One-leg Bodyweight Squats

Rycn

Bad, good or monsterous?

I can't afford gym membership at the moment so i'm experimenting with bodyweight routines.

Looking for a few opinions and experiences.

pippox

Pistols, one-legged squats, are great for your legs. And when you get to the point where you can crank out a few sets you can use dumbells to make the exercise more difficult.
The downsides are that they don't give the overall body development that barbell squats will give. And when you do move from pistols to weighted squats you need to be careful, it's very easy to end up up at a point where your legs are developed way ahead of what your core can handle.

collymcd

Decent exercise. Only problem is, I think you'll reach a stage fairly quickly where you're flying through them with too much ease. I started on single legged squats (more like bulgarian squats than pistol squats) in the gym because my flexibility was brutal so was finding it hard to perform a full squat properly. I found that the weight progression was actually the quickest of any exercise I've ever done. Soon I was using two 30kg dumbbells and found that it was putting my knees under a bit of pressure.

celts

http://beastskills.com/tutorials/tutorials/38

Mellor

My balance is terrible when doing pistols, have to hold on to a TRX or something to stop from falling over.

I done them at the end of leg day, so muscles aren't obvious 100 and i'm slightly worn out by that stage

Pace2008

Just realised I can do these without following any progressions. Always thought they'd be a difficult skill to learn.

Oddly, I find them much easier on my left leg than right - strange as I'm right-footed and have better flexibility on that side.

sportinglegend

Its not that strange that you find them harder on your dominant leg. If you think about when you are using your dominant leg to for example kick the ball you are using your left leg to stabilize you and in doing so it is more used to supporting the weight.

I would feel that a lot of field sports could benefit from doing more single leg work and from my experience GAA players are particularly poor when it comes to using single exercises in their programs instead focusing on just the compound exercises.

rubadub

Mellor wrote: »

My balance is terrible when doing pistols, have to hold on to a TRX or something to stop from falling over.

I find it hard too, you can do them in a doorway with hands going up and down the wall, there is another exercise this guy calls "shrimps". It doesn't look too hard but he says the advanced is

One of the hardest bodyweight leg exercises, if not the hardest. To be placed as part of a routine for the development of leg strength.

Dpgn6eRtsdw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EJtZsA43vI

Also on pistols

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOeBa6FotsI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Ek6hwSWns

Transform

sportinglegend wrote: »

Its not that strange that you find them harder on your dominant leg. If you think about when you are using your dominant leg to for example kick the ball you are using your left leg to stabilize you and in doing so it is more used to supporting the weight.

I would feel that a lot of field sports could benefit from doing more single leg work and from my experience GAA players are particularly poor when it comes to using single exercises in their programs instead focusing on just the compound exercises.

i would agree with that - more single leg work, plus single leg work are great for identifying issues e.g. the knee dropping in on the single leg squat, differences fro one leg to another etc

Mellor

rubadub wrote: »

I find it hard too, you can do them in a doorway with hands going up and down the wall, there is another exercise this guy calls "shrimps". It doesn't look too hard but he says the advanced is

They do look easy, I doubt that are, getting up and toucging ground must be tough, and need to be flexibile to hold it together.

I strugglt to keep my leg out straight when hold holding something. So I was holding my leg behind me like the shrimp, except left leg in right hand. i stopped because I had a feeling I look like a spastic.
I'll try (and fail) shrimps next week.