One-sided Attack

Unilateral exercises allow you to better target muscles

- Gregg Merritt

YOUR MOM MIGHT

be nagging you to pair up for good, but sometimes it’s best to stay single. So it is in the gym, where it can be highly effective to place all your focus on one side and none on the other. In fact, it’s such a positive that you should include at least one unilateral exercise for all the reps for the opposite side. Either way forces you to focus more on stabilizing the weight. If you do machine flyes or pec deck flyes with a single side at a time, you can bring your hand past your sternum to better target your inner pecs.

BACK

This is an easy each body part in every workout, and, as we’ll demonstrate, there are enough options to do all your exercises single-sided.

CHEST

The one-arm dumbbell bench press can be performed by either alternating sides or holding one dumbbell up while you pump out body part to work unilaterally because there are so many excellent rowing exercises. Here are three: one-arm dumbbell row, one-arm low-cable row, and, especially with a unilateral machine, one-arm machine row. You can also do one arm pull downs, with either a unilateral machine or with a D-handle at an overhead cable station.

CORE