Unilateral training for weak side?

[Guest guest]

I am recently getting back into shape after letting myself go for

about 3 years. Aside from the appearance of the body fat, the main

motivator that got me back at it was injuries. I tried to go back to

Aikido, and kept having nagging injuries, mostly on one side.

I am noticing now that the easily injured side is much weaker. I did

squats in front of a mirror last week and I thought my pelvis was

crooked at the bottom... it turned out that it's just the upper quads

and hip flexors are so much bigger on one side that they seem to push

my t-shirt up almost 2 inches higher on that side when I'm down near

thighs-parallel to the ground.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone thinks unilateral training for the

weak side is a good idea.

I have always heard that it is not a good idea, along with talk about

some kind of " rebound effect " . The idea seems to be that it is better

to train bilaterally hard, and the weak side will catch up. I am a

little skeptical. Back when I was at my strongest, doing pullups and

dips with heavy weight strapped on, I still had some pain problems on

the weak side. I finally videotaped myself and found that I was

twisting during the heavy pullups and levering the weak side up first.

Perhaps the answer to this is to make sure to have more symmetric

form, but I still think it shows that despite significant bilateral

improvement, the weak side was still weaker and more injury prone.

I guess I am wondering if it wouldn't be better in the long run to do

something in the way of undertraining the strong side for a while now,

until the weak one catches up, then proceed with fully bilateral

training. Any ideas?

Wilbanks

Wisconsin, USA