Audio Title: How to do a Pistol - One Legged Squat
Audio Duration: 0:04:48 Number of Speakers: 1
Transcript
Hey, this is Ryan from GMB.
The pistol squat is a great exercise to build some rock solid legs.
But are you doing it correctly?
Today I want to take a look at the proper form for the pistol squat.
Also give you some bad examples and something that you need to be sure not to do.
All right.
Let’s get into it.
It’s really important to make sure that you’re focusing on proper form in order
to not get injured and also to keep getting stronger.
Now, a common thing that I see with people when they’re performing the pistol is that
they rush into it.
What I mean by that is they try and go down into the pistol without having the proper
form.
They just want to do the repetition instead of focusing on doing it correctly.
So what is a correct pistol?
Well, first thing you need to focus on is when you’re performing the pistol is to
make sure that your knee is not going too far forward past your toes.
This is an important one.
Yes, it’s going to make the movement more difficult.
But you know what?
That’s only going to make your legs stronger.
Focus on form.
Form is the most important.
So by making sure that your knee is not going too far forward over your toes, and in fact
try not to let it go past your toes at all, is actually going to help you to build stronger
legs.
Now when doing this, you might not be able to squat all the way down.
That’s fine.
This is something that you just need to work on, some mobility, and if you’re having
trouble with mobility, you can check out another tutorial that we did earlier where I discussed
how to work on getting into the pistol squat.
I’m going back to form though.
When you go down, you want to make sure that you’re going slowly.
You don’t want to rush it.
This is another thing and something that’s really going to help with the pistol and that
is going slow with the proper form.
Remember, we want to get strong here.
We don’t just want to blow through the movement.
Now going down as far as you can, you want to hold that bottom position.
This is the next point that’s very important with form.
So instead of bouncing out of your pistol, you want to go down as far as you can.
It might only be halfway.
It might be all the way down with your butt to your heels but you want to pause in that
position just slightly.
Check your form a little bit.
Make sure that you’re squared up.
You’re not going to the side.
You’re not leaning too far forward.
You’re really focusing on trying to keep your back straight as possible in order to
return out of the squat and that’s the last point is you want to focus on trying to explode
out of the bottom position but doing it with control.
Remember it’s that form and when you get out of that form in that proper position,
you’re going to fall out of the pistol and really we don’t want that.
You could injure yourself and plus you’re not doing anything to benefit you in helping
to get your legs stronger.
So to go through these points one more time, you want to make sure that you start by sitting
back, keeping your knee over your foot.
You want to go down slowly into the pistol.
Don’t rush that lowering phase.
Pause at the bottom.
Once you pause, you can explode back up.
But do it with control.
All right.
Some things that I do see unfortunately people trying to do, what I mentioned earlier is
trying to rush through it.
You just go down into it and try and go right back up and what happens is I find them teetering
from side to side.
This isn’t good because we don’t have the proper foot placement in order to help
us get stronger.
You want to make sure that you’re pushing off the mid foot and that your foot is not
going from side to side.
Find that solid structure.
Pause at the bottom and allow yourself to explode back up with good form.
Something else that I see a lot of times is people rounding their back too much.
Work on trying to get your chest up and straightening your back as much as possible.
Yes, it’s going to make it difficult but it’s going to make you better by focusing
on good form.
OK.
Those are just a couple of things to help you with your pistol.
Now it’s time for you to go out and try it.
Feel free to leave a comment below.
Ask some questions.
If you have some concerns or what not about your pistol, hey, leave a video response if
you would like.
I love videos and would love to see how you’re doing.
All right.
Thanks for watching.
[End of transcript]