which almost all the muscles of the body are loaded.

For example, if you are doing leg extension on a machine, only the quadriceps are loaded. When performing multi-joint squats, the main load goes to the hips, but the glutes and core muscles are also included in the work.

By incorporating multi-joint exercises into your workout, you protect your body from muscle imbalances. Even if you completely exclude the development of some muscles from the program, they will still be loaded and strengthened during the training process.

Add unilateral exercises

Unilateral exercises are movements in which both paired muscles work, but separately from each other. Such exercises will help you avoid transferring the load from a weaker muscle to a stronger one.

For example, with a barbell bench press, you can shift some of the load from your weaker arm to your stronger arm. The bar will tilt, but you will be able to work with your chosen weight, exacerbating the imbalance with each repetition.

To prevent this, replace barbell exercises with dumbbell or kettlebell options. If your weak arm cannot handle the weight of the dumbbell, you will have to choose lighter shells so that the difference in strength of the limbs will not increase.

Develop mobility

If your body lacks joint mobility to do exercises correctly, it will compensate for the deficiencies with poor technique.

For example, if you have stiff hip flexors on one side, you will collapse to one side when squatting with a lot of weight. Constantly increasing the load will cause imbalance or injury.

Pay attention to your limitations and try to fix them before they cause asymmetry or injury.

How to correct asymmetry of paired muscles

To correct the imbalance of the paired muscles, increase the number of reps for the weak side by 25-35%.

Let's say your left shoulder is smaller than your right. You usually do 3 sets of 10 side dumbbell raises. To strengthen the weak shoulder, add another set of 10 reps for the left arm only.

You will do 30 reps with your right hand and 40 reps with your left with the same weight.

If you do not want to increase the load on the weak muscle, do the same number of repetitions on the strengths and weaknesses. To do this, always start the exercise on the weak side to find out how many reps and with what weight you can perform.

How to correct imbalances in muscle groups

If some muscles look weak and undeveloped compared to others, just add more load: increase the number of exercises or working weights. However, the overall load should remain the same.

For example, if you decide to pump up weak legs, you don't have to do a separate workout in addition to what you are already doing. This can result in overtraining and stalling progress.

Instead, you need to redesign your workout to make room for additional stress on your legs. You shift the focus to one muscle group, correct imbalances, and have time to fully recover between sessions.

conclusions

Let's summarize:

Muscle imbalances appear during training when one muscle or muscle group is stressed more often and more than another.
To prevent imbalance, you need to:
- add multi-joint exercises to the program that load the muscles of the whole body;
- perform unilateral exercises that load paired muscles separately;
- develop joint mobility and follow technique.
To correct the imbalance, you need to make sure that strong muscles do not receive more stress, and also increase the intensity of working out weak muscles.

Do not ignore your weaknesses, eliminate muscle imbalances in time, then you will increase your performance and reduce the risk of injury.