Unilateral Training During Recovery

Q: I have purchased and greatly enjoyed The Articles of your book series. Things had been going well until I aggravated tendonitis in my right elbow (I'm a classical musician and music teacher). I don't want to stop lifting, nor do I want to be relegated to just cardio. 

I have been doing lower body workouts. What do you think of training my upper left side to keep things going? My right arm should be better in a month, and I thought this would give some extra training to my non-dominant arm and side.

Thank you,
Peter


My Answer: It's perfectly fine to focus on unilateral movements for the upper body. In fact, training your left side will lessen the effects of detraining your right side. In other words, you will not lose as much muscle or strength if you train unilaterally. So by all means keep training your left side while your right arm recovers.




Q: Thanks for your response, but I guess I didn’t ask the question right. I am doing the frequency decompression, and I am advised to stay away from legs for one more week and that would be a total of 8 weeks. I hurt myself when I wrapped my knees before squatting. I was doing 385 for my last 2 sets. And it didn’t even have any pain doing the sets. So, I think it was wrapping them did something. So, I hope to return to squats and front squats.

My question is since the frequency decompression routine has only 3 workouts and one is dedicated to legs is there anything I should substitute? Or just add extra rest days? And also in the 3rd workout on the delts you have heavy-light sets. What does that mean? I took it as do a super set of heavy low reps followed by light high reps. I could be totally wrong and thought I should ask. 

Thanks, 
D


My Answer: Yes, the heavy-light sets for the deltoids means low reps, heavy weight followed immediately by high reps, light weight.  The exercise example that I give in the book is 4-6 reps of the barbell clean and press followed immediately by 8-10 reps of dumbbell lateral raises.

Now with regards to laying off the legs on the frequency decompression phase, I would suggest you substitute the leg workout with a prehab/mobility/postural workout.  This workout should include exercises for the abs, rotator cuff and other postural muscles.  If you have The Articles and Tactics & Strategies, then you will find chapters on postural realignment workouts.

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