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Weightlifting TrainingWeightlifting TrainingAsymmetric TrainingHave you ever noticed how sore you get after lifting a heavy object in your house or backyard but not during your weightlifting training in the gym. All those hours hoisting tons of weight, and yet one 50-foot walk with a concrete flowerpot results in two days of torment. Think of in this way: How, much similarity is there between exercises performed in the gym to gain muscle fast and movements carried out around the house? How often do you walk across the gym floor carrying a 50- pound weight? When was the last time you balanced a barbell on one shoulder and climbed a 1adder while weightlifting training? Chances are the answer to both questions is never. Examine weightlifting training from another point of view. How many times during the day are both your arms and legs performing the exact same movement at the same time? Not very often, we bet. Just about every exercise in the gym is done in symmetrical fashion. It seems our goal is always to move both arms and legs at the same time. One of the great misconceptions among bodybuilders is that asymmetric training (training one side at a time) will produce an asymmetric build i.e. you'll end up looking lopsided. Who wants one 16-inch arm and one 19-inch arm? And this is certainly what will happen if you carry out weightlifting training one side at a time, right? Wrong, and here's why. When you lift a bar with both arms while weightlifting training, quite often one side dominates and takes a disproportionate amount of the stress. The end result is that certain muscles on one side grow faster. The chest, triceps and front delts, are famous for this problem. But if you could place an equal amount of stress on both sides of the body, then such muscle imbalances would not occur. This is where asymmetric training comes in. How do you undertake weightlifting training asymmetrically? Let's say you want to give your lats a good blast. Grab a heavy dumbbell, and with one hand braced on a bench, pull the dumbbell up with the other arm. As you lower the dumbbell, stretch forward slightly to hit the whole lat. One-arm dumbbell rows are excellent for bringing out the back's V-flare. Triceps are no problem. Bend over at the waist and brace your body on a bench. With the upper arm held tight against the body and parallel to the floor, extend the lower arm back until it's in a fully locked position. Called triceps kickbacks, this exercise is great for correcting any imbalances produced by such movements as bench presses and lying extensions. If the delts on one side of the body are lagging behind, try including one arm dumbbell raises into your routine. Hold an upright for support, and do 10 to 12 reps per side. This weightlifting training will take care of the problem of asymmetric training. Besides the equality of stress placed on the body's muscles for weightlifting training, there's a physiological basis to asymmetric training. Good evidence suggests that the brain has to split nerve impulses to stimulate the muscles on both sides of the body to contract. Training one side at a time allows for the full nervous stimulation of these muscles. In addition, we have the issue of concentration. It's much easier to concentrate on an exercise when only one muscle group is being worked for gain muscle fast. Just about every exercise during weightlifting training you can think of can be done in an asymmetric fashion. |