Hi everyone,

I know there is naturally a muscular imbalance between the right side of the body and left, and that we as humans are not perfectly symmetrical creatures.

I am recovering from a left shoulder injury, and building up the strengh in my left Trapezius, Teres Major and Deltoid. However I have noticed that the right side of my body is becoming more developed. Especially in the Latissimus Dorsi. During deadlifts I can feel my right Vastus Lateralus, Gluteus, and Tatissimus Dorsi being more solid like they are doing most of the pull and the left side is just helping the push.

I am looking for a dumbbell routine / workout suggestions that could isolate each side to help balance them out.

Sorry to hear about your issue bro.

Have you seen this yet?

(Info: I had to delete 2 of your threads, as you had 3 times created the same thread - so i cleaned this up to only this one here)

Scott already gave you a good advice here.

Depending on 'how long' you already work out, it can also take time until both bodysides start to even out and become more close to one another.

With having had an injury (i can tell from myself - hence i have a partial rip in my left pectoralis muscle, and a slight twist in my spine) you need to pay really close attention to 'perfect form'.

Always make sure that you have a mind-muscle connection to all in the exercise involved muscles. (good way to get that connection is in the warmup sets)

And then try to 'mentally' activate all of them the same way. To have your brain focused on the involved muscles helps a lot... and will prevent one important thing from happening:

false rewired movement pattern.

You need to know, that our bodies are absolute masters in adaption to whatever problem we have. So i.e. if we hurt our left leg, we 'hobble' and shift things to the right. But this can happen also way more 'subtile' especially with things like a calming down injury or not so obvious stuff.. and your brain will begin to recrute the region of issue differently from the rest, which can lead to a fairly big area of influence, since our bodies are build on a kinetic chain (spine/skeleton). Which is also why just the fact that your shoulder was hurt can even influence areas down into your lats or even further.

On top of that comes the fact - as you discovered already too - that we are not 100 % symetrical either.

So don't make the mistake to treat the 'broken' side more extreme to make it 'cope'. Try in fact to treat it as your main indicator. Meaning do everything with that side first, and then do the same amount of reps on your other side.

Pay attention to form, muscle activation / recruitement (as said above).

And give it time, it can take a while until it starts to even out.

If your latissimus dorsi is quite visibly bigger on the right site, maybe have a check at an orthopaedic doctor / physician. Maybe you have a slight scoliosis too (spine bend / twist) as i have that issue too and that can be a sign for it. It can make your ripcage pertrude a tad more on one side on the back, or having muscles on one side of the bend/twist being recruited differently/stronger to even out the imbalances that the spine is producing due to its misalignment.

Cheers!

Thanks Scott and crood.

@Scott - I actually do lift by focusing on my negative reps, and focus to not do the jerky/wiggling movements like you demonstrated.

The current excersises I do to focus on balancing out my lower/upper back are:

-Straight bar Romanian / Sumo Deadlifts with 135lb for 10-12 reps of 4-5 sets

-Single leg back extension on a 45% bench with bodyweight or 25lb

-Bent over dumbbell rows one arm at a time with 40-60lb, increasing the weight from low to high each set

-Wide wrip pull ups til failure

-Bent over dumbbell back fly 10-15 lbs til failure

-Dumbbell pull over 60lb for 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps

Got any other suggestions or ideas how to approach this?