Your Body is Not Built Equally, You Have a Weak Side

One of the most asked questions I get is why one body part hurts when the other sides doest’t when there wasn’t a direct injury to the area. Clients can’t understand why one knee hurts when they have been training both legs the same amount for years.

Most people assume both sides of your body are doing the same amount of work with every exercise. Nothing could be further from the truth. One side of your body has been doing more than the other for most of your life. The compound movements that you’re doing to strength your body don’t fix that. Everybody has a weaker side when it comes to certain movements. We all have a dominant side that we’ve been favoring since we were kids. It’s from things we don’t even think about or notice. From everyday tasks like going up the stairs with the same leg going first every time, sleeping on the same side every night or only using your dominate hand when carrying grocery bags, they all play a part of why our bodies act ave move differently from everyone else’s. Our bodies like to cut corners by trying to find shortcuts. To be as efficient as possible we run on autopilot. Our brains don’t want to think about which hand should we use to point everything. It gives the workload to whatever side does it better. It picks a side and that’s the one it’s using forever. Same as your favorite color. You don’t remember when and why you picked it, you just did and that’s what it is.

Let’s start with a simple barbell squat to actually relate this to exercise. If your right side is 15% stronger, your right side takes more of the load as you’re doing your reps. Just because you did your set it doesn’t mean the weight was pushed evenly. I’m not saying your right side did exactly 15% more but it does more work. Using machines (like a leg press) will cause an even bigger difference. That’s because machines usually have a fixed path that takes balancing away. Having to balance the bar on a barbell squat takes more cooperation between both legs than a leg press.

The whole point of lifting weights is to get stronger. When you get stronger you add more weight. Sounds perfectly fine right? When you add weight the same side that was already carrying more of the load has to do even more work. More work, more strength. Now that dominate side is getting stronger faster than the weaker side that has already fell behind.

Here’s one way I check for leg imbalances since I’ve used that as the example. A 30 second test for leg imbalances First off get into a split squat stance. (Put one foot forward and one foot is back with your back heel off the floor) then squat down until your back knee is a just off the ground and hold that position for 30 seconds. Don't hold onto anything, but if balance is an issue for you be close enough to be able to hold on to something. After 30 seconds switch and do the other side. Be mindful on what’s happening as you’re doing it. Try not to focus on the clock. You need to be able to properly compare if there’s a difference. Were you shaking more on one side compared to the other side? Did the front knee on your left side turn inward while the other stayed over the foot? Did you make it the whole 30 seconds on one side and couldn’t on the other? Did both sides feel the same? If that’s the case then that’s what we want. If they don't, then we have an imbalances that needs to be worked on. My guess is whatever side you did last was the one you struggled more with. Why is that? Because our brains do what’s the most efficient, hence the stronger side.

So you have a weak side, now what?

Just because one side hurts it doesn’t mean it’s the weak one. Most people think if one side is sore out achy that automatically makes it the weak one, but from my experience it's tends to be the opposite side. Why is that? Usually because the stronger side is the side that's been doing the extra work for a while. It’s like a one sided marriage, eventually it’s going to be tried off doing too much of the work, get fed up and decides to let you know about it. Your strong side gets run down from the extra load until it can’t take it anymore, while the weaker side is like you been picking up my slack all this time why stop now. You’re stronger side starts out by mentioning the issue here and there to see if you will listen. Once you don’t make the adjustments then the asking stops and the demands start. Now your stronger side is upset at your other weaker side because yes at one time your weaker side probably needed the help but never got up to speed. That's why just focusing on side that’s upset normally lead to little progression and frustration. All that does is saying sorry without solving the issue.

How to strength the weaker side

First lets add some single leg work into your weekly training. That means don’t treat it as accessory work you will do if there's time after you do the fun stuff. It’s just as important as everything else. Quite frankly it’s more important especially if you’re chasing gains. Potential exercises to add are split squats, reverse lunges, single leg glute bridges and step ups. These are great exercises for individual leg strength. Even just standing on one leg for 30s can be beneficial.

Here’s 2 options

To start off pick 2-3 exercises and add them a couple times a week consistently for 4 weeks. You want to start every set on your weak side first. Then mirror the strong side to whatever the weak side did. If you were only able to complete 6/10 reps on your left then do 6 reps on your right even if you could have finished the set on the other leg. I know it feels like not doing the most you can, but that's the point. You can’t close a gap by training both ends of it equally.

If that seems not as productive to you then do an extra set just on the weaker side instead. Make sure it does ask the reps your strung side has. The weight doesn’t have to be heavy. The focus is on control. It’s not about strength right now. You need to build the side that's been lagging behind.

Once it’s hit a month redo the test. Now I want you to focus on the difference between from the first test. Did you improve by shaking less, able to hold for longer time, or lower difference in holding each side? The objective is to make up ground so your weaker side until you evidentially get them close enough you can’t tell the difference from day to day. Your imbalances aren’t going to be solved in that 4 weeks because it took years for them to get so far apart. Another thing that’s hard is your imbalances also aren’t going to be the same as anyone else's. That’s because they didn’t become imbalances the same way. It could come from an old injury or the physical demand (or lack there of then) from work.

Your body doesn’t move perfectly in sync. Most online programs don’t account for that. Imbalances are one of the biggest issues that trainers forget about. Sometimes plans don’t work because they aren’t built for you. It’s built for whoever the template was written for, and you got handed a copy. Find Your Fitness Inc builds around the not the average one a copy and paste program assumes.