Your right side is almost certainly a bully that takes advantage of your left. It’s time to teach it some manners with unilateral training.
- Most of us have a strength imbalance between the right and left sides of our bodies.
- Bilateral exercises (like squats and bench presses) can hide and worsen this problem because the stronger side compensates for the weaker one.
- Unilateral training (one limb at a time) exposes these imbalances and forces you to correct them.
- Working on just one side forces the core to work incredibly hard to stabilize the body, building functional strength.
- This also improves your proprioception—the body’s ability to sense its position in space—reducing the risk of injury.
- Integrating exercises like assisted pistol squats, single-leg deadlifts, and single-arm rows can radically change the quality of your strength.
Is Your Right Side Stronger Than Your Left? Probably (and That’s a Problem).
Wanna bet? I bet that if I asked you to pick up a child, you’d almost always use the same arm. That if you had to kick a ball, you’d always choose the same foot. And that if you had to carry a heavy grocery bag, you’d entrust it to your go-to hand. It’s normal; we are creatures of habit. Our body, which is a masterpiece of engineering but also quite a slacker, learns to optimize movements by relying on the side it perceives as more skilled, stronger, more “correct.”
The result is that almost all of us move through the world with a more or less pronounced strength imbalance between our right and left sides. A system “bug” that you might not even notice in everyday life. But when you ask your body to get serious—to run a half marathon, lift a barbell, or tackle a challenging trail—that little bug can turn into a giant problem. A problem that often has a name we really don’t like: injury.
Think of a car with poorly aligned front wheels. At low speeds in the city, you get by. But as soon as you hit the highway and rev up, the car starts to vibrate, pull to one side, and wear out its tires unevenly. Well, your body works the same way. Ignoring imbalances is like driving a car that needs a wheel alignment: sooner or later, something is going to break.
Unilateral Training: What It Is and Why It’s the Secret to an Injury-Proof Body.
If you spend your time in the gym doing only squats, deadlifts, and bench presses—the great classics of bilateral training (that is, with two limbs working together)—you might never notice the problem. In fact, you might be making it worse. Because in these movements, your dominant side will always do a little more of the work, secretly helping out the weaker side. It’s a silent cheat, an unwritten pact between your muscles to get the job done.
Unilateral training is the party crasher that exposes this conspiracy. Simply put, it means training one limb at a time. A Single-Leg Squat instead of a Back Squat. A Single-Arm Row instead of a Barbell Row. And so on.
When you do this, three wonderful things happen.
- You expose the truth. There’s no big brother to lean on anymore. Your left leg has to do 100% of the work, and if it’s weaker than the right, you’ll notice immediately. It’s a ruthless but necessary diagnosis.
- Your core catches fire. Pick up a heavy kettlebell with just your right hand. What does your body instinctively do to keep from bending sideways like a weeping willow? It activates all the muscles of your abdominal corset (the core) to create opposing tension. This “anti-lateral flexion” or “anti-rotation” work is the smartest and most functional way to build a strong core, far more effective than a thousand crunches.
- You improve proprioception, a big word for the nervous system’s ability to perceive the body’s position in space. Balancing on one leg requires constant, refined communication between your feet, ankles, knees, hips, and brain. It’s like updating the software of your internal GPS: you become more coordinated, more stable, and more aware.
4 Unilateral Exercises to Build a Strong and Symmetrical Body.
Ready to find out where your weak points are hiding? Here’s a starter kit to get serious. The golden rule is one: form over everything. Forget your ego, lower the weights, and focus on controlling the movement.
1. For the Legs: Pistol Squats (and Their Progressions).
The full pistol squat is an advanced exercise, a true test of strength, mobility, and control. But you don’t have to start there. Begin with assisted versions: you can sit on a bench or box (Box Pistol Squat), or hold onto a support with one hand (a rack, a wall bar, a TRX). The goal is to lower yourself in a controlled manner on one leg, keeping your heel on the ground and your back straight.
2. For the Posterior Chain: Single-Leg Deadlifts.
The Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift is pure magic for the hamstrings, glutes, and balance. Standing on one leg with a slight knee bend, push your other leg straight back behind you as you hinge forward with your torso. Imagine you have to touch an imaginary wall behind you with your heel. You can do this with just your bodyweight or by holding a dumbbell or kettlebell in the hand opposite the standing leg. Your pelvis should remain parallel to the floor, as if there were a tray with two glasses resting on it.
3. For the Back: Single-Arm Rows.
The Single-Arm Row is a classic. Place one knee and one hand on a bench, grab a dumbbell with the other hand, and pull it toward your hip, focusing on squeezing your lat muscle. The secret here is to resist the temptation to rotate your torso. Your core has to work like crazy to keep your back flat and stable.
4. For the Shoulders and Chest: Single-Arm Press.
Lie down on a bench and grab a dumbbell with one hand (Single-Arm Dumbbell Press). As you push the weight up, you’ll feel how all the stabilizer muscles in your shoulder and trunk activate to keep you from rolling off the bench. It’s an exercise that teaches your body to create a stable platform from which to generate force.
How to Integrate Unilateral Work Into Your Training Week.
You don’t have to overhaul your routine overnight. The easiest way to start is by replacing one or two of your main bilateral exercises with their unilateral counterparts.
For example, if you do squats on Mondays, try swapping them for 3-4 sets per leg of box pistol squats. If you do the barbell bench press on Thursdays, try doing single-arm dumbbell presses.
Always start with your weaker side, and never do more reps with your strong side than you can manage with your weak one. It’ll be a blow to your ego, but it’s the only way to close the gap. You’ll see that within a few weeks, you’ll not only feel stronger and more stable, but you’ll have built a much more solid, honest, and, above all, resilient foundation of strength.