Comment by calmbonsai
14 hours ago
There's also the risk of injury.
At very low reps and high weight, particularly for highly coordinated motions (squats, dips, pull-ups, Pulver press back-extensions), there's a much higher chance for injury due to insufficient support at one or more positions within the entire range of concentric and eccentric efforts by all activated muscles. We all have, at the very least, minor intrinsic asymmetries that need explicit addressing.
There's also intra-set recovery. Roughly (very roughly) speaking, your endo-neuro-muscular system "adapts best" where there is a refractory period for a reset-to-quiescence between exertions.
There is real truth to "muscle memory" and the exclusive way to achieve that (and avoid injury) is through a sufficient amount of well-formed repetitions. The only way to achieve those repetitions is by using a resistance that's sufficiently low.
Asymmetry is normal and you cannot address it (outside of repeatability of movement, aiming for no form degradation during high load).
As long as your movement does not degrade horribly, asymmetry is fine.
Even before strength training, your one arm is dominant, more precise. But this has an effect on your leg as well.
Doing unilateral work will never change that asymmetry. As you get stronger, due to drastically different activations of the nervous system between the sides, you will get slightly different adaptations.
Looking at powerlifters, most of them have visibly different sizes of hip, leg musculature between sides. They even have drastic flexibility differences where one hip goes deeper, or the musculature makes the barbell sit skewed on the back.
To be clear, by "addressing" I did mean altering form and training to lessen the risk of injury due to asymmetry. FWIW, I wear a heal-cup in my right shoe and do additional rotator cuff warm-ups to due minor leg asymmetry and an old injury.
Even Smolov has clear discrepancies in the way his feet are positioned.