Daily Mobility Exercises by Dr. Kelly Starrett › Forums › General › Side-To-Side Differences in Athletes › Re: Side-To-Side Differences in Athletes

07/11/2013 at 4:11 pm #72416
AvatarAydan Mcmahon
Member

From personal experience I recommend that you start to fix it, yesterday.  No messing around.

I played right handed sports for ~17 years before it caught up to me, but it did.  (Volleyball, badminton, and softball.)  The result was that the right side of my back got so strong that it pulled the whole thing into spasm, repeatedly; took months to be able to sit in a chair again without severe discomfort.  I’ve had to temporarily given up most of my sports and stick to balanced activities.

For your reference:

– Both sides- shoulder missing IR.  Right responds well to soft tissue work, left does not
– Left – shoulder definitely lacking stability
– Right – erectors, rhomboids, QL are crazy tight
– Right – foot tends to want to wander out to duck foot more than left (I suspect this is a product of running on the shoulder of roads more than my strength imbalance, though)
– Left – hip range of motion more limited
– Left – tightness in IT band region and peroneals more pronounced than right
– Right – tighter quad than left (tendency to pull this muscle when sprinting)
– Both sides – valgus knee (correction in progress)
– Right – ankle
Basically from the waist up my right side is tighter and from the waist down my left side is tighter.  I think it’s a combo of the left side always balancing the right side when we create torque for throwing/shooting/hitting/etc.  Being both right handed and right footed, the joints on my dominant side have better range once loosened up because they are used to full range being used.  Left joints seems to remain stiff, which I assume is due to under-use and will undoubtedly take time to regain full ROM.
The crappy stuff:
Not playing sports I love.
Pushups are a useless exercise for me as the right side will literally drag the left up no matter how hard I try to use the left. Pullups are a similar issue.
I have been told that I probably shouldn’t do snatches because of the insane spinal torque created by my mismatched shoulder ROM. (Boooo).
Always being that person modifying the crap out of the wod to make exercises isolate each side of the body so that you never finish in a time relateable to your peers.
You are in line to be my fitness doppleganger.  Sadly, that is not a cool thing to be.  Don’t do it!