BEST Mobility Exercises to Improve Your Pistol Squat

BEST Mobility Exercises to Improve Your Pistol Squat

Hey, Forest Vance here from Body Weight Strong 2.0. I got a special video for my good friend Rick Kaselj.

We are going to talk today about ankle mobility and mobility drills you can do to help get better pistol squats. Pistol squats are great exercise. They could require a ton of strength, mobility and flexibility to do them.

BEST Mobility Exercises to Improve Your Pistol Squat

CLICK HERE to watch the video on YouTube

They are great exercises for building strength in your lower body with just only your body weight.

S big hang up a lot of people have, myself included before I started doing pistols,  was I had the strength to do them but I did not have the mobility in the ankles and the hips to do them.

I suggest you start with a quick test of where you are with your strength and mobility.

To do this you can use body weight only or some kind of counter weight to help you out. Do 5 body weight squats, I am going to use a kettlebell.

Step #1 – Body Weight Squats Self Test

Like I said it’s going to counter weight on the front of me. I am going to do 5 body weight squats.

Body_Weight_SquatsBodyweight Squats

Step #2 – Close Stand Squats Self Test

I want you to do 5 closed stand squats. When you go through this get a feel of where you are, Is it really easy for you to sit down and do closed stand squats?

Closed Stand SquatsClose Stand Squats

This is going to be a lot like your movement pattern when we get to our pistol squat. You can sit in the squat and see where it feels tight.

Step #3 – Mobility Drill

If you have a hard time getting to do those closed stand squats. Here is a great mobility drill that you can do that hits a lot of those things all at once.

Mobility_Drill_Mobility Drill

Get down into a split stance, then right foot forward left foot back and then like a windshield wiper, rotate your left foot back, point your left toe and face your points straight out, sit down on your foot so you will get a little ankle mobility, bring your hands forward and then push with your elbow out on the knee.

This is a great drill I picked up recently.

You are going to push out on the knee, drop your right elbow down towards the floor, keep pushing your knee over to get a little ankle mobility. You will rotate through those three positions and then just sit down.

Rotate over to the other side and repeat. Remember when sitting down on your ankle, make sure your back foot isn’t turned, push out on the hip and then drop it. Spend 30 – 60 seconds or more on each side.

Now do the the close stand squat again and see if things improved.

Your next progression from here is the  full pistol squat.

Step #4 – Half & Full Pistol Squat

Hopefully, the ankle and hip mobility drills will help you. You might not be able to just go from never doing pistols at all to doing them in one day but. Work on progression, mobility and the routine and this will help you give that mobility you need.

Now what you can do is a half pistol squat. You can use your counter weight; you can do the close stand squat and sit down deep into the squat. Then extend one leg out and stand up.

Full_Pistol_SquatsFull Pistol Squat

The next progression from there is you can go to your full pistol squat .

Thank you so much for watching. If you want to know more about how to do more pistol squats, hand stand push-ups, one armed push-ups, all kinds of cool strength based body weight exercises, head over and check out the Full Body Weight Strong Program. Talk to you next time!

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Forest Vance, MS

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