SIDE EFFECTS Amazing, but true — training your left half and right half separately can make your muscle gains a whole lot better By Tim Scheett Are you the type of guy who leaves things half-finished? Like that fence you started painting a few months ago that’s now half brown, half white? Or the motorbike in the garage with various parts of the engine strewn about the floor? Perhaps you’re really industrious and wanted to build a new deck — which is now nothing but a pile of wood in your back garden and four weather-beaten stakes in the ground. You wouldn’t think the same half-assed mind-set would get you anywhere in the gym. But, amazingly enough, you’d only be half right. The technique is called one-sided training. In simple terms, you divide your workouts into right-side and left-side training days. By doing this, you achieve total isolation of muscle groups on each side of your body. You also get crossover effects — studies show that when you train a muscle on one side of your body, the corresponding muscle on the other side actually responds as if it’s being trained, too. That’s like twice the results for half the work! Ready to find out more? CHOOSING SIDES While you may have never taken the concept of unilateral training to the extreme we recommend here, doing one-sided exercise probably isn’t new to you. If you’ve ever done moves like one-arm overhead extensions, dumbbell concentration curls, one-arm lateral raises or lunges, then you’ve trained unilaterally. It’s a smart approach to include in the mix of any training programme: recent research shows that you can produce more total force on each side of the body when you perform unilateral (as compared to bilateral) exercise. For instance, on a dumbbell bench press, each side outputs more force than both working together during a barbell bench. More force equals more stimulus, which equals more growth — common maths for uncommon results. Instead of doing the usual balanced version of unilateral training — in which you use the same amount of weight and reps for both sides during the same session — our one-sided programme calls for training right-side muscle groups in one workout and left-side muscle groups in another workout on separate days. If you’re asking why, and we’re pretty sure you are, let us tell you our side. Splitting your body in half for training purposes has several benefits, including: ›› Crossover effects. When you focus all efforts on one side of your body, the resting side also receives nervous stimulation — which encourages muscle regeneration and growth — and increased blood flow, enhancing the delivery of oxygen, nutrients and hormones to those resting muscles while helping to flush away waste products left over from previous workouts. ›› Balanced development. Most people have at least some level of imbalanced development between sides — one is usually slightly stronger. That state of affairs can lead to injury and impair your biomechanics. By hitting each side unilaterally, one half can’t compensate for the other during a workout, as often happens with bilateral moves. ›› A stronger core. This unconventional training method challenges your core muscles (the muscles of your abdomen and lower back), allowing you to gain greater muscular development in your torso and build a better overall strength base. Also, you activate and strengthen a host of stabiliser muscles when you lift weights with only one side of your body. ›› Shock value. This novel method of training stimulates your nervous system and muscle fibres in a totally different way than any previous training programme you’ve tried. New stimuli lead to gains in strength and mass. UNI-BOMBING Our one-sided training programme consists of four workouts per week. Workout No. 1 focuses on your right chest, shoulder, trap, triceps, back and biceps. Workout No. 2 hits your left chest, shoulder, trap, triceps, back and biceps. In Workout No. 3 you’ll do your right quad, hamstring and calf. Workout No. 4 will finish off your body with your left quad, ham and calf. You’ll perform about two exercises per muscle group and do 2–3 sets for each. The volume of work performed (total sets) per muscle group is low for good reason: because you train one side of all your upper- or lower-body muscles in one workout, doing too many sets for each muscle group can overtax your recuperative abilities and your nervous system. As a general guideline, use a weight for each set with which you can perform 10–12 reps — not so heavy that you fail before 10, and not so light that you can easily do 15 or more. The programmes novelty is shocking enough without the need for super-heavy weights; save the tonnage for your down ’n’ dirty strength programmes. We suggest a two-days-on, two-days-off training regime for this programme. For example, do Workout No. 1 on Monday, Workout No. 2 on Tuesday, then take Wednesday and Thursday off before coming back for Workouts No. 3 and No. 4 on Friday and Saturday. Follow this one-sided training approach for 3–4 weeks at a time, maximum, before returning to a more traditional programme, and do not revisit this alternative training style more than once every 3–4 months. It’s an effective tool but only if used sparingly. Meanwhile, these short workouts might just leave you some extra time, say, to actually finish that deck? On second thoughts, forget it. It’s the home-improvement magazine’s responsibility to motivate you on that front. Just keep lifting, buddy, and you’re not a half-ass in our book. M&F SIDE ORDER There are many other unilateral exercises you can perform for each muscle group. Here’s a short list of options: CHEST ›› Incline Dumbbell Press ›› Decline Dumbbell Press ›› Cable Flye (flat, incline, decline) ›› Cable Crossover SHOULDERS ›› Front Raise (dumbbell or cable) ›› Cable Lateral Raise ›› Bent-Over Lateral Raise (dumbbell or cable) ›› Dumbbell Upright Row TRICEPS ›› Kickback (dumbbell or cable) ›› Cable Pressdown (D-handle or rope) ›› Lying Dumbbell Extension BACK ›› Seated Cable Row ›› Straight-Arm Pulldown BICEPS ›› Dumbbell Curl (seated, incline, standing) ›› High-Pulley Cable Curl LEGS ›› Step-Up ›› Dumbbell or Barbell Lunge ›› Leg Curl (standing, seated, lying) ›› Stiff-Legged Dumbbell Deadlift UNILATERAL TIPS Use this guide to turn any exercise into a one-sided affair: ›› KEEP THE MOVEMENT SLOW and controlled. A count of four on the negative portion of the lift and a count of two on the positive will ensure this. ›› USE A LIGHT WEIGHT. ›› CONCENTRATE ON THE CONTRACTION of the primary muscle you’re training. ›› TAKE A SHOULDER-WIDTH STANCE FOR STANDING ONE-ARM EXERCISES. Place your non-working arm firmly on your hip or thigh or tuck it behind the small of your back. If balance becomes an issue, grasp a high-back bench or the frame of an apparatus. ›› ON STANDING EXERCISES, keep your knees slightly bent, pull your abs in tight and hold the natural arch in your lower back. ›› FOR SEATED OR HORIZONTAL EXERCISES, plant your feet, keep your back and glutes against the bench and maintain the natural arch in your lower back. Grasp the bench edges under your glutes or place your non-working hand firmly on top of your thigh.

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