"The one legged squat is employed more often as a feat of strength than it is as a training exercise."

John Grimek, on the pistol

The pistol squat is more of a stunt than an exercise. The Dragon Door folks are completely out to lunch on this one.

For one thing it is a weird and unnatural movement, not "functional" at all, yet a lot of the people that praise the pistol will tell you how important functional exercise is. This exercise is proof that bodyweight exercises are not necessarily functional. A squat with a barbell is far more functional.

The book "Naked Warrior" truthfully, misses a simple mechanical point: your center of gravity

1) is determined by individual proportions
2) has to be over your foot at all times

So depending on your individual proportions, getting into that bottom position is going to take some severe compensations. Making these twists and torques with the knee fully flexed and fully loaded is a disaster.

Some of the proportions problems that will knuckle your efforts to do pistols:

• having a gut
• having an ass
• having hamstrings big enough that your knee opens when your heel touches your ass*
• not having short stumpy legs
• not having narrow hips

The book goes through this whole focacta explanation of how the right way to do this exercise is pushing through your heel, like in a real squat, which is pretty much impossible for average proportions. People stick with it and learn to do it with the heel down, but only by making all kinds of ridiculous compensations.

Holding a good sized weight out in front of you at arms length as a counterbalance will change your center of gravity back to front and overcome some of the issues - but holding a 45 out there is a significant bump in weight for one foot. .

But seriously, it is a stunt. If you want something like a pistol but not goofy, do one legged squats Paul Anderson style, off a high box or table. I couldn’t find a good picture of this. You can do these with the off leg behind the box or to the side of the box. The foot either doesn’t reach the ground or just barely touches it, it doesn’t push off the ground. Pavel mentions them in the book, I think he had Maxwell doing them off a picnic table.
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FROM CCROW ON THE POWER AND BULK FORUM

http://powerandbulk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=36499