When you’re training at home, anything can be used for a workout.
Dowels, brooms, countertops, tables, chairs, sofas, coffee tables, stairs, etc.
Use it all, you’ll get the exact same training stimulus as you would in a fully outfitted gym.
Home gym workouts thrive from being resourceful, especially if you don’t have a lot of equipment on hand.
Fortunately, a door (or door frame) can be used to help learn and progress a number of different exercises.
In this video, I discuss how to use a door to work through a variety of single leg pistol squat progressions.
Decreasing or increasing the demands of an exercise doesn’t always be related to subtracting or adding load, but it’s a really simple adjustment to make, and also nice for quantifying progress.
Here’s a series of single leg pistol squat variations, covering beginner, intermediate all the way to advanced.
I hope you find these instructions to be simple, yet effective. Single leg squats are an incredible exercise to practice on a regular basis. Single leg squats can be trained 2-3 days per week, leading to impressive gains over time.
Beginner| Fully Assisted On the Way Down and Up
Grab the door itself, or ideally the door handle, using both hands. Use upper body to help guide you into the bottom of the squat and back up to the top. This beginner variation allows for decreasing weight moved, more stability and balance.
3-5 sets of 5-6 reps
Intermediate| Slow Lowering with Limited Assistance, Full Assistance on the Way Up
Use minimal upper body assistance on the eccentric (lowering phase), really slowing down the descent as much as possible. Once you’re at the bottom, the upper body can assist with standing back up.
Eccentric focused exercises can increase muscle soreness significantly in the days that follow, just a heads up.
3-5 sets of 5-6 reps
Intermediate| Lower down with NO Assistance, MINIMAL Help on the Way Up
Time to let go of the door and lower to the bottom of the squat without assistance. You feel shaky, wobbly and maybe even weak. This is normal. You’re building strength, control and coordination with this pattern!
Slow down the descent as much as you can.
3-5 sets of 5-6 reps
Once at the bottom, use minimal assistance to stand up. Challenge yourself here, you dictate the intensity of the exercise, make a choice to ramp up the intensity. Go for it.
Intermediate/Advanced| Pancake Hands on the Door for Balance Only
Slide the hands along each side of the door, stabilizing the motion. The hands are there to prevent you from falling to one side or the other, NOT to reduce the load.
If having two hands on the door feels unnatural, and it may, try using one hand, thumb on one side and the other fingers on the opposite side. Use a feather light touch on the way down and up.
3-5 sets of 5-6 reps
Advanced| Freestanding, Unsupported Single Leg Pistol Squat
Congratulations, you made it. A freestanding, unsupported, zero help single leg pistol squat.
People like to joke about pistol squats being a circus trick, but there a demonstration of single leg strength, stability, mobility and athleticism.
Once you own a single leg squat, you’d be surprised how often use it stand up from the floor. It’s quick and efficient.
Lastly, single leg training is back-friendly.
This is not a recommendation to ignore researching corrective strategies to address the back pain and train around it forever.
In a world where every other person has suffered some sort of back tweak or injury, single leg training is extremely forgiving and often a great option for people.
Some folks may need to limit the range of motion to acclimate to this freestanding single leg squat, and that is ok. Grab a chair and lower down until your butt contacts the seat. Touch and stand back up.
Weighted Single Leg Pistol Squat
Increasing the load beyond bodyweight is the next logical progression.
I’ve added weight by using kettlebells, dumbbells, barbell, sandbag, weight vest, and so on.
Whatever you choose as weight really doesn’t matter. Weight is weight. Gravity doesn’t discriminate. What’s important is that it’s comfortable to hold onto.
Adding weight to exercises is trial and error at times. You want to add enough to challenge each rep in the set, but not too much that you’re unable to control the movement or find yourself compensating/cheating to complete the reps.
We’re always toeing the line here.
Hope you enjoyed this… give the blog a follow and certainly check out the Meauxtion YouTube channel.
M(eaux)tion Fitness 