How to Fix Muscle Imbalances and Why You Should
Maintaining good musculoskeletal health is essential for overall well-being. Muscle imbalances can occur in any of the body’s muscle groups. Various factors, such as sitting too much, work, lifestyle, previous injury, poor alignment, and incorrect posture, can cause them.
Visualize it like this. It’s like driving your car with one tire low on air – you can feel the imbalance when driving. That imbalance will eventually lead to potential damage to your car. So, you need to fix the tire by putting air in it or using the spare. However, remember that the spare tire will only last a certain amount of time and will help fix the issue until it wears out.
Similarly, when you strength train, run, or exercise, you may feel restrictions or limitations in your motion and movements due to muscle imbalances. Your body will compensate for muscle imbalances and prevent strain, pain, and injury for some time. However, like the spare tire, they will give out in the end.
Muscle imbalances are more prone to injury when you train and or run. As you strength-train the imbalances, the compensations get worse. Therefore, it’s essential to identify and fix muscle imbalances before they cause decreased performance, suffering, and damage.
Functional Assessment
The best way to address muscle imbalances is to do a functional movement assessment. By performing seven different tests, from lunges to shoulder mobility, you can hone in on the causes and trace the reasons for muscular imbalances. For example, poor hip alignment and stability produced by weak glutes can cause knee pain.
A functional movement assessment can help identify areas of weakness and determine the root cause of an imbalance.
Check Your Alignment
Poor posture and alignment cause one set of muscles to tighten and others to be taut. So, for example, when the thoracic spine is rounding too far forward, your chest muscles shorten and constrict. On the other hand, it causes your mid-back muscles to become taut, meaning they are stretched and tightened and lose flexibility. This process occurs as a protection mechanism for your body.
Posture plays a significant role in muscle imbalances. And as a result, the muscles will not stretch nor contract correctly, staying stuck until fixed.
Agonist Antagonist Training
This training style trains your muscles the same way you move every day. For example, when you open a door, you push to reach your arm forward and then pull the door to open it. So agonist and antagonist training is precisely that. You perform one set with a back row. And after the back row, do a bench press. This way, you are training the proper movement mechanics.
This training works great when you do it on one side to correct muscle imbalances because antagonist agonist training makes you strong quickly.
Unilateral Strength Training
The problem is, many times, your strengths become the focus, and the weakness gets pushed aside. And in doing that, the muscle imbalance can cause an injury. For example, when you run or sprint, one hamstring may be stronger than the other. So, when running and sprinting, that increase in force production can injure the weak imbalanced side.
Also, strength imbalances, such as poor thoracic spinal alignment, can injure your shoulders. And weak glues can cause hip flexor tightness and flexibility issues.
Strengthening exercises should focus on the weak muscle groups. At the same time, stretching exercises should target the opposing muscle group causing restriction to solve the muscle imbalance correctly. For example, strengthen the glutes and stretch the hip flexors.
Proper Form
Awareness of correct posture, body mechanics, and proper form during physical activities can go a long way toward preventing any future muscle imbalances. You can’t build a house in the sand, but don’t expect it to stay up forever. The sand will shift, and the house will fall due to imbalance and poor foundation. Like your body, strain and injury will occur due to poor form and muscle imbalances.
Lifestyle Modification
In addition to strengthening and stretching exercises, lifestyle modification is essential. For example, this is Generation S- the sitting generation. Sitting for more than 30 minutes daily is bad for your posture, tightens your muscles, decreases your metabolism, etc.
So by sitting correctly, taking breaks to stand up and stretch your muscles, walking for a few minutes, and exercising, you can modify sitting and reverse course. Being mindful of good posture when sitting will also dampen the muscle imbalances effect.
Without modification, you will be in a recycled version of “the same old, same old” situation.
Caution with Fatigue
Recognizing signs of fatigue and overexertion is vital to prevent any potential injury or strain on the body. When muscles get tired and you continue to exercise or train, the muscle imbalance is vulnerable to damage more than when you started. So, stop when you are fatigued.
I know many people who have pushed out just one more set and injured their knee or shoulder on one side due to the lack of strength from hidden muscle imbalances.
It is crucial to discover and fix muscle imbalances. But unfortunately, you often don’t know they are there because your body compensates based on what you do daily and habitually. And when you go running, do strength training, or play a sport, adding force to the weakness and imbalance cause injury.
So make sure you do a functional assessment. It will help you become mindful of your body. If you don’t, just become aware of how you simply move.
Check out the book, The Balanced Body, to see more strengthening and stretching exercises to restore alignment and fix muscle imbalances.
To see more routines for unilateral and agonist and antagonist strength training, check out my book, Instant Strength.
And check out my YouTube channel for more methods and techniques, Balanced Body.
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How to Fix Muscle Imbalances and Why You Should
Maintaining good musculoskeletal health is essential for overall well-being. Muscle imbalances can occur in any of the body’s muscle groups. Various factors, such as sitting too much, work, lifestyle, previous injury, poor alignment, and incorrect posture, can cause them.
Visualize it like this. It’s like driving your car with one tire low on air – you can feel the imbalance when driving. That imbalance will eventually lead to potential damage to your car. So, you need to fix the tire by putting air in it or using the spare. However, remember that the spare tire will only last a certain amount of time and will help fix the issue until it wears out.
Similarly, when you strength train, run, or exercise, you may feel restrictions or limitations in your motion and movements due to muscle imbalances. Your body will compensate for muscle imbalances and prevent strain, pain, and injury for some time. However, like the spare tire, they will give out in the end.
Muscle imbalances are more prone to injury when you train and or run. As you strength-train the imbalances, the compensations get worse. Therefore, it’s essential to identify and fix muscle imbalances before they cause decreased performance, suffering, and damage.
Functional Assessment
The best way to address muscle imbalances is to do a functional movement assessment. By performing seven different tests, from lunges to shoulder mobility, you can hone in on the causes and trace the reasons for muscular imbalances. For example, poor hip alignment and stability produced by weak glutes can cause knee pain.
A functional movement assessment can help identify areas of weakness and determine the root cause of an imbalance.
Check Your Alignment
Poor posture and alignment cause one set of muscles to tighten and others to be taut. So, for example, when the thoracic spine is rounding too far forward, your chest muscles shorten and constrict. On the other hand, it causes your mid-back muscles to become taut, meaning they are stretched and tightened and lose flexibility. This process occurs as a protection mechanism for your body.
Posture plays a significant role in muscle imbalances. And as a result, the muscles will not stretch nor contract correctly, staying stuck until fixed.
Agonist Antagonist Training
This training style trains your muscles the same way you move every day. For example, when you open a door, you push to reach your arm forward and then pull the door to open it. So agonist and antagonist training is precisely that. You perform one set with a back row. And after the back row, do a bench press. This way, you are training the proper movement mechanics.
This training works great when you do it on one side to correct muscle imbalances because antagonist agonist training makes you strong quickly.
Unilateral Strength Training
The problem is, many times, your strengths become the focus, and the weakness gets pushed aside. And in doing that, the muscle imbalance can cause an injury. For example, when you run or sprint, one hamstring may be stronger than the other. So, when running and sprinting, that increase in force production can injure the weak imbalanced side.
Also, strength imbalances, such as poor thoracic spinal alignment, can injure your shoulders. And weak glues can cause hip flexor tightness and flexibility issues.
Strengthening exercises should focus on the weak muscle groups. At the same time, stretching exercises should target the opposing muscle group causing restriction to solve the muscle imbalance correctly. For example, strengthen the glutes and stretch the hip flexors.
Proper Form
Awareness of correct posture, body mechanics, and proper form during physical activities can go a long way toward preventing any future muscle imbalances. You can’t build a house in the sand, but don’t expect it to stay up forever. The sand will shift, and the house will fall due to imbalance and poor foundation. Like your body, strain and injury will occur due to poor form and muscle imbalances.
Lifestyle Modification
In addition to strengthening and stretching exercises, lifestyle modification is essential. For example, this is Generation S- the sitting generation. Sitting for more than 30 minutes daily is bad for your posture, tightens your muscles, decreases your metabolism, etc.
So by sitting correctly, taking breaks to stand up and stretch your muscles, walking for a few minutes, and exercising, you can modify sitting and reverse course. Being mindful of good posture when sitting will also dampen the muscle imbalances effect.
Without modification, you will be in a recycled version of “the same old, same old” situation.
Caution with Fatigue
Recognizing signs of fatigue and overexertion is vital to prevent any potential injury or strain on the body. When muscles get tired and you continue to exercise or train, the muscle imbalance is vulnerable to damage more than when you started. So, stop when you are fatigued.
I know many people who have pushed out just one more set and injured their knee or shoulder on one side due to the lack of strength from hidden muscle imbalances.
It is crucial to discover and fix muscle imbalances. But unfortunately, you often don’t know they are there because your body compensates based on what you do daily and habitually. And when you go running, do strength training, or play a sport, adding force to the weakness and imbalance cause injury.
So make sure you do a functional assessment. It will help you become mindful of your body. If you don’t, just become aware of how you simply move.
Check out the book, The Balanced Body, to see more strengthening and stretching exercises to restore alignment and fix muscle imbalances.
To see more routines for unilateral and agonist and antagonist strength training, check out my book, Instant Strength.
And check out my YouTube channel for more methods and techniques, Balanced Body.