Hindu Squats?

[red5angel]

Anyone out there doing them on a regular basis? how many and how often?

[Kempo Guy]

I do them about every other day along with my other bodyweight exercises.

For my lower body I do:
5 x 30-50 Hindu squats alternated with
5 x 20 - 30 Boot strappers and
5 x 20 Lunges (20 per side) or 5 x 15-20 bleacher lunges and finally
5 x 10 Snatches/Swings with a 53lb Kettlebell (this is both upper and lower body)

KG

[fa_jing]

I got up to a personal best of 400 straight, it took me several months. I was doing them 4-5 times a week. Now I've ditched them in favor of pistols and jumping rope (now that the weather's nice), but I still like to end my leg workouts with 25-50 hindu squats, only I do them explosively now, rather than smoothly as I did before.

[red5angel]

what are pistols?

[Kempo Guy]

pistols = one legged squats

[red5angel]

Ah! how the hell do you start out doing those? I have been wanting to for some time but have no idea how to begin!

[Kempo Guy]

There's a couple of different ways you could "ease" into doing these. The easiest is starting them with a chair or stairs behind you. Lower yourself down and touch the chair with your glutes. This will limit the range of motion for the exercise, hence they're easier. Once this gets easy, start using a ladder or stairs behind you (instead of the chair) and incrementally go lower. Once you get comfortable, go solo with no assistance... Once these get easier, then add weight. I had a link for an article on Intesity Mag, but it doesn't seem to work anymore...

The second way is to do 'bleacher squats'. This is when you support one of your feet on a chair behind you and squat down on the unsupported leg..

KG

[fa_jing]

Try http://www.intensitymagazine.com/02-...ke_mahler.html What you need is flexibility in your glutes, good balance, and some strength in your legs and abs. I recommend you start with the regular hindu's until you can do 200-300, just to make sure your knees can take it. I actually waited till I could do 400 because of my past history of knee problems. Pistols are a friggin great exercise and are like a power-lifting exercise rather than a body-building, because you don't emphasize the negative portion of the rep, you should combine that with long rest periods between sets.

[Black Jack]

Pistol squats are a mean *****. I will stick with the freeweight work for the legs as I prefer to not look stupid falling on my clumsy white bread ass doing pistols.

I do like kicking squats though. Go down and come up and kick with one leg, go down and come up and kick with the other. They burn pretty good.

[Kempo Guy]

r5a,

I found the new link for the article I mentioned here.

This is the same article fa_jing mentions in his post, but the new URL.

KG

[Robinf]

Pistols also take a good deal of strength in the glutes.

[red5angel]

Thanks for the links guys and the advice!

[PAMantis]

But what the he1l are Hindu squats?

[red5angel]

PAMantis - Bodyweight squats essentially. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your arms cross horizontally in front of your chest. As you lower your body to your heels, swing your arms back to help balance yourself. As you come back up to a standing position swing arms back in front of your chest.

[PAMantis]

Gotcha! Ok, so I've been doing them for a while just didn't know it. I do at least 100 of them every day as a warm-up. I guess I should start increasing the number and working into pistols so that I can get a better workout. A question though? If i have knee problems will the pistols make them any worse? I have petella femoral syndrome, basically the inside of my quads are too strong and pull my kneecap out of the groove that it's supposed to be in.

Thanks!