Uneven Body Parts

One thing that many people experience with the development of their physique is the development of a muscle on one side of the body that exceeds the development of the same muscle on the other side. This is very common with the pecs and lats but could also be the case for biceps, quads or any other muscle group.

The mind muscle connection which I talked about in my post on developing weak points, is usually what is responsible for uneven development too. Variance in the effectiveness of nervous impulses between the same muscles on opposing sides is generally what makes us either left or right handed, left or right footed - the path of nervous impulses is often stronger from one side to the other, leading to that side to take on most of the work during training.

So, the first thing to address is that connection, refer to my weak points post for information on developing this.

When training that muscle group, ensure your focus is on really feeling the contractions on that side and ensuring that you are working that muscle. Also, make sure that when doing certain movements where the bar should be horizontal, that it is! Too often you see someone bicep curling, bench pressing or shoulder pressing for example, where one side of the bar is going up above the other - that is the strongest arm taking over and continuing to do this will only ensure that the stronger side is doing more work and hence the uneven development will only become worse. One thing I like to do here is to ensure that the trainee is not using safety clips on the bars – they will soon know if one side is going up above the other!

When you train the muscle group unilaterally, always ensure you complete the set with the weakest side first and then when you do the set with the stronger side, stop where you did with the weakest. Taking concentration curls as an example, it is no good doing the strongest arm first, failing at 12 reps, then adding 2 forced reps, but then when you do the other side you fail at 8 reps. Instead, start with the weaker side and only replicate what you are able to do on that side when you work the stronger side.

Adding negatives, forced reps and other intensity boosting techniques just to that weakest side, and even increasing the frequency of training on the weaker side alone, when implemented correctly can help it catch up. BUT, increasing frequency will only work if you have improved that mind muscle connection to the muscle, otherwise you are just wasting more time by not training it effectively once more during the week!