 Hey, welcome back to the School of Calescentics. I'm Coach G and I'm going to take you through some progressions and regressions for your pistol squats. So we're going to go through the pistol squat and look at some progressions and ways to develop the ability to be able to do that pistol squat. So your pistol squat is obviously our single leg squat where we're going to take one leg up. I'm going to send my knees slightly forward as I sit down and reach ahead and then from the bottom stand back up. So again from the side reach forwards into the bottom of the pistol and drive up to the top. So the first thing that we're going to look at is having a look at the bottom position in the base of the squat on its own. So we're going to sit down into a squat here. I'm going to have my knees tracking my toes rather than sitting out into this wide squat with my feet turned out. So my knees are tracking my toes and everything's pointing forwards. From there what we're going to try and do is extend one leg forwards and see if we can hold that base position, take it back and then try exactly the same on the other side. This is going to highlight any sort of mobility restrictions that you're going to feel potentially in your ankles or in your hips. So you may find as you do this movement you get into the bottom and then you start to roll back and then come back forwards. You might have to use your hands to help assist with that and test the same on the other side. The other thing you can do whilst holding this position is hold a weight bias out in front of you and that's going to help you get your weight into the right position from there. So again this is going to test our ankle range as well as our hip positioning. Can we hold the base of the pistol squat? And if we can't do that just yet we want to be working on our hip and ankle mobility working through the squat progressions to help us in a means to get there. So that's the base position just checking that out first before you progress into your pistol squat. So this next one is a single leg squat and all we're going to do is from standing pick one leg up and just have it close to the other leg. As I go down into the base position of the squat I'm going to make sure that my standing leg my knee is tracking my toes so I'm going to sit down to where I can and then drive back up through the standing leg switch to the other side. This is going to really challenge and test out that stability moving in that unilateral way that we're working through one leg at a time okay and as I go down see how low we can get the hips into that base position driving back through the heel when we're on the other side reaching forwards and standing up and that's your single leg squat which is a way to progress towards your pistols. So this next pistol progression I'm going to use the upright of this rig to help support me all the way down and do a full pistol squat. So I'm going to stand holding onto the upright raise the leg up and now I'm going to work down into my pistol keeping my knee tracking my toes but notice I'm just tapping the rig I'm trying to hold on as little as possible get into that base position drive through the heel start to come up and also again just tapping the rig as I come out of it rather than pulling my way up the rig where I'm not actually using my leg to really do all that much so again raise one leg up my knee's going to start to lead forwards a little I'm going to add holding on to the post just a little bit for a bit of help get into that base position again drive out and just have that little bit of assistance to come back out of the bottom of my pistol. So this next progression we're going to use a box so that actually when I go into my full pistol I've got that deficit of my bottom leg to travel down which we don't have when we're doing the pistol on the floor. So what's great about this is I can build strength through the full range in the standing leg and all I'm going to do is stand side on take one foot off the box and then from here again leading with the standing leg so the knee starts to travel forwards this bottom leg is now got the positioning where it can come down deeper I'm going to reach forward hold that base position in my pistol and now see can I drive back up again standing all the way to the top. Another great thing you can do here is start to add pauses at certain points to build strength through that full range so I'm going to go down into my pistol add a little pause go a little bit lower add a little pause see if I can again add that pause into the base and then drive up all the way to the top finally I'm also going to think about what this other leg is doing so as I go into the bottom of my pistol I'm going to then see can I actually draw this up a bit higher okay how does that feel for my hip flexors and my quads as I stand up it may then drop again that's fine but really trying to test that range and lift that bottom leg up so that's our box pistol squat variation so another way that we can use a box or a platform to help us progress towards our pistol squats is to have it behind us and then all I'm going to do is from a standing position raise one leg up and now I've got that platform to sit back to I don't then want to change my mechanics and just sit back on top of that platform instead I still want to be leading with this leg so I'm going to let my knees start to travel forwards reach forwards find that positioning where I'm then just touching the box drive through the heel and come back up again okay so we're avoiding just sort of collapsing on top of the platform notice as well that the heel stays connected to the ground we don't want it to lift up so my knee travels forwards I reach ahead find that box add a bit of time and attention here hold it and then drive out the bottom and over time what we can do is then lower that platform so you can use a chair or anything you've got available to use to gradually start to work that depth into your full pistol squat so we've covered some of the progressions and regressions for our pistol squat and if we're struggling with any of the mobility or anything required to do the full pistol then make sure that you check out the lower body mobility foundations to help you progress towards that pistol going forwards