Do people actually find pistols hard to do…??
[quote]k1t0r5 wrote:
Since you know so much about how elite athletes train, why don’t you read a few articles by Mike Boyle. I think he’s trained a few more elite athletes than you and guess what he has his athletes do? You guessed it, he bases routines off of single leg squat variations. He doesn’t even have his athletes do back squats (GASP!).
I don’t know what your comment about the 500 pound squat was supposed to mean, but once you get past the high school level (where you’re probably still at), 500 lbs would only be impressive for the smallest guys on the team (and kickers).[/quote]
I don’t know why I am wasting my time argueing with you but your obviuosly brain dead, since you think these athletes who train with Boyle NOW got to the NFL by training with Boyle. They were NFL caliber far before anybody knew who Boyle was.
While I’m still teaching you to put 2 and 2 together, why would he have them doing back squats when they are doing squats throughout training camp, preseason, and the season? Their squat numbers are already up and plateuing.
And please show me all these elite athletes who do pistols for a workout routine please. They don’t even have to be a routine, they can be for a warm up.
Your still playing both sides of the fence if a person is seeking to be an athlete and had to choose one exercise for legs what are you going to give him?
Sorry to take you out of fantasy land Majority of football teams outside of the o-line and D-line are not correctly squatting 500lbs. Despite the fact that you are proving my point in a roundabout way that squatting is better than pistols.
[quote]Hanley wrote:
Do people actually find pistols hard to do…??[/quote]
Yep.
Some of us are still beginners that lack the relative strength, balance, and hip mobility needed to pull off a move like the pistol. I can almost get a clean rep unassisted, which is way better than when I started, but I still have a ways to go.
[quote]Doug Adams wrote:
Hanley wrote:
Do people actually find pistols hard to do…??
Yep.
Some of us are still beginners that lack the relative strength, balance, and hip mobility needed to pull off a move like the pistol. I can almost get a clean rep unassisted, which is way better than when I started, but I still have a ways to go.
[/quote]
Hip mobility, balance, lower leg flexibility, probably. Relative strength? lol ? yeah right it requires little more than the strength to go up a stair.
Most people I’ve trained with find pistols pretty damn hard, but I think it’s mainly a mobility issue. I could do 5-6 solid reps when I first tried doing them, but my taining partner couldn’t come close to doing one. We squat about the same, he DLs a lot more than me, but I have better mobility.
I think pistols, if you’re coordinated and mobile enough, can be a great accessory exercise. I only see them as a problem if people are neglecting squating and DLing to do pistols. Finishing a DLing session with a few sets of weighted pistols can be a good thing though.
I’ve been using assisted pistols* to great advantage the past couple of months; my right quad, hamstring and glute are naturally very dominant, and my left leg is now almost up to par by doing them. I was previously doing one-legged lunges and reverse lunges, but that just wasn’t doing the trick for me.
*by assisted pistols, I mean that I stand in front of the Smith Machine with the bar at hip height, and I rest my fingertips on the bar for balance as I go up and down.
For me, a pistol is to a squat is like a one-arm chin is to a pullup.
[quote]dragonmamma wrote:
I’ve been using assisted pistols* to great advantage the past couple of months; my right quad, hamstring and glute are naturally very dominant, and my left leg is now almost up to par by doing them. I was previously doing one-legged lunges and reverse lunges, but that just wasn’t doing the trick for me.
*by assisted pistols, I mean that I stand in front of the Smith Machine with the bar at hip height, and I rest my fingertips on the bar for balance as I go up and down.[/quote]
Thanks to you, I found the Smith Machine a little more useful.
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
Hip mobility, balance, lower leg flexibility, probably. Relative strength? lol ? yeah right it requires little more than the strength to go up a stair.[/quote]
This, I think is where people go completely wrong when thinking about single leg squats and pistols. They assume you are doing them with bodyweight only. I challenge any one who is writing one leg squats off as something a “bosu ball using personal trainer” would use, to try them holding 70 lb dumbells in each hand. Come back and tell me if one leg squat variations are easy and require no strength.
Should they replace back squats? Hell no. I never even came close to saying that. I think that when you’re considering athletes, they are a very worthwile exercise as part of a complete leg program. Especially if you add the external resistance that everyone seems to forget about.
And since you mentioned something about picking only one exercise to do, I sure as hell wouldn’t pick any kind of squat. Either cleans or snatches since explosive power is far more important than max strength in any athlete.
[quote]k1t0r5 wrote:
And since you mentioned something about picking only one exercise to do, I sure as hell wouldn’t pick any kind of squat. Either cleans or snatches since explosive power is far more important than max strength in any athlete.[/quote]
I disagree with this. If you have limited time you are far better off developing a base of maximal strength in the weight room and developing explosiveness out on the mat or field practicing your sport. I think people put way too much influence in the sport specific carry over of lifts performed standing still with a weighted bar.
[quote]Donut62 wrote:
I disagree with this. If you have limited time you are far better off developing a base of maximal strength in the weight room and developing explosiveness out on the mat or field practicing your sport. I think people put way too much influence in the sport specific carry over of lifts performed standing still with a weighted bar.[/quote]
That is a good point, but there is only so much explosiveness that you can develop without using exercises that build explosiveness. By coincidence, I happened to read a roundtable discussion thread from about a year ago in which some site contributors had a “thinktank” about leg training.
Somewhere in the thread a study was brought up that compared the weight room numbers of D-1 college football players. It was noted that the highest max bench and squat numbers were more often then not held by players that weren’t starting. The players with the highest power clean max, on the other hand, almost always belonged to the first string players.
That is only one study and there could be other factors to consider, but it does make you think.
[quote]undeadlift wrote:
For me, a pistol is to a squat is like a one-arm chin is to a pullup.[/quote]
Are you kidding? It’s far easier achieving a pistol than a one-arm chin. I think pistol is not really a matter of strength, but one arm pull ups is pure strength.
Maybe pistol are to squat is like one arm push up is to bench press…
Debates aside, that was a fucking great video.
[quote]Hanley wrote:
Do people actually find pistols hard to do…??[/quote]
Doing Pistol Squats is a skill. While it may have some validity in training balance and co-ordination, pistol squats in my humble and unprofessional opinion are mostly just about getting better at doing pistol squats.
If you train someone with single legged squats or games of free-for-all dodge-ball played with medicine balls while kneeling on swiss balls you’re mostly just teaching them to become better at these exercises.
And I never finished writing this response and I started at 3pm and it’s past midnight now and the girl I was working on all night got taken out of the club by her fat friends which made me pretty pissed so when some jackass came up to me and fake puked in my face I grabbed his right shoulder and pushed him into my fist, whereupon he actually felt compelled to vomit for real. Don’t fuck with me right now, son.
Pistol squats suck. You wanna get faster? Run. You wanna jump higher? Snatch. You want co-ordinated, fast lateral movement? Get out on the field and play some fucking contact sports. Single Legged Squats are a waste of my time, hurt my knees, and symbolize time wasted learning them as a skill (and nothing more).
If you tell me you’re dumber for reading this I swear to Vishnu I will reach through the fiberoptic and sattalite connections that seperate us and fuck you the fuck up.
Peace Bitches
Some of you are failing to realize that adding resistance makes the pistol and single leg squat very worthwhile exercises. You probably think they are useless because you always perform the exercises with your own body weight even though you need resistance. I would suggest reading the Alwyn Cosgrove interview with Robert Dos Remedios. Here is the link.
[quote]Geebus wrote:
Some of you are failing to realize that adding resistance makes the pistol and single leg squat very worthwhile exercises. You probably think they are useless because you always perform the exercises with your own body weight even though you need resistance. I would suggest reading the Alwyn Cosgrove interview with Robert Dos Remedios. Here is the link.
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1587252[/quote]
Great interview. I especially like the part where he says:
“Go ahead and get all over me for doing single leg squats because there’s “not enough load.” My volleyball athletes do sets of ten with 40-plus pounds of external load. What can you do? Oh, and yes, the athlete pictured below can regular squat a shitload as well.”
And for those who didn’t take the time to read the article he was talking about women’s volleyball players ;).
In response to the comment about single leg squats only making you better at doing single leg squats, wouldn’t that be true for any weightroom exercise? Take a complete beginner and have him bench 3 days a week.
His numbers will almost double in the first two or three weeks just because he’s getting better at the skill. I know as an athlete I would like to train my legs to be strong one at a time since rarely in any sport do both legs propel off the ground at the same time.
And for the last time, I would never take out back or front squats and replace them with single leg squats. Single leg squats should be used in addition to traditional squats.
Gymnasts exclusively do single leg squats with weights for their leg workouts and plyometrics. A lot top martial artists in kicking sports (kickboxing) also do them. Bill “superfoot” wallace is one there are plenty of them though.
So I wouldn’t call it a fad (since those sports have been doing them for quite a while) or useless. Not to mention a lot of bodybuilders in Arnolds day when they couldnt get to the gym did one legged squats and one handed pushups. There are pictures of Arnold doing pistols just look on yahoo.
[quote]k1t0r5 wrote:
In response to the comment about single leg squats only making you better at doing single leg squats, wouldn’t that be true for any weightroom exercise? Take a complete beginner and have him bench 3 days a week.
His numbers will almost double in the first two or three weeks just because he’s getting better at the skill. I know as an athlete I would like to train my legs to be strong one at a time since rarely in any sport do both legs propel off the ground at the same time.
[/quote]
What kind of beginner can increase ANY lift by even 50% in 3 weeks? Do you really think you can take someone with a 95 pound bench press and get them benching 155 pounds in 3 weeks?
And besides, teaching an athlete the bench press will get them exposed to heavy weights and bring about some physiological change in the athlete. It won’t just make them better at bench pressing.
[quote]FightingScott wrote:
What kind of beginner can increase ANY lift by even 50% in 3 weeks? Do you really think you can take someone with a 95 pound bench press and get them benching 155 pounds in 3 weeks?
[/quote]
You obviously haven’t been around total newbies very much. I personal train at a university gym and I train clients who have never even set foot in a gym before on a regular basis. These aren’t the kind of beginners that took a weight lifting class in high school 10 years ago or used to fool around in their garage but are just now getting serious.
These are people that genuinely have never touched a bar before. Most of the time they bench about 50% of what they can chest press on a machine their first day. Within 3 or 4 workouts in which we bench, I usually have them benching close to 90% of what they chest press. Obviously this is due to improvements in form, not strength increases.
There’s an even more dramatic improvement in squat numbers because it is a more technical lift.
[quote]FightingScott wrote:
And besides, teaching an athlete the bench press will get them exposed to heavy weights and bring about some physiological change in the athlete. It won’t just make them better at bench pressing.
[/quote]
So teaching an athlete one exercise will cause phsyiological changes, but teaching them to single leg squat simply teaches them a skill? Yes single leg squats are harder to execute than benching or squatting, but that doesn’t mean single leg squats are simply a skill and not capable of building strength, which you suggested in another post.
Like I said in a previous post, try them holding some heavy dumbells and then come back and tell me they don’t require strength.
[quote]Franck wrote:
undeadlift wrote:
For me, a pistol is to a squat is like a one-arm chin is to a pullup.
Are you kidding? It’s far easier achieving a pistol than a one-arm chin. I think pistol is not really a matter of strength, but one arm pull ups is pure strength.
Maybe pistol are to squat is like one arm push up is to bench press…
[/quote]
And a BW squat is far easier than a BW chin, the same way a pistol is far easier than a one-arm chin.