Unilateral

I received this through the JumpUSA enewsletter. I have known this for years but it occurred to me that some of you may not be familiar with this

"Unilateral training - exercising one side of the body at a time - is a very effective training method often overlooked. Unilateral training creates more muscle involvement because of bilateral deficit. This means that the total weight you can lift with each limb working independently is greater than two limbs working together.

Example: The Leg Press. Adding up the weight you can lift with each leg will often be greater than the total weight you can lift with both legs. Because the weight you lift with both legs is less than each leg lifting a weight independently, you have a strength deficit.

Unilateral training also increases the strength of the inactive side. This is a little known fact of neurophysiology. If you do knee extensions with your right leg, your left leg gets a small training effect - without doing anything. Australian researchers found that that fast unilateral training had a greater effect on the untrained limb than slow training did. Unilateral training is a good change of pace, which may boost you to the next level of performance.

J Appl Physiol, 99:1880-1884, 2005"

JumpUSA

Basically doing things with one arm or leg instead of two is more effective. So when doing squats, make them Bulgarian Split Squats, when doing arm curls, do them one armed with dumbbells instead of with a barbell. In general if there is an exercise that you can do with both limbs and a barbell or one limb and a dumbbell then chose the one that works a single limb at a time (make sure that you hit both limbs though).