8 Reasons to Integrate Unilateral Training
One of my favorite things about training and working out is the almost limitless options to gain strength, build muscle, increase range of motion, and feel better over all. If you aren’t careful, this can lead to some paralysis by analysis which is why it’s always great to hire a coach. I might know a guy!
Most good functional training programs have a wide variety of bilateral (both sides working at same time) movements that consist of squats, deadlifts, presses, pulls, the Olympic weightlifting movements of cleans, snatches, and jerks, jumps, and some integration of nonstructural movements like rowing and skiing.
All of these are great, but after 20+ years in athletics, professional basketball, and coaching a wide array of athletes, I’d like to make a simple observation: almost all athletic movements are done unilaterally. Whether on a field, court, track, bike, skates, or other athletic arena, many of the movements are in a unilateral (single side) fashion. This does not mean unilateral is better than bilateral, but it is definitely worth highlighting a bit as unilateral work often gets overlooked.
What is Unilateral Training?
This is when we actively train one side of the body at a time. Rather than traditional lifts – i.e. back squats and bench press – that have us performing bilateral movements (both limbs/sides at the same time) we focus on only at a time to fully isolate that portion of the body.
Benefits of Unilateral Training
Correct Imbalances
By solely performing bilateral lifts like squats and deadlifts, many imbalances may go unnoticed, often hidden by the body’s natural tendency to compensate.
Core Stabilization
With unilateral training, you can challenge your core muscles to support the imbalanced load, promoting sound movement patterns.
Boost Sport Performance
Sport and power athletes can and should integrate unilateral training as part of their assistance work to bulletproof their bodies and practice how they play.
Decrease Injury Risk
Injuries often result from overuse, muscular imbalances, or poor movement. Unilateral training offers coaches and athletes the ability to isolate specific movements, muscles, and joints to increase symmetry of muscular development and movement.
Improve Muscular Stimulation
The ability to isolate and train individual movements and muscles on a unilateral basis could help promote muscular development and growth. Muscle growth in size for the win!
Speed Injury Recovery
Muscular injuries happen and, unfortunately, they might deter you from exercising regularly. The science implies that unilateral training will not only strengthen the muscles being worked but also has positive effects of strength and muscle on the contralateral (opposite) side.
Develop Motor Skills
Studies suggest that motor engrams — memorized movement patterns stored in the motor area of the brain — may develop after performing unilateral movements. This can help with reaction time along with integral movement patterns in life.
Create Program Variance and Mind/Muscle Connection
New movement patterns and integrating something different can be a great way to enhance benefits for athletes while refraining from overuse and burn out. It can also be a great way for athletes to build a better relationship with how they move and discrepancies between each side which can heavily influence mobility protocols and focus points in program design and accessory work.
Examples of Unilateral Movements
The possibilities are nearly endless but here’s a few examples of movements I like to incorporate when training my clients:
1. Single-Arm Dumbbell Bench Press
2. Single-Arm Dumbbell Shoulder Press
3. Reverse Lunges
4. Alternating Cossack Squats
5. Single-Leg Box Step-Up/Step-Downs
6. Single-Arm Dumbbell Row
7. Suitcase Carries
8. Waiter Carries
9. Single-Leg Kettlebell Deadlifts & Single-Leg Deadlifts
10. Single-Arm Kettlebell Sit-Ups
And the list goes on!
If you’re bored of repeating the same movements over and over, and want to spice it up a bit, give some of these movements a shot and let the gains flow! Let us know in the comments some of the unilateral movements you enjoy implementing in your training!
Simple Ways To Use Exercise When You Feel Overwhelmed
Next time you are in a funk, feeling overwhelmed with life, or feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, try these exercise-related tools for managing and overcoming those thoughts and feelings.
1. Put on your favorite playlist and let it lift your mood.
Listening to music increases blood flow to brain regions that generate and control emotions (2). The limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory, “lights” up when our ears perceive music.
Music can generate momentum. It can help trigger memory and motivation. Lean into the artistic magic that music provides and allow it to serve you in pursuit of creating action to move, get outside, or exercise, which provide their own benefits.
2. Move your body. Go for a walk or hit a workout.
Being in the same place for too long allows for our thoughts to spiral. Our world is so full of energy and changing the environment can help shift the energy and vary the stimulus to our senses. This can spark new thoughts and new brain activity. Movement really is medicine! Integrating activities like going for a walk, noticing where you are holding on to tension, and using the breath and the mindset to let go of things no longer serving you can be a great way to decrease overwhelming feelings. “The mental benefits of exercise have a neurochemical basis. Exercise reduces levels of the body’s stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also stimulates the production of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that are the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators. Endorphins are responsible for the “runner’s high” and for the feelings of relaxation and optimism that accompany many hard workouts — or, at least, the hot shower after your exercise is over (1).”
3. Use your breath!
We all experience overwhelming feelings. It is normal to be impacted by stress but to use the many tools listed in this article to better manage our physiology. Life can find ways to up regulate and down regulate our systems and our lenses on the world determine how much we value or do not value certain stressors. Something interesting that I thought about recently is that we can go weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without air. Our breath can be one of the most valuable tools for managing stress and serving as a control valve for stress management. Strive to nasal breathe as much as possible in your day to day lives. Obviously with high intensity exercise, mouth breathing may be required, but enhanced nasal breathing during activities of daily living, working, sleeping, and low intensity exercise can be a game changer for your health and physiology management.
Check out the XPT+ app for breathing protocols to help with breathwork guidance. You can also check out the book titled “The Oxygen Advantage” which can be a great tool to better understand how our breath impacts our world. Breathing through the nose can create awareness of the breath and assist with slowing down breathing patterns so its not so rapid and anxious. This type of breathing activates the vagus nerve which regulates our nervous system and helps us control our fight or flight response to down regulate into a rest and digest state (7). Better management of our physiology can help with better decision making, enhanced mood, and a higher quality of life.
Stress will come and go and challenges will always be present, but having access to the right tools can provide a great service to create actionables rather than marinating in stressful situations. So many of us get stressed about being stressed and then feel overwhelmed. These 3 tips will help you when you need it most.
Leave comments below as to how these things have helped you and also please share any additional thoughts you may have that can help others. Send me a message on Instagram (@therealbrycesmith) and share your journey with overcoming challenges and the strategies used to reach a better state.
Citations
Amanda Ruiz MS, LPC. “6 Ways to Cope When You Are Feeling Overwhelmed.” The Counseling Collective, The Counseling Collective, 22 May 2023, www.discovercounselingcollective.com/blog/2020/10/13/6-ways-to-cope-when-you-are-feeling-overwhelmed.
“Exercising to Relax – Harvard Health Publishing.” Harvard Health, 7 July 2020, www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/exercising-to-relax#:~:text=Exercise%20reduces%20levels%20of%20the,natural%20painkillers%20and%20mood%20elevators.
Identity vs. Process: Reinterpreting Failure | Mark England | Tedxrva, www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-6as-5dxSs. Accessed 3 Nov. 2023.
Jäncke, Lutz. “Music, Memory and Emotion.” Journal of Biology, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 8 Aug. 2008, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776393/.
Park, Alice. “The Sun and Your Mood: Why Sunlight Is so Good for You.” Time, Time, 7 Aug. 2017, time.com/4888327/why-sunlight-is-so-good-for-you/.
YouTube, 7 Nov. 2023, https://youtu.be/X4VGGgOuFsU?si=u7uYJy2j67SDzxGF. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
“Are You A Mouth Breather? Learn Why Breathing through Your Nose Is Best.” Henry Ford Health – Detroit, MI, www.henryford.com/blog/2022/10/nose-vs-mouth-breathing. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
The Life Changing Habit You Should Start Today
After many years in high level sports, twelve years of coaching, three years of podcasting, and countless conversations with some of the world’s most incredible humans, I have discovered a common thread in just about all of them.
We are all a bundle of stories. Our worlds are heavily influenced by how we talk to ourselves, and the stories we tell ourselves based on life’s events. Keeping these stories bouncing around in our head isn’t a big deal in the beginning, but overtime, we accumulate more and more stories and without writing them down it becomes an unorganized library with books and pages everywhere.
You see, writing helps us better understand our thoughts, our feelings, the events in our lives, and as I say often, “Writing fills the gaps within our thinking.” It helps us to create meaning. Below is some structure to help with this life changing habit you should start today. The habit is called journaling. I used to get touchy feely about this word and it had a negative connotation for me. So I prefer to think of it as brain dumping and mindset organizing. Let’s unpack this a bit.
Five journaling prompts for any day
If you want to prime yourself for success each day, answer the following 5 questions:
1. What am I grateful for today?
What does this do? It immediately shifts your mind into a positive mindset. Negativity is typically louder and generates more attention than positivity. It can be heavy, overbearing, and block out the positive light from sneaking in. Asking this question each morning helps to leverage the small crack in the blinds into a reservoir of gratitude and magic. I suggest leaning in to show appreciation for waking up, what you have, where you are, the people you love, and the circumstances that you have. This will give you excitement for the day and enhance your mood. For an enhanced thought experiment, ask yourself: What little miracles could happen today?
2. What is the most important task today? Or, which task has been weighing heavy on me recently that when accomplished will be a large weight off of my shoulders?
What does this do? We all have so much going on all the time. In a world with so much stimulus, it’s easy to develop paralysis by analysis and end up in a state of freeze and procrastination. This question gives clarity on your priorities for the day and helps steer you down a path to start. I highly suggest choosing the most important task of the day that is going to move your needle forward closer to your goal. If nothing else were to get done today, this one task should be accomplished and enhance the quality of your life.
Another perspective on the days where it is harder to generate momentum could be: What is the easiest task or lowest hanging fruit on my to do list today? I sometimes like this approach because it builds momentum and usually bridges to other tasks that I can seamlessly cross off my list. This gives me a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of confidence to then attack the bigger tasks that have a larger barrier to entry or may be more difficult in nature.
3. How am I feeling right now?
This is a lost art. Starting from your toes and gradually working your way up your body, check in with yourself and how you are feeling. What are the major thoughts that are taking up a lot of space and time? What are some major wins for you lately? What foods, drinks, and habits are helping versus hurting you? How’s your thinking? Are you feeling clear and concise or foggy and chaotic? This is meant to be a personal exploration to gain insight into where you are in that moment and then can be a great comparison tool for you later.
Documenting it can help keep tabs on your health and wellbeing and enhance your ability to communicate with your doctor, body workers, coaches, and loved ones. Personal pattern recognition can be a wonderful tool for forward progress.This is a really great question to check in with yourself and bring attention to lingering problems, gradual improvements or enhancements based on recent behaviors, or emotions that need some extra attention
4. What’s working right now? What could be better?
I don’t recommend doing this question every single day as it takes some time to generate a pulse on decisions and habits to better see their progress or detriment to our well being and goals. There are obvious ones like food, sleep, relationships, alcohol, etc, but there are also micro moments that can take some time to reveal their impact on our lives. This habit is a great one to access weekly and make sure you are on the right path.
It is helpful to keep our daily habits in alignment with our goals, prevent distractions, and help to course correct when necessary. A great metaphor for this journal prompt is like swimming in open water, it’s necessary to pop your head up on occasion, find some sort of landmark or spot, and then ensure you are swimming in that direction. In swimming and in life, it’s easy to fall off the path if we don’t take a peak on occasion.
5. What noteworthy moment took place yesterday that is worth documenting?
It’s easy to get lost in the mundane of the day to day. We bounce from one thing to another, go to work, eat, solve problems, pay bills, use the restroom, and repeat. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the magic of each day if we don’t carve out the time to highlight it. This is my way of showing appreciation to my life. It feels like nothing happens, but then we look back and our lives change a lot. It is gradual and incremental progress. Just like journaling. It may feel like nothing is happening and that it is another task in your day, but the mental clarity and mindset shifts can do wonders for your performance and relationship with life.
This question also helps to enhance our memory and ability to share stories. I love using it to create pivotal landmarks that heavily impact my life. It is a great way to reflect on an interesting interaction, an observation, a funny moment, and a great conversation. Keep it simple most times and when you feel artsy, add some detail and some color to make the memory more vibrant. We don’t go to our graves with money or stuff, but rather the memories we made along the way.
Summary:
What am I grateful for today?
What is the most important task today? Or maybe, which task has been weighing heavy on me recently that when accomplished will be a large weight off my shoulders?
How am I feeling right now?
What’s working right now? What could be better?
What noteworthy moment took place yesterday that is worth documenting?
This practice doesn’t have to be complicated
I went into great detail of these 5 questions to help mold your mindset, give you prompts and ideas for your own practice, but the truth is, journaling doesn’t have to be a major task!
Oftentimes, I start a 5 minute timer on my phone and I brain dump in each one of these categories. Other days, I write a few words, draw pictures, or write a novel. As humans we are malleable creatures that are never truly the same in the day to day. These habits help us develop routine and self exploration so we can continue to refine our choices and live life on our terms. It is a nice recap to see what is serving us and what isn’t.
It is a nice way for us to better get to know ourselves and have a tool to better connect with and understand each other. Have some fun with this and please let me know how it goes. I had heavy resistance in beginning a writing and journaling practice, but after seeing this as a common thread in most of my high performing clients and podcast guests, I surrendered to the practice of journaling and have never looked back.
I’d love to hear from you so please send me an email to bryce@allsmith.co, or find me on instagram @allsmithco and @therealbrycesmith.