jgr1’s BodyBlog

For about the last eight weeks I have been working to improve my body symmetry.  Initially the problem was I had a noticeable difference in strength and visual development between the left and right sides of my upper body.  It seemed that my left side was lagging my right side.  So my goal was to improve the strength and development of my left side to match that of my right side.  The plan has been to use various exercises that isolate the left and right sides of the body.  I would start with the left side since this seemed to be the weaker side and run each exercise to failure.  I would then, with the right side, match that number of reps plus one rep to account for the incomplete rep at failure on the left side. I would quickly do a drop set on the left side with 4 to 6 reps as a target. My thought was to continually hit the left, weaker, side with extra reps when I couldn’t match the number of reps that I could do with the right side.  By working the weaker side harder strength and development progress should, in theory, be more aggressive for that side of the body.

 
Assessing my progress over the past weeks showed that, in nearly all cases, the strength of my left side became more equalized to the strength of my right side.  That is, as weeks progressed I was doing less drop sets on my left side.  In fact during the final week I did only a few drop sets and these were for exercises where I increased the weights.  I also noticed that the form for some of my bar bell exercises improved because I wasn’t struggling as hard with the left side of my body as much.  The ability to use both sides of the body equally is one of the reasons why I feel good body symmetry is important and it seems that I have been able to accomplish progress in this area.

 
I was curious about how others approached this issue so I discussed it with some of the guys at the gym where I workout.  Of those that considered body symmetry as important the consensus is to include a number of dumbbell exercises in their routines to help maintain body symmetry.  Also, the guys that I talked to which were more serious about their workouts showed a tendency to avoid using machines in their routines.  Their routines stuck to primarily free weight and cable exercises.

 
So, going forward I plan to keep body symmetry an important part of my routine planning.  It is obvious that it is an ongoing effort and needs to be constantly addressed.  The way to achieve body symmetry seems to be by using a number of exercises that isolate the left and right sides of my body in every routine, especially dumbbell exercises. ,

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 8:07 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.