San Antonio Personal Training

2/13/08

Good Wednesday morning ya'll!  I hope everyone is having a great start to their day.  I know that my boot campers first thing this morning did as most walked out tired, but with a smile on their face.

Today I want to talk with ya'll about muscular imbalances.

I am currently working with a client who is active duty military and is working hard to get his upperbody in the shape he wants it while he rehabs his lower body from an injury.  Since we have been working out, we have found several imbalances in his body and we are working to improve them daily. 

 He has created these imbalances simply by doing the exercises which the Army focuses on such as pushups, situps and long distance running.  One of the major imbalances we have found is between his hip flexors and his abdominal muscles.  In the Army, on a daily basis, he would do endless amounts of situps and leg lifts usually followed by a long distance run.  The problem with this being that as he worked out his abs with the situps he also worked his hip flexors by extending his legs too much.  Then after working his hip flexors during the situps, he would go do a long distance run, where again his hip flexors would get a heavy duty workout!  The problem with this is that overtime he got to where his hip flexors were so much stronger than his abs that he would use his hip flexors when he naturally should have been using his abdominals.  To correct this we have found ways to isolate his abs without engaging his hip flexors, which will allow us to get the abs as strong as his hip flexors thus correcting the imbalance.

The military is not the only reason people have muscular imbalances.  Most of the guys at the gym love to spend time working the chest and the biceps, thereby neglecting the back.  Others will work their abs into a six pack, but forget about their lower back, creating the opportunity for a major injury.

Make sure that as you lift weights you hit "opposite" muscle groups.  An easy way to remember this is for every push exercise you need a pull exercise and for every lower body exercise you need an upperbody exercise.

Be careful not to create imbalances in your muscles because where there is an imbalance there is a chance for injury.  If you are not sure how to keep yourself from creating muscular imbalances then stop in and see either myself or Hector for a 30min. or hour session and we can teach you how to avoid muscular imbalances.

Make it a great day San Antonio!

Nicholas Wood

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