How to Correct a Muscle Imbalance While Working Out in The Gym

It can be rather frustrating to work out day after day at the gym and watch your gains get bogged down due to muscle imbalance. Muscle imbalance can happen to anyone. In fact, it happens quite frequently to gym goers when they go through rigorous training sessions. To put it simply, muscle imbalance occurs when one muscle is stronger than its opposing muscle.

The difference in strength of the various muscle groups can possibly derail the hard work you have invested and also lead to serious injuries. That’s because when one muscle is weaker while the other is overactive, it puts the body in a bad posture. This limits your mobility at the joints, making the muscles stiff.

So, are you wondering how to get back on track after a muscle imbalance? Read on to know how it can be corrected:

• Perform Unilateral Exercises

Did you know that one side of your body is naturally stronger than the other? So, when you’re working out both sides of your body together, the dominant side is likely to pick up the slack. So, if the right side of your pec is stronger than the left side, then the bar on the right side will rise a little faster and fatigue a bit slower. This will cause your left pec to be slightly underused when compared to the right one.

Hence, performing unilateral workouts like barbell exercises which involve both the sides of your body work the best. Doing this makes the body work hard by exerting energy from both the sides independently. It prevents the dominant muscles from taking over work from the weaker muscles.

• Fix Your Flexibility

An issue with your body mobility can be the underlying problem of a muscle imbalance. If you have tight quads, glutes or hamstrings on either side of your body, it will definitely mess up your squat or deadlift performance, leading to a muscle imbalance. On the other hand, if you have limited mobility in one of the shoulders, it will have a direct impact on your shoulder press form or bench press, resulting in one of your sides working out more than the other.

Once you figure out the source of the problem, you can focus your workouts to improve the mobility and flexibility in that particular area. This will ensure that muscle imbalance does not come back once you have fixed it.

• Work More on Your Weaker Side

Sometimes, muscle imbalance can be caused due to certain parts of the body being favoured more than the others while working out. This is very common when the focus is applied more on pressing movements than pulling movements. For example,  some people train their upper bodies more than their lower bodies to gain that top-heavy body. So, adding a few extra exercises that target the problem areas will help for sure.

A successful fitness regime can be achieved with the right planning and proper techniques. Watch this space for more updates on fitness and health.