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    Home » Fitness Tips For Moms

    15 Unilateral Exercises For Muscle Imbalance

    Please consult your physician before beginning any exercise program.  See full disclaimer
    Pinterest image with text: woman in purple shirt and black pants pressing a band overhead as as a unilateral exercise

    Get stronger and prevent injuries by using these unilateral exercises for muscle imbalance. These exercises work one limb at a time to help you develop muscles, joints, and improve your core.

    I have an advertisement relationship with the ads in this post. Check out my disclaimer here
    Three images of a woman performing single leg exercises with text between the images.

    Ever wonder why one leg is stronger than the other. Or notice discomfort only on one side of your body? Thanks to our daily habits, we naturally have some muscle imbalances.

    Moms especially tend to have muscle imbalances from not only carrying kids but our posture throughout that first year holding babes. Naturally, your body adapts to the way you hold kids and leaves one side stronger than the other.

    As a Certified Strength Coach, I prioritize unilateral exercises in my signature SMASH home workouts to help correct these imbalances and get women stronger in just 25 minutes a day.

    Mom in a bright bikini and blue hat on the beach holding a baby in a sunhat. mom has a very arched low back.

    Benefits Of Unilateral Training

    Strength: Incorporating unilateral exercises into your workouts helps you get stronger as one muscle can't rely on the other to get the job done.

    Reduced injury risk: By strengthening weak links throughout our body and correcting muscle imbalances, we naturally reduce our risk of getting hurt.

    Core strength: Unilateral exercises mean you're using a lot of unbalanced positions and your body has to fight to stay upright. This forces your core muscles to kick in and is more effective than many ab exercises.

    How To Use Unilateral Exercises

    Scroll through the list of unilateral exercises below and choose your exercises based on where you are capability-wise and what you feel you're weak in. Know that these exercises are "big bang for your buck" exercises and will target as many muscles as possible.

    If you need smaller, isolation exercises, you'll want to look more into your specific imbalance.

    Pick 3-4 exercises and work them into your weekly program.

    The most effective unilateral exercises are the ones you'll actually do!

    Unilateral Exercises For Lower Body

    These exercises may seem tame on a screen but when you’re performing them with control, they’re anything but!

    Maximize your results by really focusing on slow, controlled repetitions and engaging the muscles you should be.

    Single Leg Squat To Marker

    How often are we standing up/sitting down while trying to balance something?

    This exercise is amazing for hitting not just your legs but your entire body in one of the most primal movements: the squat.

    Many people avoid it for fear that they will be unable to stabilize their knees (learn more about strengthening your knees). But the trick isn't avoiding it, it's both strengthening the glutes as well as making use of a marker (bench). The focus needs to be in keeping the knee inline with the pinky toe and not letting it cave inward.

    The better you get, the lower the bench or marker can go. Or, begin by using assistance like TRX straps so you have complete control of the resistance placed on the leg.

    Lunges

    Lunges of any sort are a great way to train unilaterally and will improve everything from the leg muscles themselves to the hip and ankle joints. Consider the following variations or check out these lunge variations for glutes.

    • Reverse lunge
    • Resistance band lunges
    • Lateral lunge
    • Deficit lunge
    • Cross balance lunge
    Woman in grey shirt and black shorts performing a dumbbell lunge

    Bulgarian Split Squats

    This exercise is a love/hate for absolutely everyone. But no one can deny it’s effective!

    You can actually adjust this unilateral exercise to target more quadriceps or more glutes/hamstrings based on how you position yourself. You can also vary the exercise in resistance (check out this banded Bulgarian split squat).

    Crossack Squats

    Taking lateral lunge to a whole new level. The crossack squat requires a ton of ankle and hip mobility but the benefits of this exercise are worth the effort. If needed, use a support in front of you as you or, elevate the heel of the working leg and slowly work your way down.

    Step Ups

    Step-ups in any form (high step-ups, lateral step-ups) will be beneficial.The best place to start is by using a lower step and slowly advancing to high, un-weighted step-ups.

    Other things to consider are using a controlled descent to maximize strength.

    Woman in black pants and sports bra holding a dumbbell at her waist with one leg up on a bench about to do a step up and arrows and text around it for tips on performing

    Single Leg Glute Bridge

    Strong glutes come with an insane amount of benefits (read why you should train glutes). And of course, the glute muscles look good when strong too!

    This single-leg, gluten bridge variation is perfect to get your bum firing. Make sure you lead with the glute though and not your low back. However, first learn how to engage glutes.

    If you're really serious about improving your glutes, you can check out a few of my favorite glute exercises as well as these fun glute bridge variations.

    Woman in sports bra and shorts performing a slingle leg glute bridge off a bench

    Unilateral Hamstring Curl

    Hamstrings are both a knee flexor and a hip extender- they're pretty important. On top of their functions, hamstrings are prone to injury.

    Keep the back of your legs strong and not only will your posture improve but your chance of injury will decrease. This applies to all posterior chain exercises.

    Supported Single Leg Deadlift

    Though all single leg deadlifts are wonderful for teaching the hip hinge and strengthening the hamstring muscles, the supported variation is the best for beginners.

    Single Leg Hip Thrust

    Glute training at its finest, the single leg hip thrust is a great way to develop horizontal power while correcting imbalances from side to side.

    Unilateral Exercises For The upper Body

    Far too often we only look at training single-limb exercises for our legs.

    But using this training style on our upper body is important to! It promotes control which in turn develops strength which then makes daily things (like carrying!) easier.

    And just as important as single-arm strength is making sure your shoulder can support the movement! Use these unilateral shoulder mobility drills as a warm-up.

    Single Arm Shoulder Press

    As a mom, our shoulders get a workout each and every day! The truth is, just carrying your babes is a unilateral workout 😛

    Chances are, you carry your babes on one side more often than the other. This is fine, except that it creates a bit of an imbalance. Make sure both of your shoulders are strong by performing this single-arm press.

    This upper body exercise helps keep your shoulders strong. It also requires a lot of stability to keep the body upright and in good posture. Remember, you can switch it up by doing this exercise seated or standing and with a resistance band or dumbbells.

    • Half kneeling shoulder press
    • Z-press
    Woman in purple shirt and dark pants performing a single arm shoulder press with a resistance band

    Single Arm Row

    Rowing should be a crucial part of ANY training program.

    Single-arm rowing is even better Bentover rows, seated high rows and renegade rows are all amazing ways to row with just one arm. Check out more back exercises to really nail down postural support.

    Single Arm Chest Press

    This can be done as a floor press (for more support) or as a flat back dumbbell press (more advanced).

    Regardless, not allowing one arm to take over for the other in a press is difficult. It’s always a great way to make the shoulder stabilize.

    Unilateral “Core” Exercises

    Let’s not forget about direct core work! Remember, part of the job of the trunk muscles is to prevent movement like in these plank alternatives. Training unilaterally inforces that.

    The below exercises challenge your body perfectly because they force the core to do its job. That said, technically all unilateral exercises are core work! Each one requires more stability than a bi-lateral exercise which makes your core work double time.

    Single Arm Farmers Carry

    I freaking adore farmers' carries. There are so many ways to do them. They are also one of the most functional, and effective core exercises I know of.

    You actually do farmers' carries all the time (say what!?). When you carry your babes in a car seat! Only chances are, you do this by leaning into your body versus standing upright.

    To make this task easier.. train it! Strengthen the muscles to make the day to day task easier. And training them individually will keep you more balanced.

    Traditional single arm farmers carries are great. However, don’t forget about overhead carries or even bottoms up kettlebell walks.

    Side Planks

    A classic exercise that trains one part of your core at a time. This exercise comes with a ton of variations to keep it progressing. Add on:

    • Abductions
    • Hip dips
    • A rotation with the upper arm

    Parlof Press

    This exercise should be a staple in all programs because it’s perfect for learning to stabilize.

    It requires you to resist rotation in a variety of ways. You can do this exercise, standing, with a staggard stance, kneeling or even add it in to other exercises like the deadbug. Parlof presses are the foundation of STRENGTH.

    Woman in orange pants and black sports bra performing a band press out (called a parlof press) while standing with a red strength band attached to a squat rack

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    • Glute isolation exercises
    Pinterest image with text: woman in blue shirt anf bright pants performing a unilateral exercise with text blocks over the image

    Common Questions About Unilateral Exercises

    What are unilateral exercises good for?

    Unilateral exercises help improve sport performance, boost strength in the core muscles, correct muscle imbalances and prevent injury. They’re a great addition to a workout program because they can be scaled to each individual level.

    What are unilateral strength exercises?

    Common unilateral strength exercises include pistol squats, high step-ups, one arm push-ups and one-arm pull-ups. However, many of these strength exercises have regressions even beginners can work into their programs.

    What is the difference between bilateral and unilateral exercises?

    Bilateral exercises train both limbs at the same time where as unilateral exercises train only one. Think of a squat: a regular squat with both feet on the ground is a bi-lateral exercises. A unilateral variation would be a single-leg (or pistol) squat.

    More Fitness Tips For Moms

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    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. frankland

      April 22, 2017 at 6:02 pm

      great exercises, thank you for sharing!

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        April 23, 2017 at 1:04 am

        Thanks!

        Reply
    2. Melissa

      June 21, 2017 at 4:11 pm

      Single leg glute bridges and single leg squats are two of my favourite exercises to include in a lower body workout. I definitely find that having to focus on one side at a time increases my mind-body connection as well, so I end up getting a better workout than if I were doing both sides at the same times. Thanks for sharing these. Great tips!

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        June 22, 2017 at 12:45 am

        I love it Melissa! You definitely need to focus SO much more when you're rocking unilateral exercises which is perfect because you contract the muscles more and thus see better results. Plus, it's easy for one side to take over for the other with bilateral exercises so it's nice to switch it up.

        Reply
    3. Oh to Be a Muse

      June 21, 2017 at 4:20 pm

      These are all really good exercises, mom or no mom. I need to get back to the grind.

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        June 22, 2017 at 12:44 am

        They definitely work for non moms too! They rock because they get you strong!

        Reply
    4. Kimberly Hsieh

      June 21, 2017 at 7:28 pm

      Not a mom, but I will definitely do these exercises!

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        June 22, 2017 at 12:43 am

        I promise they work for non moms too 😀

        Reply
    5. Christine

      June 22, 2017 at 1:02 am

      Man, I wish I had the drive like you to work out. I had a baby one year ago and my body does not look like yours and it because I do nothing! I better get it together! Thanks for sharing these exercises. I'll pin this and refer back to it for motivation.

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        June 22, 2017 at 1:23 am

        Everyone has different priorities so don't beat yourself up! I'm personally just a freakishly rigid person when it comes to my workouts but it wasn't always that way (it's been a very long journey: https://fitasamamabear.com/journey-to-health/). My advice is to pick a form of fitness you actually enjoy and start there. It takes a long time to create routine and it won't happen if you hate it but every little bit counts 🙂

        Reply
    6. Jenn

      June 22, 2017 at 1:13 pm

      These are great exercises! I have been getting back into it.

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        June 22, 2017 at 11:27 pm

        Congrats on jumping back in!

        Reply
    7. Ant

      June 24, 2017 at 12:25 pm

      Love how you show the exercise move/form and then show which part of the body that will help tone. I need to get back to working out. Your blog is pretty helpful.

      Reply
      • fitasamamabear

        June 25, 2017 at 1:22 am

        Thanks! I'm glad it was helpful!

        Reply

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