While writing my last blog post, Top 5 Adam T Glass Articles, I reread his Investments Series in detail. Reading all the way to the end, I came to the part about pistols, which started me dreaming about how far I could push the envelope with this exercise…
But before I talk about that, let’s start at the beginning.
What is a pistol?
A pistol is a one-legged squat to the floor, with the other leg stretched out in front of you. It challenges your strength, balance and flexibility, all at the same time. You’ll know you’ve got it right if people ask you if you’ve taken up Cossack dancing. It looks like this…
Is a pistol just a one-legged squat?
No. Often, people use the term “pistol” interchangeably with the term “one-legged squat”. But while a pistol is definitely a one-legged squat, a one-legged squat isn’t necessarily a pistol. Hmm, I feel a Venn diagram coming on… Or maybe not. You get the idea.
Some coaches have their athletes do one-legged squats from a bench, to take the flexibility issue for the non-working leg out of the equation. These one-legged squats aren’t really pistols, as the name comes from the position that the body makes when at the bottom of the lift and the one-legged squat off a bench doesn’t form the pistol shape.
How do you do a pistol?
I am not going to give a pistol tutorial here as there are already plenty of good ones on the internet. The best tutorials I have seen are:
- Beast Skills Pistol Tutorial – Jim goes through a number of techniques for learning the pistol. I particularly like the door frame technique as it was the way I learned. Did I mention that I want to be Jim when I grow up?
- Mike Mahler Stair-Step Approach to One-Legged Squats – Mike Mahler explains how to use a normal flight of stairs to learn the pistol. Nice and simple.
- Steve Cotter’s Mastering the One-Legged Squat – Steve gives some useful guidelines on what to do if you have any pain or discomfort while doing pistols. And we’d be wise to listen to Steve. His name has a tendency of cropping up when people talk about pistols.
OK, I’ve mastered the pistol. What’s next?
Add weight. Use dumbbells, kettlebells, or plates. I am currently languishing at around 30kg but hoping to hit half-bodyweight (c. 36kg) by the end of October.
When I add weight, I tend to use a 12″ box to stand on. This helps me avoid stressing my lower back. By using a box, I decrease the amount of lumbar flexion I undergo during the exercise, as my inactive leg gets to drop a bit lower. It also makes it easier to hold the weights, as they don’t hit the floor.
You can see that I look a lot more comfortable on the box than on the ground!
How does that stack up?
Poorly. Dragondoor runs a beast tamer challenge, which is regarded as quite a tough test that includes pistols and very few people achieve it. I think there are 13 officially recorded successes to date. The challenge is to lift a 48kg kettlebell in the following lifts:
- a pull-up
- a pistol
- a one-arm press
Of course, there could be lots of people who have achieved the 48kg pistol but struggle with the one-arm press and pull-up but I doubt it…
So who holds the world record?
I wish I knew for sure! Happily, Adam is there to help. Coming back to the Investments Series, Adam says “I think the best pistol squatter in the world is Steve Cotter, who is able to pistol two 32kg bells, and most impressively leap from the floor at bottom position to a table top with ease (video).”
Doing a bit of my own research, I found a reference on the Dragondoor forum to someone asking the same question who has the biggest pistol? On that thread, the answer was also Steve Cotter, with 2 x 40kg kettlebells. Whether that’s internet inflation or incremental improvement on the 2 x 32kg that Adam remembers, it is hard to say…
Double bodyweight pistol?
I am going to assume that Steve probably weighs at least 80kg, so the rough ball-park for the world record pistol is therefore around double bodyweight, which has a nice ring to it. I can’t find any reference to this on Google, but if anyone can point me in the right direction, I’d be really interested to hear about it…
Great article! You’ve really inspired me to stop putting off the inevitable and to properly start to train my one-legged squats. That Beast Skills tutorial is particularly user-friendly – I might try incorporating the step up variation into my current step up program.
My biggest problem is hamstring flexibility. I really struggle to keep my raised leg off the ground. I’ve been trying a couple of the ideas from a T-Nation article I found ( http://www.tmuscle.com/readArticle.do?id=3295633 ) but do you have any other suggestions on ways I might get over this particular hurdle?
Thanks for your comment.
If you are having trouble keeping your raised leg off the ground, this may indicate a lack of strength rather than flexibility.
To test for lack of flexibility, you could put a brick on the floor to hold your leg up off the ground at the bottom of the exercise. If you physically cannot get into this position, your problem may be flexibility. Or mobility. If you cannot get into this position, I would start by foam rolling your leg muscles to improve the soft tissue quality and this will have an impact on mobility.
To test for lack of strength, try standing still and holding one leg out in front of you, Frankenstein-style. If you struggle to hold it at 90 degrees to your body, this may indicate that your problem is strength and not flexibility. Holding this position for time will help your bottom position on the pistol.
If you still want to train pistols before correcting this flexibility or strength issue, try doing them off a small box, bench or chair so that the free leg can dangle down. I’ll be doing a post about making suitable boxes soon so keep an eye out for that!
Pingback: Introducing: round up