The growing Gap

BobTbay

BobTbay

Mr. Nice Guy
Trusted Member
Well some of you know my primary goal is overall health and weight loss and I've never done a cycle and probably never will but I try to exercise 6 days a week I've been pretty strongly influenced by the writings of Mike mentzer and his one set to failure technique so that's what I do and I really like it because it's not boring going to True failure is somewhat painful perhaps even more than somewhat painful.

So the issue I'm having is there's a growing gap between the strength and my dominant arm and my non-dominant arm for instance I use 22 lb dumbbell curls and with that I've worked my way up to I can do about 34 reps strict form with my left and about 45 strict reps with my right obviously without warm up on both arms.

by my calculations that's more than 30% increase in reps from my left arm to my right arm and I do my left arm first to try to give it a bit of an advantage I've also noticed over the past several months that my right bicep is getting larger and more defined than my left bicep. Well I don't want to be completely misshapened but I do want to continue growing with both my right and left arms I'm not really a bodybuilder because I used to be morbidly obese at 400 lb I don't really have the type of body where I can take my shirt off and be proud of my new physique all I can really say is that I look pretty good in clothes and I have functional strength since I'm a paraplegic navigating the world was stronger arms than most and particularly stronger grip I do train grip twice a week and I can do 250 lb heavy grips but also with the difference between the two hands I can do 250 every pound heavy grips and make the handles click together on average three or four times with my left hand but I can do seven times with my right hand.

So yeah I'm experiencing a growing great Gap between the strengths of my dominant and non-dominant muscle groups and it's beginning to be a little concerning because on average it's about 30% increase in reps but a 30% increase in reps because the final reps are the hardest is a significantly greater than 30% a difference in strength and ability and if I keep this up at some point it may start to be noticeable even in clothes

so I'm wondering if anyone else has a gap between what they're capable of or whether they simply do the more traditional thing which is to equalize the number of reps on each arm or what

my Hope Is the Gap will begin to shorten as one arm reaches its genetic potential maximum sooner than the other and then the other one will catch up

well I think you will for reading this somewhat long tome.

You see I got a Chromebook and it has on it the free talk to type program I'm sure it's not new it's probably very old I remember Dragon Naturally Speaking 20 years ago which was terrible but this program seems to work really surprisingly well and I'm beginning to like it having used it both here and to write things in my journal and in other places I feel like I'm in Star Trek and this is the Captain's Log no not that log you dirty bastards

the only real downside to this Chromebook is that i haven't figured out the commands for punctuation

thank you for your time and thoughts on this matter I read a lot but I have yet to get my hands on a physiology of exercise textbook; I did however just recently get my hands on a nutrition textbook from the University of Hawaii and I can send you the link to where I got it if you're interested since I take Sundays off of exercising I've decided to replace it with an hour on Sundays of reading about First Nutrition and then when I get the proper textbook exercise physiology I'm open to textbook suggestions for that keeping in mind I'm not rich and don't want to pay five or $600 for a textbook
 
The Old Guy said:
Can you get heavier dumbells as the rep count is too high and isn’t really strength as much as it’s becoming endurance. Also not sure if you can but if you can do reverse close grip pulldowns, they are a fantastic bicep exercise.
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I don't have access to a machine, so reverse grip lat pulldowns are out, I did find lat pulldowns with dumbells demonstrated here.

but I'm skeptical. I'm not sure bikini fit knows exactly what she's doing.

I did just buy a single Bowflex selectech 552 dumbell for myself on Black Friday, maybe I should put that into use. It goes to 52lbs

I have thought it would be nice to do a heavier weight, as with the lower weight And really High Reps my muscles are just screaming just howling for like the last 15 plus reps, it's really quite painful.

if you were me what kind of rep range would you look for to start over again?
 
A lot of strength is neurological, as is fatigue a protective mechanism our body is trying to prevent injury with, as fatigue sets in while we still have plenty of unused energy.

I mean especially the dominant side unilateral imbalance, first of all our body is asymmetrical from inside out. There is a liver on the right side and the right diaphragm is larger in humans, naturally, yes it happens naturally, pigs for instance are not right handed or left handed but still their diaphragms are just as asymmetrical. https://elifesciences.org/articles/18481

Our left and right brain hemispheres have different functions too, and our circulatory system works asymmetrically.

This all means to me that you can't expect things to subside on their own without deliberately training the non-dominant side more. You can try to "activate" the weaker side by playing with foot orthotics, by chewing on one side of the palate, etc. In fact, simply trying to train the weaker side is useless as long as it isn't "activated", if for example, your jaw is shifted to one side because of tоoth аsymmеtries, it will lead to asymmetrical whole body stability issues and neck muscle imbalances, altering your breathing patterns and which side ribcage expands and contracts improperly upon inhalation and exhalation, etc..
 
i mean when i’ve had imbalances, i’ve just matched my weaker side with my dominant side. so instead of going that extra 30% with your right arm, stop where you failed with the left arm.
Also, if it’s your non dominant arm, doing things such as opening doors with it, brushing your teeth etc. with it, will make it be more coordinated, which may also cause better performance just from the extra coordination.
 
In 2012 I completely severed my Right arm which has been reattached. I have serious nerve damage and had several nerve and arterial grafts. I lack a pec minor and only have a partial front delt with no long head of the bicep. It is significantly weaker than my left. I cannot extend it overhead or out in front in of me. My wrist is is broken and frozen, my grip is pretty weak. Bone necrosis from a failed arterial graft has made recovery difficult.

The neurologist informed me my left will never get much bigger than my right as the body seeks balance naturally. Like you I train volume not heavy. It has gotten stronger. Age can play a serious role in recovery. I can DB bench 90 lbs with my left, but only 30 lbs with my right.

I have overworked and strained the left trying to make up the difference repeatedly.

It just is what it is. I seek incremental progress.

Sometimes shit sucks. I support your efforts and respect what you do.

GP
 
@BobTbay
I have a headache so point form... Gonna be blunt.
First, the only thing I'm 100% sure of in this reply. That exercise is brutally misnamed. It shouldn't have the word Lat or Pulldown in it. Putting tension on the lats during that move is like flexing your calves during bench press, we don't call those calf raises. And there is no "pulling down" going on. It's a terrible side lateral at best.
Your case is complicated as hell.
Serious as hell in my mind too. Fuck the aesthetic part of this, you need to be able to function.
Keep that arm moving as much as possible all day.
Common guy training with a lil imbalance I'd echo "do the weak arm first, match those reps with the other" but you are not in the common guy category, this is already dramatic.
I knew a guy with this issue and know of several others, Bas Rutten is a public one you could read about.
I'd suspect a nerve issue(neck), damage or "pinched", maybe your posture remains static for too long each day or something? Fingers crossed a chiro or physio/massage might be able to help
Doesn't matter what I, some clown on the internet, thinks. Have it assessed ASAP.
Could you have an anchor for some bands or a pulley installed up high to work the pulldown function of the lats?

Concerned for you Sir, Best wishes
 
gondar1 said:
@BobTbay
I have a headache so point form... Gonna be blunt.
First, the only thing I'm 100% sure of in this reply. That exercise is brutally misnamed. It shouldn't have the word Lat or Pulldown in it. Putting tension on the lats during that move is like flexing your calves during bench press, we don't call those calf raises. And there is no "pulling down" going on. It's a terrible side lateral at best.
Your case is complicated as hell.
Serious as hell in my mind too. Fuck the aesthetic part of this, you need to be able to function.
Keep that arm moving as much as possible all day.
Common guy training with a lil imbalance I'd echo "do the weak arm first, match those reps with the other" but you are not in the common guy category, this is already dramatic.
I knew a guy with this issue and know of several others, Bas Rutten is a public one you could read about.
I'd suspect a nerve issue(neck), damage or "pinched", maybe your posture remains static for too long each day or something? Fingers crossed a chiro or physio/massage might be able to help
Doesn't matter what I, some clown on the internet, thinks. Have it assessed ASAP.
Could you have an anchor for some bands or a pulley installed up high to work the pulldown function of the lats?

Concerned for you Sir, Best wishes
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I have developed an odd asymmetry where my left grip strength is dramatically stronger and I stand on the left leg by default despite being right handed. I could go into details... my left ribcage got closer to the pelvis than on the right, left scanlenes forced to be overactive it's really noticeably pulling on ribs and skull... none of these bothered me prior to teen years... there really are plenty of public figures with similar experiences and some have it figured out. I found one with generally the same issue but going into the opposite direction as me, it was Nеаl Hаllinan who also grew up with palatal asymmetries which among other pathways, through neck muscle asymmetry, led to full body asymmetry. His palate, as he showed maxillar impression in videos, was the exact opposite of my maxilla. In general, as anyone would see on researchgate, when one side has a posterior crossbite, the mandible deviates to the other side to prevent tongue biting. Just the shift (for many to the right, for me to the left) leads to overactive neck muscles on the right. The side on which muscles such as sternocleidomastoid is overactive pull the temporal bone into internal rotation, which leads to the eye socket being positioned higher than the other side (left eye higher for me) and that is accompanied by the maxilla turning to the same side where the eye is elevated. If anyone has any form of malocclusion, you can bet 100% it has to do with it.

This is important: it is as difficult to relax a muscle that is compressed by the bones, as it is to contract a stretched muscle. That's why crowds of physical therapists and massage therapists and chiros and who ever else isn't aware of it, will engage in what should probably be called... "muscular masturbation". Just jacking up a muscle when the problem is in the bone! Take lateral pelvic tilt for another example. Some would see that one side has an overactive glute medius and the other side has an overactive rectus femuris. But stretching them will not do anything at all because you've got the whole package, ALL muscles surrounding it are asymmetrically overactive, and the overactivity will cease instantly as soon as tr bone position is no longer compressing these muscles.
 
Will try to keep this short but I have a gap in strength but not as much as you. I was diagnosed with a virus that attacked my nervous system many moons ago and as such lost strength and size on one side of my body. It has pretty much disappeared but this wasn't a 14 day virus - this was a few years of being really messed up and my body learning to cope with the difference over an extended period of time.
Anyway, I do exercises many people don't for reasons we don't need to get into but a few are heavy wrist curls with DB's, 1 arm DB floor presses, and put a decent amount of weight on one side of the old style DB's so you have a handle on one side and weight on the other side. The exercise is like using a hammer but only moving your hand/wrist like with a heavy hammer.
I am right arm dominant - always have been. In sports my right side is typically the arm that wants to be used and I had to learn to be ambidextrous as much as possible in different sports.
Even though my right side should be the larger side, it is (now) barely noticeable but I am definitely stronger in the left arm for the 3 exercises I mentioned. There are others but the difference is a few reps. As far as development, strangely enough my right arm is much more vascular even though it isn't as strong or quite as big - same for my chest.
It really doesn't impact my life at all but it did when it hit me decades ago and yes I had a MRI, spinal tap, blood work, saw 3 neurologists as it isn't normal after a bad cold/flu to lose almost all your reflexes on one side of the body.
I would get heavier weight (per @The Old Guy 's recommendation) and work harder to equal it out - as you said the gap is growing. Regardless you mention being a paraplegic and the fact you are working out and losing weight and working out is impressive. Do what you can and if one arm is slightly stronger than the other - I wouldn't worry about but a significant difference might warrant a visit to a neurologist but that is up to you.
Regardless, congrats on sticking with it and pushing yourself vs. feeling bad for yourself. I hope you figure it out, best luck.
 
I just would start with the weaker arm and only lift the same amount with the stronger arm, it will balance out after a bit of doing that
 
You’re a wheelie boy, yeah? Think of how much more you use your arms, my guy. Getting in and out of bed, lavatories, fuck even just maneuvering around if you don’t have a power chair, like making more right or left turns in your house. I’d guess you’re more likely to lead, and brace with your dominant hand getting out of the chair? If you’re using your arms a fuck of a lot more to get around, differences are probably going to get pronounced over time.

I’d say bump the frequency on the weaker arm. Like if you’re hitting arms Monday and Friday, do some extra sets on your weak side on Wednesday. If you’re hitting 20 reps on Monday, use the same weight but stop at 10-15 on Wednesday. You’re not trying to fatigue it, just use it and get some blood going, really focusing on quality and mind muscle connection. Your body will send muscle where it feels it needs it. Sometimes(at least for me), increasing the frequency helps my body to even shit out.
 
I personally think anyone that is in a chair long term, should take trt. I have a nephew in a motorized chair, and I know for a fact, he wouldn't have broken his femur when his buddy fell on him putting him to bed (they were drunk) because his bone density would be better. He is now 52, and you can see how his body has shifted from sitting all the time and I think it would have prolonged that from happening.

I would bet if his hormone levels were checked his test would be very low.

Trt may help to an extent with the imbalances as well.
 
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