How to Avoid Muscle Imbalances?

Do you get 10 bicep curls on your right side but are having a hard time completing 5 with your left? Although a dominant side is common, slight differences in strength, balance, and mobility can sometimes indicate a muscle imbalance, which could harm your exercise performance and increase the risk of injury.

When the muscles balance around a joint, it means they are contracting at a speed and intensity to help the joint move as it should. With any movement of the body, there are primary motors, which are the muscles that are supposed to provide the main force to move the joint, and there are assistants, which are muscles that provide help when the primary motors need help. A muscle imbalance can occur, for example, when the primary motors are too weak to do their job, forcing the auxiliary muscles to try to compensate.

Avoid Muscle Imbalances

What causes a muscle imbalance?

A sedentary lifestyle is a possible culprit . We spend our days hunched over in front of computer screens, sitting at desks and in cars or with our necks folded looking at our smartphones.

Sitting for long periods of time causes the hip flexors to become tight and short, which can prepare you for muscle imbalances, even in the buttocks.

Doing the same movement over and over can also cause muscle imbalances. This is because when you use the same muscles repeatedly in the same way, they can overwork and get caught in a semi-contraction position, which can ultimately compromise the joint.

This can be adopted from everyday habits, such as carrying your gym bag on the same shoulder, which regularly forces one side of your body to exert more effort than the other.

But it can also take the form of healthy physical activities. Repetitive exercises like running, for example, primarily work your body on one plane of motion; They do not necessarily help you develop the full strength that you could develop through activities that involve more varied movements.

Another factor behind muscle imbalances is your genes . If, for example, your mother and grandmother have back problems, you may have a predisposition to experience similar problems later in life.

Whether it’s the natural curves of our spine or how our joints are built, genetics can play a role in susceptibility to certain problems.

hombre con desequilibrio muscular espalda

What symptoms cause muscle imbalances?

Pain and tension are major indicators of a muscle imbalance. For example, if your paraspinals (the muscles that go up and down on either side of your spine) have to compensate for weak abs and deep back muscles, your back will eventually start to hurt.

Asymmetry is another obvious symptom. This unevenness can manifest itself in your appearance (that is, one shoulder seems taller than the other) and / or how you move (that is, one side is weaker or wobbly).

That means that muscle imbalances can cause someone to lack the strength potential they would have if their primary engines functioned properly.

In fact, a muscle imbalance is often the reason why some people cannot perform certain exercises correctly . Case in point: the dominated. People whose back muscles are too weak to lift their bodies will use the smaller muscles of their arms and shoulders (i.e., their assistants) to try to make the movement happen, with little or no success.

That type of situation is not only true for the dominated. Every time your technique fails during an exercise , it can reveal where you are experiencing muscle imbalances. Do your knees buckle when you squat? You may have weakness or limitation in the hips. Does your lower back sag during ironing? That could be a sign of central weakness.

Why are muscle imbalances problematic?

A muscle imbalance may seem like a minor annoyance right now, so what if your right leg trembles more than your left during strides?

Left untreated, muscle imbalances can cause pain, dysfunction, and injury. This is because they can alter the position of the joint they are attached to, changing their range of motion in potentially dangerous ways.

If this happens repeatedly over a period of time, your chance of injury is higher, both in the muscles, which can be overloaded by supporting too great a load for too long, and in the joints, which do not receive the support they need to stabilize during strenuous exercise.

The most common example of this domino effect is caused by weak glutes. In that scenario, deep hip rotators can take over, which can trigger hip pain and even pinch the sciatic nerve. Another example: weak shoulder muscles. When the pectoralis minor takes over the weak serratus, it can increase the risk of shoulder and neck pain.

If the imbalance is in your core, it can cost you a loss of flexibility, poor breathing, interrupted digestion, as well as neck or back injury or pain.

Is there a treatment?

Building strength and increasing your range of motion are essential when it comes to correcting muscle imbalances. Once you have identified your particular weak areas, you can focus your strength training and stretching on them. You may want to have a personal trainer, or a physical therapist if you are in pain, to help you develop a specific routine.

Regardless of the action plan you decide, you should know that your healing will not happen overnight. Muscle imbalances can be difficult to fix, especially if the pattern has been ingrained for a long time.

Re-training the muscles is the most difficult part . Once the auxiliary muscles have become accustomed to compensating for a weak prime mover, they will stubbornly continue to do so. It will take time, patience, and repetition to get them to break that unhealthy habit.

Determined exercise is needed to attack the unbalanced muscle. And often you have to make movement a lot easier than people expect. That could mean lifting less weight, refining and simplifying your technique, or both.

When it comes to addressing muscle imbalances, correcting core issues should be at the top of your to-do list. You core your base of operations. Proper basic training is the foundation of fundamental human movement. No one can afford to neglect this basic component of the body.

Another useful option is to do one- sided exercises , that is, movements that train one side of your body at a time, such as single-leg glute bridges or single-arm weight rows. Movements like these will ensure that you don’t rely too heavily on your dominant side, which helps you isolate and remedy muscle imbalances.

Incorporating exercises that encourage movement in many different directions or planes is another useful strategy. Mix up your routine with a variety of push, pull, rotate and side movements. Exercising like these will help you avoid repetition and overtraining, reducing the risk of muscle imbalances.