"True" Unilateral Training
By Tate Tobiason, CSCS
With the world grinding to a halt, the economy in shambles and toilet paper disappearing faster than the residual training effects of speed, I have had the time to sit and reflect. Like any good coach, I have spent these last few days thinking and reflecting upon how I can prove to the social media world that I am smarter and know better than the rest of you. I will admit it took me awhile to come up with this idea and it cost me many a sleepless nights, but that is mainly due to my border line unhealthy relationship with caffeine.
Every few months the debate of Bilateral vs. Unilateral training arises again in the darkest realms of social media. Let us end the debate once and for all, because we all know that bilateral training is pointless and the only athlete who ever is on two feet during a game is a certain quarterback’s (who now dresses in red and plays in Florida) backup. However, I shake my head when I see my fellow Unilateral Brothers in iron butchering the benefits of unilateral training.
You see, true unilateral training is not training one side then other side within an Upper-Lower or Strength-Power split. My friends, true unilateral training is splitting our training days into Right and Left training days! By taking advantage of cross-innervation one is able to train both sides of the body while only fatiguing one side at a time!
This training split opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, and may one day lead to an evolutionary fast-forwarding of ambidextrous athlete’s dominating our sporting events. We are on the horizon of something truly magnificent. Just think of all of the possibilities, even those not related to training outcomes. With true unilateral training of you will be able to cut down on useless program writing due to only having to change R to L after each exercise! Then there is the financial relief from being able to only buy half of the dumbbells required for standardized bilateral training, not to mention the amount of money one will get from selling those useless barbells.
Is my thought process flawless and perfect…..without question it is. Remember, your viewpoints are irrelevant to mine and everything is black and white in the realm of performance training.
Tate Tobiason is an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of North Dakota
Please direct all fan/hate mail to trtobiason@yahoo.com
