Pistol Squat

How To

It should come as no surprise that you need to have adequate flexibility in all of the joints in your lower body to do this exercise.

If you cannot perform this exercise, you can perform pistol negatives off of a box, or a supported pistol where you use your arms to help you come back up.

Because the pistol squat is a single-leg exercise, it can help you identify imbalances in strength and mobility that may exist between sides. Once you’ve identified these imbalances, you can then work to correct them and thus reduce your risk of injury, because one side won’t be compensating for the other.

The single-leg element also makes the exercise great for building strength, because you have to perform reps with the strength of just one leg, having a lot of muscle groups working at once, including a bunch of important muscles used in running, like glutes, hamstrings, quads, and core.

Tips

Tip 1

Hold your arms out in front of your body to help with balance.

Tip 2

It’s super-important to first warm up your ankles and hips, since the movement requires a lot of flexibility, balance, and control.

Tip 3

If you feel yourself tipping forward, and/or you feel like all of your weight is going into your knee, sit back and think about keeping your weight in the heel.