Unilateral strength training involves working each side of the body independently. It can be a helpful strategy to meet your specific health and fitness goals by targeting muscle groups, prevent injury and overtraining, and support rehabilitation. This type of training is especially important for people who already have strength or range-of-motion imbalances that could be exacerbated through bilateral training.
Unilateral strength training can be done with a variety of exercises. These include single-leg squats, lunges, single-arm shoulder presses, and one-arm rows to name just a few. The specific exercises that work best for you will be determined by what sort of imbalances you need to correct or any previous injuries. However, it’s a good idea to incorporate unilateral training into your lifting routine to minimize imbalances from developing in the first place. There are a number of benefits of unilateral training:
Reduce compensation
By working one side of the body at a time, you are able to focus on each individual muscle group and work to build up strength evenly. Since each side is getting an equal amount of work, unilateral training prevents the dominant side from compensating for the weaker—something that can occur without being noticed during bilateral lifts such as squats.
Minimize risk of injury
Unilateral training can also help prevent overuse or overtraining of the dominant side, and it can reduce the muscle and range-of-motion imbalances that can lead to injury. This is a time when it can be particularly helpful to work with a trainer who can identify imbalances as you lift and guide you to exercises that help target specific muscle groups and motions to restore equal function. BXF offers free consultations to help answer the questions you may have about your specific training needs.
Improve stability and balance
Unilateral training can also help to improve your overall stability and balance. Lifting one side at a time creates an uneven load on one side of your body. Core muscles step in to help stabilize the load and provide balance, building core strength even while you work other muscle groups.
Build functional strength and boost performance
In the real world, few of our movements are perfectly symmetrical. Most sports, for example, require a range of reaching, strafing, lunging, and swinging that is largely one-sided. Training the way you use your body helps build the resilience your body needs, whether you’re stepping onto the court or hoisting your luggage into the overhead compartment.
Aid rehabilitation
After an injury or early in a rehabilitation journey, you may be unable to work the injured side directly, but unilateral training provides a way to continue to stimulate the injured area safely. This occurs through a process called cross education. When you work one side of your body, the neural pathways that are triggered also stimulate the unused side. That means even if you are only working the non-injured side, you can still improve strength and gain benefits in the area of injury.
Because injury can also result from muscle imbalances, unilateral training can also help address these issues directly by targeting underused muscle groups. For example, runners who have overly dominant quadriceps and hip flexors can experience a range of issues from knee pain to shin splints. Intentionally strengthening glutes and hamstrings (the posterior muscles) helps those muscles activate more easily and restore balance, bringing relief and injury reduction.
