Muscle Imbalances

I have this issue which i wanted to discuss and want to know how to deal wid it
my right biceps is 13 inchs but my left is 12.2 approx (i m right handed) so should i be concerned or its natural ????  

Don’t worry, the human body looks symmetrical only at a macroscopic level.

One of your arms is longer than the other. Right if you are a right handed person. Same for your legs. Muscle imbalances are inevitable whether you lift weights or not, simply being active in life in certain activities and not in others, will create the chance of imbalances.

Barbell exercises are always easier than DB counterparts for the same reason, the stronger side helps get the entire poundage up and the weaker side just supports. Stronger side gets stronger weaker gets weaker. Even one of your chest/pectoral muscles is stronger than the other, though that is generally hard to be seen visually.

EDIT : Also I forgot mentioning, a lot of strength imbalances are not because of one side being bigger/or more muscular than the other, but rather just having better neuron/nerve signalling than the other. Again nothing to worry about.

Also remember that even insertions and origins aren’t identical in the left and right limbs. Arnold has a beautiful peak in one of his biceps but not the other, and it’s not because he didn’t work the other arm equally.

What to do about them?
The advantage we have as being part of the weight training population is that we can actually do something about these imbalances and fix them. Obviously there is an imbalance in strength between the two and we can check it by isolating the muscle group.

I personally had never actually directly trained my hamstrings till about a year or so ago, since they would get worked through compound lifts or as assistors. And I decided to do so when I was suggested by an experienced physio at Apollo Hospitals to do so since they were the cause of a pain I would always feel in my left leg. I explained that my routines were quite smartly designed and kept muscle imbalances in mind, but they were insistent that I check for hamstring imbalances. Now since the pain was in the left leg, it was assumed that that would be my weaker side and I would have to train that one to catch up to the demands of the right leg and even the quads. At the same time I had to travel to Bbay and meet one of the most senior persons in this Industry(authority and education not age). He told me that the routine had nothing wrong and that since there is an obvious problem, it’s the job of the examiner/physio/doc to try and give at least some explanation in order to save face. He asked me to go ahead and check it out by using an isolateral hamstring machine in his own private gym.

I started off with what I and obviously everyone assumed, that my right side would be stronger and so completed a set to failure on that getting in around 8-9 reps. Waited 4-5 minutes. Weaker leg. Completed 13-14 reps, same weight, and despite being done AFTER the right leg.

Repeated another effort right after that and again the same results, left stronger than the right.

That gave evidence to his claim about the Physio saving face, something I had a hunch of all the way as he couldn’t answer any of my questions or understand any of my explanations.

This didn’t help me solve the problem of course. I found out a few weeks later when we were studying about foot arches and any feet/sole related injuries and it clicked me that I had just recently change my shoes to these garbage ones that burnt a 5K whole in my wallet.

Adidas Adipure.
Like a hot chick. All looks, No substance.

And of course once one thing clicks, everything else starts falling into place and looks really simple and obvious looking back. I remember that I actually had really bad gripping issues with these pathetic shoes that I bought just to mimic bare-feet action. And bare-feet is exactly how I used to lift for the past 4 years(time of the issue). Bare feet never EVER gave me an issue with gripping the ground really tight. These stupid shoes would actually slide across the floor when I would be performing Sumo Deadlifts. Thinking back it should actually have rung alarm bells instantly  but I didn’t think about it since these shoes were actually bought under the assumption of BETTER gripping of the floor.

Not having the entire body absolutely rock solid and rigid, except work the working muscles and joints, is a guaranteed way to get injured let alone cause imbalances. In this case my entire stance was changing throughout the lift.

Moral of the story : Imbalances are largely commonplace and are most definitely going to occur in everyone.

You can strengthen your muscle imbalances by doing the same thing I did for my right hamstring, which is:-

1. This is a bit of a positive mind tool, but accepting a certain weakness makes us accept it mentally,physically and even emotionally. (It’s a weakness we have as human beings and having larger and more advanced brains and functions compared to other animals). This is a bit of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), but always say it out loud to yourself and think it as well, “Stronger side first”. I say the same…. and then go ahead with the right hamstring.
2. Then do the other leg, of course count the reps.
3. Once the left is done, use the right to perform the number of reps that the left one did compared to the right. This can be done in more sets, so you could have 4 sets on the right hammie and 2 on the left, it’s a non issue as long as volume is matched
4. In case the right can’t perform concentric by itself use both legs to perform the concentric and the right only for the eccentric. The same can be used to try and give the right a bit more of workload just in case you can mange to perform equal reps in 6 sets of combined legs, but 4:2 R:L , but you still clearly know/feel the weakness in the right leg. This way the right would be performing more work, but still only enough to bring it upto par with the left.
5. The above are methods in which you can still keep on progressing in strength and size in your routine while having the weaker side catch up.  If you are too anal about it, you could simply limit the workload of the left leg to match that of the right leg(from the above scenario). This way you can work on only bringing up the lagging side while maintaining size and strength on the other.

Follow the above principles and let me know how it works out for you!