The Contralateral Strength Training Effect

Some of the most common injuries happen on one side of the body. For example, you may have injured your left shoulder, or your right knee. A return to strength training may take a while, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay out of the gym and just get weaker and weaker.

How would you like to learn about a way to increase the strength of the injured limb without risking further injury and without even exercising it?

Enter Contralateral Training and the Contralateral Strength Training Effect. The word contralateral means “on the other side”. Research has shown that strength training on one side of the body can not only benefit the side worked, but can also benefit the other side of the body.

This crossover effect has been shown to increase the un-worked side’s strength by up to 50% of the benefit derived from the worked side! Another benefit that research has uncovered is that not only does the untrained limb get stronger, but its bone mineral density increases as well. Increased bone mineral density means stronger bones.

Here are some guidelines and recommendations:

1. Always avoid pain: If exercising the healthy muscle(s) causes any increase in the pain of the injured area, either back off (i.e. decrease the intensity) or eliminate the exercise.
2. Effective strength training can be accomplished by performing as few as 2 sets of 5 reps with 80-85% of your max weight 2-3 days per week.
3. This should not constitute the only exercise you are doing for rehab. You should consult with a rehabilitation expert and not only clear this type of training with them, but make sure you have a complete program to heal the injured tissues and return to normal activities.

As a side note, this type of training is not limited to those with injuries. Unilateral training can be a fantastic way to add a new stimulus to your training when you are healthy. Give it a try and break through your plateaus with the contralateral strength training effect.