About 6 years ago I dealt with a severe case of tendinopothy on my right elbow. At the time I wasn’t keen on pain management and pushed through training for years. Because of this, I started favoring my opposing elbow as pain avoidance, which caused atrophy on my right arm/shoulder/chest. Fast forward after working with you guys one on one and getting things under control for the past two years, I’m happy to say I’m pretty much pain free. However, I’ve noticed my right arm/shoulder/chest are still less developed than my left, to the point where shirts are noticeably looser on that side. As my main goal is hypertrophy, how can I address this? Would you suggest any training modifications? After a couple years, I was expecting this side to catch up but that hasn’t seemed to be the case. I’m currently running the bodybuilding template and it’s working well in general. Thanks!
We would expect that training-related size discrepancies, or lack of training in this case, to be taken care of upon return to training. The atrophied side should respond more robustly to training and, provided you were active during the injury, shouldn’t have atrophied that much-if at all- unless it was completely immobilized.
Humans are asymmetrical by nature however and some of this may be due non-modifiable causes, e.g. differences in muscle orientation. It may be useful to provide some measurements and pictures to see if there’s anything to address.