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Building muscles one at a time

Men's Fitness, Feb, 2003

I've been told I should include more unilateral movements in my training. Why is this, and how should I go about it?

--A.B., HARRISBURG, PA

Unilateral movements, which emphasize one body part or one side of the body at a time, provide a laundry list of benefits. Matt Malotki, who holds an advanced certification from the National Academy for Health and Fitness, says they'll do the following for you:

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* Isolate your target muscle. "Isolation is one of the most important advantages of unilateral movements," says Malotki. "You can focus directly on one muscle at a time. When you do triceps press-downs or lateral raises one arm at a time, you can really pay attention to the feeling on that side of your body, and you can learn to develop the mind-muscle connection more easily. Learning to isolate your target muscle is as important to muscle building as using compound movements is to simultaneously stimulating a variety of muscle groups."

* Overcome a plateau. "If you've ever reached a stagnation point with a particular exercise, such as leg curls or leg extensions, switching to a unilateral version of that same exercise can help you stimulate the muscle fibers differently and break through that plateau," Malotki says. "It adds a whole new dimension to your workout."

* Allow greater range of motion. "Often, bilateral movements have a limiting factor short of your muscle range. With cable rows, for instance, when the grip reaches your midsection, that's as far back as you can work your back muscles. With one-arm cable rows, though, you can pull back three to six inches farther, stimulating the muscle fibers through a greater range of motion, potentially making your workouts more productive."

* Improve your symmetry. "When you use both arms at the same time, regardless of how much attention you pay to form and how strict you are, the strong side of your body is going to do more work," Malotki says. "Unilateral movements will help close the gap between the strong and weak sides, and make you more symmetrical in strength as well as appearance.

"Unilateral exercises can be used as a primary movement or as a finishing movement," Malotki says. "You should also always include both unilateral and bilateral movements every time you train a body part, because each style of exercise offers unique advantages. Unilateral movements are often underutilized. If that's the case in your training, then once you start including them regularly, you're really going to see the difference."

"Since one of the biggest advantages of unilateral movements is that they really focus on that one body part, I tend to choose a movement that is as isolated as possible," says Dakota Mitchell, American College of Sports Medicine-certified personal trainer. He recommends including the following unilateral movements in your training protocol:

* Shoulders "I like front or lateral cable raises," Mitchell says. "Either is an excellent finishing movement. You want to feel the burn and the lactic acid, so you should perform two or three sets in the 15-rep range--don't go too heavy. Perform one side, then the other, to really isolate and focus on the specific deltoid head you're targeting: the front delt for front raises, the medial delt for lateral raises."

* Biceps "My preferred unilateral biceps movement is a one-arm dumbbell curl on a spider bench [a vertical preacher bench]," Mitchell says. "Many guys use alternating dumbbell curls, but I think they involve too much rest and too much body English to be considered a real isolation movement." Unilateral biceps movements can be included in the middle or at the end of your workout.

* Chest "I like one-arm cable flyes, performed at the end of your chest workout," Mitchell says. "You can stabilize yourself on the other post if the cable is long enough, and you can really isolate one side at a time. Use a light weight, and keep rep speed at three or four seconds per."

Bonus Tip: "Palpate [touch with the opposite hand] your target muscle," Mitchell says. "Studies have shown that when you do this, you can get a better contraction at that point. You can feel the fibers firing, and you tend to work the muscle harder."

* Triceps Seated overhead dumbbell extensions are Mitchell's choice for triceps. "You can really lock out your shoulder to isolate the triceps, giving you a great stretch on the long head. Reverse one-arm cable triceps pull-downs are also excellent, as they allow you to get into the lateral head and squeeze and pump it for a different feeling from other triceps movements."

* Legs "Doing leg extensions and lying leg curls one leg at a time is an excellent way to warm up or finish off," Mitchell says, "and you should include both to hit the major muscles of your upper legs. Performing these unilaterally challenges your target muscles more so than doing them the more common bilateral way, because one leg is not able to assist the other."

Building muscles one at a time

Men's Fitness, Feb, 2003

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