Muscle Balance

Why is Muscle Balance Important?

Muscle Balance is vital for to injury prevention. Whether you chose to train for bodybuilding, powerlifting, crossfit, perform calisthenics or training to peak in your sport, you need to focus on muscle balance. Optimal muscle balance enhances the function and length, and reduces the incidence of training related injuries.

"Athletes should always focus on injury prevention before focusing on performance enhancement" - Quoted by the world's famous physical preparation coach Ian King. 

Push Pull Ratios

I am sure many of you are familiar with the term ' Push Pull Ratios '. But however there are people do not truly understand about the entire concept. 

In Simple terms, when you do pushing movements you will have to do a pulling movement to negate the negative effects of the pushing movement. For every form of training there will definitely be the advantages to training it but however there will definitely be side effects which needs to be addressed. For example if you were to do plenty of pressing movements and neglect pulling movements, there will be higher chances of injuring your shoulder as compared to a person who does a larger amount of pulling movements. There optimal push pull ratios are required!

The general rule of thumb of push pull ratios is 1:1. However there are people who want to bulletproof their shoulders or perhaps train for their sport specificity, they perform up to 2:1 or 3;1 of pulling to pushing.

One simple way to calculate push pull ratios would be based on the total volume of the movements.

Volume = Weight lifted  X  Repetitions Performed  X  Number of Sets

So which part of the Push Pull Ratios do people get confused about?

Something that I have learnt from Ian King is that people assume a push is a push and a pull is a pull. However, they should factor in the planes of movement. 

The two main planes of movement will be Vertical & Horizontal. So essentially it is optimal to be able to balance the Vertical Push with the Vertical Pull (Scapula Depressor) as well as to balance the Horizontal Push with the Horizontal Pull (Scapula Retractors). Please refer to the table below for a references of pushing and pulling movements. 

Examples of exercises in each category

Something interesting to take note of is also Strength Balance.  This concept is popularised by Canadian strength and conditioning coach Charles Poliquin. Refer to the image attached for upper body strength balance targets:

In Reference to Tnation.com

Ratios for Lower Body Training

For lower body movements, the main focus would be classified into Hip Dominant Movements & Quad Dominant Movements. The easiest way to differentiate if the movement is a Hip Dominant or a Quad Dominant angle would be the torso angle during the movement. In general, when Quad Dominant movements are performed, torso angle would be more upright as opposed to the Hip Dominants movements where the torso would be at a angle of 45 degrees or lower. Refer to the picture below referenced from a youtuber "Omarisuf ". Do check out his youtube channel for more informative videos! 

Table done up by Omarisuf

Let me explain why squats and deadlifts are considered to be part of the grey area. Squats and deadlifts vary from individual to individual due to the leverages of their body. For example a person with a long torso and a short femur would be able to squat in a more unright position as compared to a person with a short torso and a long femur because he is likely to lean forward to achieve proper depth.

Also it depends on the variation of the movement that is performed. Squats can be done in a high bar position (more upright) or in the low bar position (leaned forward). Also the deadlift, it can be done like the conventional deadlift (High hip position, torso leaned forward), or it can be done like the sumo deadlift (low hip position, upright torso).

Strength Balance for lower body lifts can be referred to the table below: 

Reference from Tnation.com

Conclusion

To sum things up, proper programming is required for optimal muscle balance to achieve longevity in your sports/lifting career. I hope this article would help you to understand more about muscle balance. For any questions, feel free to drop me a DM on my instagram: Muscleintelligence. Peace out :)