If you're still training like it's 1995 — chest day, arm day, back day, rinse and repeat — you're running on borrowed time. The same bodybuilder split that felt great at 22 is the reason your shoulders are shot, your lower back protests every Monday, and your warmup takes longer than some people's whole workout. For business leaders in their 40s who want to build and maintain muscle without spending every other month recovering from injuries, there's a smarter path. Todd Vande Hei, who spent decades dismantling his own training mistakes with the Stark team, lays it out clearly: unilateral training isn't just a workaround — it's actually a more complete, more functional, and more sustainable approach than what most commercial gym-goers are doing.
The problem isn't motivation. The problem is biology and mechanics. Warmup becomes harder. Recovery takes longer. Compensatory patterns built up over decades mean that bilateral exercises — deadlifts, barbell bench press, back squats — load your joints asymmetrically, and those imbalances become injuries. Todd describes the slow elimination of exercises: first the behind-the-neck press, then the barbell squat, then the deadlift, then — well, you know how this goes. By 80, you're shuffling. That trajectory isn't inevitable, but it requires intervention. The choice isn't between lifting heavy and not lifting at all. It's between training smart or training yourself into irrelevance. You have to do some form of weight-bearing exercise to age gracefully — that's non-negotiable. Muscle is your longevity organ. But the approach that gets you there sustainably is very different from what most people are doing.
Unilateral training means working one limb at a time: single-leg squats, single-leg Romanian deadlifts, single-arm dumbbell bench press, single-arm rows, split squats. These movements deliver something bilateral exercises can't: they force stability, expose imbalances, engage your core without a single crunch, and dramatically reduce the load required to generate real training stimulus. A single-arm bench press at 30 lbs is a full-body exercise when performed correctly — feet in tripod position, glute medius activated, midline braced, shoulder packed into the socket. You are working your foot, ankle, glute, core, shoulder, and pressing arm simultaneously. That's not a lighter workout. That's a more efficient one. And because load is lower, joint stress plummets while functional strength climbs. Over time, you add muscle, lose fat, improve balance and coordination, increase range of motion, and build the kind of athleticism that keeps you moving well at 70.
Unilateral training requires intention. Todd walks through the setup mechanics Stark uses with every client: start with the tripod foot — pressing the base of the big toe, base of the little toe, and heel simultaneously into the floor. From there, engage the glute medius (the upper-outer portion of your glute) by "corkscrewing" your foot into the ground and pulling your knees slightly apart. Then brace your midline — flatten your back, engage your abs, pack your shoulders toward your back pockets, and align your head above your shoulders. Every unilateral movement follows this same head-to-toe checklist, whether you're doing a single-arm overhead press or a Turkish get-up. The Turkish get-up, specifically, is one of the most underrated functional movements available — it builds joint health, mobility, and strength in ways that no bench press ever will. Feeling awkward during these movements is a feature, not a bug: that discomfort is growth.
You don't have to abandon everything familiar — you convert it. Barbell bench press becomes single-arm dumbbell bench press. Barbell squat becomes split squat or single-leg squat. Lat pulldown becomes single-arm cable row. Bilateral Romanian deadlift becomes single-leg RDL. The weight drops significantly. That's the point. You can also program in phases: 8-week blocks of predominantly unilateral work alternating with blocks of bilateral emphasis. Mix them within sessions. The key is that every program, every mesocycle, every week has some unilateral component — because that's where your body learns to actually move. The earlier you start, the better. This isn't rescue training for 65-year-olds. It's longevity training for smart 40-something business leaders who want to still be athletes at 70.