Unilateral training

Unilateral exercise is commonly involved in comprehensive training regimes and especially those of professional sports people and athletes.

[2] Significantly, running is considered to be a unilateral action as it involves alternating between using the legs singly.

On this basis, unilateral exercises are considered to be highly functional, in that the improved sense of balance that they help to develop, transfers well to most sports and athletics where the participants are more likely to need to balance on one leg and perform an action, or move through a range of movement using only one leg as a base of support.

Such an imbalance may be the result of lifestyle factors, such as sitting at a computer using a mouse, or from training in an imbalanced way, or for other reasons.

With unilateral training, however, the person definitely performs the same amount of work with either side of their body and this can therefore mean that the muscle imbalance is resolved.

[7] As unilateral exercises can improve a person's sense of balance, correct muscle imbalances and improve the harmonious functioning of the muscular system, and transfer effectively to the performance of sports specific movements, they can also help to prevent injury as the practitioner becomes more capable and stronger in general, than if they only performed bilateral exercises.

This is because even though unilateral and bilateral exercises may yield similar results, there can also be significant differences and the use of one and not the other may mean potentially advantageous outcomes are lost.

The ratio of unilateral to bilateral exercises can be adjusted based upon the specific requirements of the training regime.

[12] The ongoing stabilisation and reinforcement of the centre of mass, has a reciprocal benefit in that it enables the limbs to move from a more stable platform and thereby improves the efficiency of their movement.

[17] How the nervous system activates in conjunction with the moving limb is considered to be of particular importance in understanding the underlying causes of the effect, which are not as of yet fully understood.

[18] In situations whereby one limb cannot be moved for some reason, the cross education effect can be used to strengthen it, improve agility, and prevent muscle atrophy etc.

This can make it useful for the rehabilitation of sports injury, training people with a lateral imbalance of motor skills, or mobility impairments such as that suffered by stroke victims who may not be able to use one side of their body.