One of the most common (and debilitating...as I can certainly vouch for!) sources of pain for an athlete or active gym goer is anterior knee pain, or in laymen's terms: pain at the front of the knee. If you don't have it (yet), believe me, it's not something you want to experience. If you've got it, you certainly know what I'm talking about but don't worry...there's hope!
One of the hardest exercises you can do for your lower body is the pistol squat. This one legged exercise requires a combination of balance, enormous glute strength and the ability to reverse momentum at the drop of a hat and go from a controlled descent into an explosive ascent! Due to the high demands of this exercise most people just skip it...BIG MISTAKE!
Most of you know already that I think that there are plenty of ways to overload the legs that don't involve heavy back squatting. Bulgarian Split Squats, pistol squats, etc are all ways to push limits of strength and size without endangering the health of the lower back. That said, done correctly (rarely ever done), the back squat can be ok as long as you're stopping your reps at parallel...
Having worked with some of the most elite professional athletes (and yes; incorporating many of those same olympic power lifts into their workouts at times) I can tell you from experience that the most significant results that I could get from my clients almost always came when the single leg lifting was the focus. Why is that? Let's find out...
I have what I affectionately call my "4 To Ignore" and I want to share them with you in the hopes of saving not only you from countless hours of wasted effort doing these noneffective exercises but also your joints from the wear and tear that these four can wreak in just a few sessions of doing them...
