Help. My left leg is a lot more muscular than my right. The left hamstrings are thicker and the left adductor is bigger than those on the right. It’s been this way from before I lifted weights. I think it came from playing a lot of basketball as a kid and doing running jumps off my left leg. But that was 15 years ago.
I’ve been squatting and deadlifting since and the imbalance is still there. What can I do to correct it? Even now after a couple days of heavy deadlifting and squatting, my left leg is feeling more fatigued. When I’m pushing through sticking points, my left leg contracts harder before I can stop it. The muscles there are always taking over the work.
how long have you been training your legs for? my advice to you, if you have only been deadlifting and squatting for a little while is to give it more time and try to focus on using both legs equally
Mate…what you’ve done in your post is to make a great case for the inclusion of unilateral work in all programs.
When you lift. Your body doesn’t give a shit which muscles you ‘think’ you are targeting. It just moves the load as effectively and biomechanically efficiently as possible.
Try doing a variety of single leg work in your training and let your weak leg define the loads and repetitions.
I am in the same boat. I injured my left leg, and it never came around to equal my right leg. after every leg workout my right leg was much more sore. Eventually I hurt my back because I was using one side more then the other when squatting and deadlifting. I just started unilateral work, but even after that my right leg got more of a workout. I would say focus on the mind body connection, and stay away from 2 legged exercises as you will only be working on leg.
Check out my “Single Leg Supplements” article here on T-Nation; it should help all of you out.
Stay strong
MR
You will die a horribly painful death in less than 48 hours unless you correct this imbalance!
[quote]TRIPNATURE wrote:
You will die a horribly painful death in less than 48 hours unless you correct this imbalance!
[/quote]
Oh crap.
I used to post on the old Weightrainer site (now defunct) and Casey made the point that I established a much better mind-body connection with my left leg with all those years of favoring it for jumping. I became extremely left-legged. I’ve seen it carried to extreme in a couple of guys who mostly played a lot of soccer. I’m trying to address the problem by simply using my right leg more and doing one-leg squats, one-leg deadlifts and one-leg standing high jumps with it.
I’ve been squatting and deadlifting for well over ten years. I’m going to focus on the deadlift from here on because that’s were I get the best results, most hip strength and when I can feel my adductors, hamstrings and glutes on both sides working. On the squat, my left leg muscles contract more on the last couple reps when max effort is demanded, but for some reason that’s not the case with max deads. I should mention I’m very “dead favorable” and can deadlift with good form nearly 50% more than I can squat.