Muscular Balance for Stronger, Supported Joints
Muscle imbalance, neurological connection and the Soma-X approach to lifelong training
One of the primary ideas in somatic exercise is this: it’s not only what we do, but how we do it. The way we organize muscular effort influences how we move and how forces travel through the body.
Sometimes, developing that organization begins with a surprisingly difficult task: learning to deliberately engage a muscular contribution we struggle to find.
What is muscular organization?
Muscular organization is how your nervous system coordinates your muscles to share the work of supporting and moving your body—within one limb, between sides and through the body as a whole.
My own history made this more than an idea.
My vastus medialis—the part of the quadriceps toward the inside of the thigh—was congenitally underdeveloped. Alongside it, my vastus lateralis, the outer quadriceps muscle, felt like concrete: hard, tense and doing far too much of the work. My inner-thigh adductors were soft and undeveloped. I struggled to engage them.
These muscles have different jobs. The inner and outer quadriceps help straighten the knee. The adductors help move and control the thigh at the hip. I needed their different contributions to work together.
My feet turned well outward while I walked. I noticed little inward rotation as the leg moved underneath me, and limited rolling through the foot as my weight passed over it. Walking happened, but it lacked the subtle adjustments I needed.
The differences extended beyond my thigh. My left leg carried more of the work than my right. My right hip felt weak and unstable, and some muscles on the right side of my back seemed underdeveloped. Yet my right shoulder and gluteal muscles could still produce considerable effort. These muscles were much larger.
I could be strong in one contribution and struggle to find another.
My left back carried most of the postural work and heavy lifting. At twenty-five, I suffered a displaced rib injury. At twenty-eight, I developed crippling patellofemoral pain—pain around the kneecap. I trace those injuries to the uneven way my body was carrying the work. Hip arthritis at forty-two, shoulder injury and a weak leg added to the history I needed to understand.
That experience left me with a question:
How can I complete the movement, yet struggle to find some of the muscular contributions within it?
Picture me getting up from a chair. I shift toward the left and push harder through that leg. My hips and trunk adjust, and I stand.
The task is complete. The limitation remains.
The neurological connection
Muscles produce movement in response to signals from the nervous system. Those signals help determine which muscle fibres participate and how much force they produce. Strength depends partly on the muscle itself and partly on how the nervous system activates it. [1]
Here, neurological connection means our ability to deliberately engage a muscle and control its contribution to movement.
A muscle can be present and working, yet difficult to engage in the way a particular task requires. We may struggle to begin its effort, sustain it or coordinate it with neighbouring muscles. This difficulty can exist alongside differences in muscle development, joint structure or strength.
In my thigh, the outer quadriceps was easy to engage. Bringing the inner quadriceps and adductors into their respective roles required much more attention.
The difficulty was immediately apparent when I tried.
An exercise can become difficult when we ask a muscle to participate that we struggle to engage through the nervous system. The challenge includes developing that neurological connection—learning to deliberately engage the muscle and control its effort.
Resistance and practice give us a way to work on both control and strength together.
Strong does not mean every contribution is developed
A person can lift considerable weight while repeatedly relying on the same muscular arrangement.
One leg leads the rise. One side dominates the pull. The familiar contributions carry the exercise, while others remain less developed or difficult to engage.
Adding weight may strengthen that familiar arrangement without adequately addressing the contribution we want to improve.
This is why we sometimes reduce the resistance, change the position or provide support. We make the action manageable enough to practise a different way of sharing the work.
Then we increase the challenge.
Research supports the nervous system’s capacity to adapt through resistance training. A review of twenty-seven trials in adults aged fifty and older found improvements in voluntary muscle activation—the ability to activate muscle during a deliberate effort. [2]
Strength training develops more than muscle size. It can also develop our ability to use the muscle we have.
The path of least resistance
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Bill Nordt describes a “path of least resistance”: joints and muscles can complete a movement through an easier route that distributes forces less favourably. His clinical framework emphasizes learning to control how those forces travel through the body. [3]
This gives me a useful way to understand my own experience.
My body could complete a task using the contributions most available to it. Repeating the task did not necessarily teach me to engage the contributions I struggled to find.
Familiar movement became well practised.
At Soma-X, we ask more than “Can you do another repetition?”
How are you doing this one?
Can we adjust the position? Make the effort easier to recognize? Give the less capable side an appropriate challenge?
The intention is to develop more useful cooperation. Different muscles have different jobs. They do not need to contribute equally.
How this can contribute to pain
Muscular organization influences where forces travel and which tissues repeatedly carry the demand.
If one side carries most of the lifting, it receives more of the repeated challenge. If we struggle to control a movement, some tissues may encounter demands they are poorly prepared to tolerate. Pain can arise when loading and the body’s capacity to manage it fall out of balance. [4]
My aim is to strengthen my inner quadriceps, adductors and hip muscles, and learn to use them together so my outer quadriceps no longer carries so much of the work. My outer quadriceps still has an important job. I also want the inner quadriceps, adductors and muscles around the hip to contribute effectively to theirs.
We can work on that relationship by improving control, developing strength and gradually building tolerance to greater demands.
Pain has several influences, however, and a visible difference between sides does not automatically identify its cause. Some asymmetry is ordinary. The useful question is whether a difference limits the movement, comfort or capacity we need. [5]
Pain can make the connection harder
Muscle imbalance can contribute to pain, and pain can make it harder to engage and coordinate the muscles supporting the movement.
Pain can change how the nervous system organizes muscular effort. We may shift away from one side, stiffen a region or rely more heavily on other muscles. Some changes can persist after the original painful episode. [6]
After certain joint injuries, activating a muscle can become particularly difficult. Knee injury or surgery, for example, can produce arthrogenic muscle inhibition: changes in signals from the joint interfere with the nervous system’s ability to activate the surrounding muscles fully. [7]
The person may be trying hard and still struggle to produce the intended effort.
This is a recognized example of a neurological difficulty that deserves attention during rehabilitation. It helps explain why “just try harder” can miss something important.
We need an appropriate starting point, a manageable challenge and practice that helps the person regain useful control.
Find the contribution. Give it a challenge.
At Soma-X, we bring attention and resistance together.
We choose a position, range and resistance that allow the student to practise the intended action. Sometimes support helps. Sometimes working one side at a time makes the difficulty clearer.
Can you access the muscles inside the effort? Can this access become recruitment and useful mobilization? Can this mobilization continue into reliable, sustained use? Can you repeat this without immediately returning to the familiar arrangement? When does this new mobilization shut down? Where do you need to return to regain access?
Feeling the contribution can help guide learning. Progress also needs to appear in what you can do: better control, greater strength, more repetitions or a more manageable everyday task. The end game is always: can I integrate this useful mobilization into everyday life?
Then we ask more.
Can I add more resistance? Can I integrate this new contribution into a larger movement? With less support? What about a task that requires several contributions to cooperate—all without losing useful mobilization?
A congenital difference, like mine, belongs in that planning. We develop the body we have.
Exercise is central to current guidance for several painful conditions. For patellofemoral pain, recommendations place education and knee-focused exercise at the centre of care, with hip exercise and other support selected for the individual. Shoulder rehabilitation guidance also supports active exercise, including resistance and movement-control training. [8], [9]
There is useful work to do.
Bring the connection into the whole movement
Learning to engage a contribution during an exercise is a beginning.
We also need to use it when we stand, climb, carry, reach or ride. It has to contribute to posture and movement in everyday life.
The nervous system adapts to what we practise. Research on short-term strength training has demonstrated changes specific to the trained task. That makes practising the movements we want to improve an important part of the programme. [10]
In a trial involving people with chronic low-back pain, practising personally relevant everyday movements improved function more than a comparison programme of strength and flexibility exercises. [11]
At Soma-X, we direct attention inward. Which muscles can you feel working? Can you deliberately engage the contribution you struggle to find, sustain its effort and bring it into the movement? This internal focus gives the practice a clear intention: develop control of the muscular contributions that have been difficult to access, then build their strength through gradually increasing resistance.
The goal is movement you can trust without consciously supervising every muscle.
Strength and cardio belong in the same life
Resistance training develops strength and the control to apply it. Cardio develops the fitness to sustain activity.
Walk. Ride. Swim. Find something you want to return to.
Cardio gives us more opportunity to enjoy the capacity we are developing. A stronger leg matters on the stairs. Strength and cardiovascular fitness together can take us further along the trail.
Both aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening exercise belong in the World Health Organization’s recommendations for adult health. [12]
At Soma-X, we bring attention, progressive resistance and cardiovascular fitness together around the student’s needs and ambitions.
Research supports these training ingredients. Our approach is to make them understandable, personal and sustainable. To build them from the inside out.
We start with what you can do. Find what needs development. Build gradually and review the response. Persistent or worsening pain deserves appropriate assessment.
My question began with a body that could complete movements while struggling to engage some of the contributions within them.
This question continues to guide our teaching.
Find the contribution. Learn to engage it. Develop control and strength. Bring it into the whole movement.
Our programmes and membership give that work a place in your life.
Find the movement. Build the strength.
Keep the adventure.
References
- Enoka RM, Duchateau J. (2017). Rate Coding and the Control of Muscle Force. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, 7, a029702.
- James E et al. (2021). The influence of resistance training on neuromuscular function in middle-aged and older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Experimental Gerontology, 149, 111320.
- Nordt B. (2017). Cartilage and Exercise: An Introduction. OrthoVirginia. Clinical explanation and training framework.
- The interaction between pain and movement (2018). Journal of Hand Therapy.
- The Calculation, Thresholds and Reporting of Inter-Limb Strength Asymmetry: A Systematic Review (2021). Journal of Sports Science & Medicine.
- Hodges PW. (2011). Pain and motor control: From the laboratory to rehabilitation. Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 21, 220–228.
- The Effect of Physiotherapy on Arthrogenic Muscle Inhibition After ACL Injury or Reconstruction: A Systematic Review (2024). Life, 14, 1586.
- Neal BS et al. (2024). Best practice guide for patellofemoral pain based on synthesis of a systematic review, the patient voice and expert clinical reasoning. British Journal of Sports Medicine.
- Rotator Cuff Tendinopathy Diagnosis, Nonsurgical Medical Care, and Rehabilitation: A Clinical Practice Guideline (2025). Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy.
- Giboin LS et al. (2018). Neuroplasticity following short-term strength training occurs at supraspinal level and is specific for the trained task. Acta Physiologica, 222, e12998.
- Van Dillen LR et al. (2021). Effect of Motor Skill Training in Functional Activities vs Strength and Flexibility Exercise on Function in People With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Neurology, 78, 385–395.
- World Health Organization. Physical activity.