Disproportionate Muscles?

mudcow007

my mrs noted last night that my left leg is no where near as muscly (is that a word?) as my right leg

i am right footed, if that makes a difference?

all i can think of is my left leg is lazy making my right leg push harder on the pedals?

am i freak??

kinda reminds me of a Family Guy episode

MonkeyMonster

ahhh, when he discovers internet pron...

My legs are but that is partly due to being on crutches for years so right leg (left hip got fixed eventually) is bigger.

Do you push off on your right from standing start? I'd put money on that being a factor.

Pufftmw

Its bad habbit on your pedaling - I am concious of using my right to push down more and pull up more with my left. Over time it will affect muscle size on both legs. Likewise, even though I weight train both arms at the same reps/weights there is still a difference left/right with right being the more prominent as that is likely to be that I am right handed & use it more "generally" than the left.

I want to find somewhere to teach me to be a more efficient pedaler too as I am obviously wasting efficiency someplace.

mudcow007

yeah i push off with my right definitley, i think i always have done.

my right calf is about double the size of my left!

i think im going to have to buy a push along scooter and commute on that to build my other leg up

bigmat

Have you had an injury to your left leg at any point? I injured my left knee last year marathon training, by the time I got myself to a physio it had caused "atrophy" of my left thigh muscle to such an extent that my left thigh circumference was over an inch smaller than my right. Looked very weird! It has sorted itself out more or less though.

Agent57

MonkeyMonster wrote:

Do you push off on your right from standing start? I'd put money on that being a factor.

I wouldn't. It's one pedal stroke amongst thousands, and not even that much more effort, unless perhaps you set off in the highest gear all the time. Can't see it having much effect.

I've found my left leg to less defined than my right in the past few years, too. To me, though, it seems as though my left leg is swollen, rather than being significantly less muscular.

mudcow007

no injuries to cause muscle wastage or anything like that, i think it must be maybe just technique? so technically im only powering along at the moment on one leg, imagine how fast i can go with two!!

an there was me hoping to wear shorts to show of my new an improved calfs

Headhuunter

It's normal to have dominant sides to the body. I had an induction session with a personal trainer a while back at the gym, he looked at me and quite quickly asked me if I was right handed, he said that he could see that my right "pec" was more developed than the left one.... I had always thought I was quite well balanced!

I try to consciously go through phases of unclipping on the right for a few months at junctions etc and then on the left for a while to try to make sure I'm not always pushing off with 1 leg or the other all the time....

asprilla

My left quad is much bigger than my right even though I'm right footed.

It's got nothing to do with which foot I push of with, it's because my left leg is fractionally longer than my right and at the moment I don't have a shim between my right shoe and cleat to even them up.

Since my left leg is longer I it tends to do more work and so get bigger.

I suspect you are the same.

Go and have a bike fitting.

rick_chasey

Headhuunter wrote:

It's normal to have dominant sides to the body. I had an induction session with a personal trainer a while back at the gym, he looked at me and quite quickly asked me if I was right handed, he said that he could see that my right "pec" was more developed than the left one.... I had always thought I was quite well balanced!

Sounds like he was trying to size up the quality of your reach-around....

mudcow007

Asprilla wrote:

Since my left leg is longer I it tends to do more work and so get bigger.

Go and have a bike fitting.

funnily enough when i was getting "sized up" for the bike the guy doing the measuring was having issues as he got two different measurements for my inside leg/ croach height thing (like a saddle on a pogo stick)

i will go back to the LBS an see what they say

i feel like a bit of a freak now

bigmat

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

Headhuunter

Rick Chasey wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

It's normal to have dominant sides to the body. I had an induction session with a personal trainer a while back at the gym, he looked at me and quite quickly asked me if I was right handed, he said that he could see that my right "pec" was more developed than the left one.... I had always thought I was quite well balanced!

Sounds like he was trying to size up the quality of your reach-around....

I had to look that up on urban dictionary.... Now I feel all dirty....

Headhuunter

BigMat wrote:

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

Yeah I agree, calves seem fairly secondary to the quads and hams for me. I do calf strengthening exercises at the gym to try to balance them out a bit!

rjsterry

BigMat wrote:

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

I would guess that it depends how much you flex your ankles in a normal pedal stroke, as well as whether you tend to mash or spin. Souplesse, innit.

mudcow007

i "think" calfs only come into play during hill climbing

my quads an glutes are quite chunky but again my right quad is way bigger than my left

notsoblue

BigMat wrote:

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

I think it depends on your pedalling technique. If you're more of a spinner than a masher then you do use your calves more. Or at least I find I do when I'm trying the wiping shit/kicking the door down technique.

Paul E

Since I have commuting since moving here my calves have got bigger as I am a spinner, even my mate who I bike with up in scotland mentioned it, I hadn't even noticed. Apart from that I think I am pretty balanced.

bigmat

Right, more spinning required then by the sounds of it. I definitely need to be in decent climbing shape by July - Marmotte could be tricky otherwise!

daviesee

BigMat wrote:

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

High gear - mashing - thighs

Low gear - spinning - calves

Headhuunter

daviesee wrote:

BigMat wrote:

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

High gear - mashing - thighs

Low gear - spinning - calves

I would have thought spinning wouldn't particularly help in building muscle mass though, but rather build definition. It's the equivalent of doing heavy weights/short number of reps at the gym to build mass and size vs lighter weights/high reps to define...

asprilla

Headhuunter wrote:

daviesee wrote:

BigMat wrote:

Slightly OT, but re calves, I hear cyclists talking about defined calves etc. Personally all my power seems to be in my thighs, which are pretty massive, whereas my calves look relatively normal. Could be that I'm not utilising those muscles properly due to poor technique or something? Are calves really that important to cycling?

High gear - mashing - thighs

Low gear - spinning - calves

I would have thought spinning wouldn't particularly help in building muscle mass though, but rather build definition. It's the equivalent of doing heavy weights/short number of reps at the gym to build mass and size vs lighter weights/high reps to define...

Burning calories leads to definition, be that though high weight / low rep or vice versa; it's just that the guys who are bulking are usually eating calories by the skip load. You can't bulk and cut at the same time.

Mashing is a much 'squarer' pedalling motion that sminning and so concentrates on the quads while spinning, being more circular, is more of a full leg motion.

Greg T

My thighs suffer by comparison when I look down.....





No not my stomach...

asprilla

Greg T wrote:

My thighs suffer by comparison when I look down.....





No not my stomach...

Yeah, oversize tops tubes are all the rage these days....

rjsterry

That'll be why you've been struggling with the SCR Greg - just extra weight. You need to learn to pedal with it.

Greg T

Asprilla wrote:

Yeah, oversize tops tubes are all the rage these days....

Am I happy to see you or is that a CO2 inflator in my pocket?

Sorry I meant track pump . . . . . .

edited to add . . . .

RJSterry wrote:

That'll be why you've been struggling with the SCR Greg

Struggling . . . is that right princess . . . .

rjsterry

Only going off your recent posts. Been doing no better myself recently.

daviesee

Headhuunter wrote:

I would have thought spinning wouldn't particularly help in building muscle mass though, but rather build definition. It's the equivalent of doing heavy weights/short number of reps at the gym to build mass and size vs lighter weights/high reps to define...

Probably a better definition than mine

phy2sll2

I'm just fed up with having muscly legs and the upper body of a five year old. Maybe I'll invest in a recumbent arm-bike for my winter commute.

rick_chasey

Headhuunter wrote:

I would have thought spinning wouldn't particularly help in building muscle mass though, but rather build definition. It's the equivalent of doing heavy weights/short number of reps at the gym to build mass and size vs lighter weights/high reps to define...

Pretty sure Armstrong had the biggest thighs and calves I've seen in the peloton in a long while and he hardly mashed....

rick_chasey

Similarly, compared to today, Merckx mashed like maaad: