If you have one arm much stronger than the other and it is causing problems during the workout then stand in line. To be truthful only a very few people have same strength in both the arms. But, for many of us this difference in strength can be very much.
The more this gap increase the more intensely it effects our workouts. So, in this article, I will be talking about how can you bridge this gap.
I, myself, have been a victim of this problem. In fact, my problem was pretty severe. I felt this problem most when I was working on my biceps using dumbbells.
It was a frequent occurrence, while my left hand was totally spent after a few reps, my right hand felt totally fresh. So, I had to limit my reps and weight according to what my left hand could handle.
It really started to piss my off. Then I got into thinking. Why? Why is my right hand so strong and my left hand to weak?
How it happened?
One obvious explanation was that I was a right handed, and did major part of my work using the right hand.
But, was this the only explanation. To be truthful, the gap between the strength of both of my hands increased even further after I started body building and lifting weights.
Then, one day I realized that while doing many exercises that required both of my arms together, like pull ups,
biceps cable curls and barbell curls, I used my right arm more than my left. In ideal case, both of the hands should be used equally.
And, for me it was the ultimate explanation.
So, now I had to do two things. Firstly, I had to stop what I was doing wrong and secondly I have to make up for the damage that I have already done.
So, here are the four things I did which helped me to make both of my hands almost equally strong:
1) Started to use my left hand more
It is very common thing. While lifting things or doing some common task we tend to use our dominant hand more. That’s why, it grows stronger. So, I started to use my left hand for most of the common task I did on the regular basis.
For example, earlier to lift a bucket I would use my dominant hand, i.e, my right hand, but now I started using my left hand.
This is one example, you should do all sorts of other tasks with your left hand. Like, opening a screw or whatever. Be creative!
2) Each hand individually
As I said, the mistake I was making is that I was doing lot of exercise in which most of the time both of my hands were being used simultaneously and its natural I was using my right hand more as it was more powerful.
So, the solution to this problem was simple. I started to do exercise that required hands individually. For example, single hand push ups and dumbbell curls instead of barbell.
From what I have learnt. There is no added benefits of using barbell. If you can lift the same weight on dumbbells, it is exactly the same thing.
But, when you use dumbbell, the work is perfectly divided between the two hands.
You can apply this to most of the body parts. Like for example, while doing hammer strength curls, rather than doing both the sides together. You do each side individually.
In all honesty, you can’t apply this trick to every exercise and if you stop doing the exercise in which you need both the arms together you’ll end up missing a lot. So, you need to face that problem.
3) Focus
Now, there is a very important exercise like cable row and barbell row in which you need both the arms together. What now? The answer to this is focus. While exercising, especially, when lifting heavy weights, you must focus on using both the arms equally.
The more you get tried the difficult it will get to focus. But, you have to train yourself to do that. The trick here is to do such exercise at the begin of your workout, when you are most fresh and powerful.
4) More left less right
I know it is very easy to say, focusing on the hand your are using more when your are doing very heavy reps. It happened to me to. But, then I came up with a little trick to solve this issue.
I stopped focusing on both the hands and started to focus on my left hand. All you have to do is think about using the left hand and your stronger right will use itself automatically.
These are few way with which you can increase the strength of your weaker arm. You can think of you own ways too. From what little I have learnt about body building, is the fact, that you need to be creative to have a good physique.
Especially, if you don’t have a trainer.
And, secondly, you can’t expect results in own or two days. You need persistence. And, believe me, you will start to see results sooner than you can think.
