Muscle Symmetry: Make Your Body A Masterpiece

Everyday you look in the mirror hoping to see changes in your body. These changes can range from tighter glutes to bigger biceps. Body image is very popular these days and it is most important in the sport of bodybuilding. Looking sloppy onstage means you didn’t peak properly and did not prep for the contest properly. Sometimes people look shredded yet something seems to be off and the “naked eye” cannot quite decifer what it is exactly. Upon further examination and scrutiny people realize their body does not possess the proper symmetry. This is far too common with the beachbody community, and the arms and chest are massive compared to their chicken legs. Let’s dive in and see just why this happens and ways to combat this in the future.

It is hot and muggy, you are tired and feel out in space, and it’s leg day. As the time approaches to go to the gym, your mind decides to start telling you it won’t be a good leg day. You sit there and go through the exercises on the docket for today and realize your mind is on the right track. You decide to skip leg day today and do it tomorrow. Tomorrow rolls around and you realize that you took a day off yesterday, which pushes the rest of your workouts back unless you take another off day after your rotation. The other solution is to let it slide and not do your leg training this time and you’ll make up for it next time.

It is pretty obvious in the above scenario to see why someone has chicken legs compared to any other bodypart. Most people would not have a problem skipping legs because most people pay attention to other areas of the body before the legs. This is fine for the most part because who needs symmetry, right? Everyone needs symmetry, because your body works on a system of balance. If you skip your legs for the next couple weeks you will see that your other lifts will be affected as well. This happens because your body requires a system of balance and requires you to train your entire body. Now that we understand the above portion, we are still left to understand how to build symmetry. Well, lesson 1 was just covered, and that lesson was; don’t EVER skip a workout.

Let’s move to lesson 2, and we will begin it with a story. I used to work at a gym and I thousands of people training in thousands of different ways, but one stuck out in particular. A gentleman was doing a circuit workout, and at this point was doing arm curls with a 25 pound dumbbell in one hand and a 30 in the other. That is correct, two different sized dumbbells. Now, as a trainer you do not want to come off as conceded so approach the situation with logic which is what I did. The gentleman told me he knew that his left arm was weaker but he didn’t want his right arm to suffer. The days of training, ahhh how I miss those days of wondering how people design their workouts. This is a pretty obvious example of how muscle imbalance occurs, but it’s not always this obvious. Each person needs to take a good look in the mirror and decide which muscle(s) require more attention. If you are of the lucky few that do not have this problem, then congratulations and keep hitting the weights hard. For the other 99%, please continue reading this article. Most of us began training based on observation of others and continued on from that point. We saw people pairing certain exercises together to make a workout and we learned from that point. Others saw magazines and read for days and put together their workouts. The issue that occurs in most is certain muscle groups respond better to certain training intensities. This is where science steps in to tell us that if we possess more fast twitch fibers within a muscle, the best stimulus is low repetition, heavy compound movements. On the other end, if a person possesses more slow twitch fibers then it is best to use moderate weights and moderate to high repetitions. This can lead you to an experiment to see how quickly your muscle fatigue by using a percent of your one rep max, but this is beyond the scope of this article. Lesson 2 is to take a good look in the mirror to decide which muscle groups are bigger than other muscle groups. Some people will have small legs compared to their upper body. Others will have very large arms and a flat chest. There are many possibilities, you just need to be true to yourself and decide which muscles need more work.

Work is the topic of lesson 3, and it does not mean get a job (which is quite tough in this economy). This means working out, and what you should do to balance this equation. There are many ways to bring up weak bodyparts, but you need to decide which method works best for you. Some methods are; increase the volume of the lagging body parts, decrease the volume of the bigger bodyparts, train with heavier weights with the lagging bodyparts, and decrease the frequency of your bigger body parts. Each of these methods have their benefits, but it is up to the individual to decide which will work best. Unfortunately, handing out training advice will not get you very far because you do not understand the science behind the training involved. It is best to take the advice above and research which exercises and which methods will work best to bring up those lagging bodyparts.

Training advice is offered on the DS Supplements Forum, www.dssupplements.com/forum/forum.php or for direct questions regarding this article, email: Brandon@dssupplements.com

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