For you young’uns who don’t get the title of this post, click here.
Bonus points for anybody who shows up in full-on Western gear today.
Foundation
Pistols
Pistols are one-legged air squats. Practice progression:
Pistol to box/bench
Pistol with support (wall or ring)
Pistol with db/kb
Pistol with heel elevated
Pistol!
WOD
“Annie”
50-40-30-20-10
Situps
Double-unders
Zack and Derek, showing off their pistols CrossFit Manatee style
A pistol is a one-legged squat. It requires tons of flexibility, balance and coordination. And also leg strength. For many people, the limiting factor in the pistol will be mobility in either the hip or the ankle. If you can do good, deep air squats, your hips aren’t the problem. If you have good air squats, but can’t get down to the bottom of a pistol, we know that you have tight ankles.
I’m speaking from experience, here — my ankles suck. They’re not the loose, limber joints they should be. Instead, they’re more like rusty hinges. I suspect a lot of you are like me in that regard — with elevated-heel shoes and little opportunity in the day to move around and use that ankle the way it’s meant to be used, most of us have tight ankles.
So today, we’re going to mix it up a bit and do some ankle mobility work as a part of our warm-up instead of in the cool-down. We’ll try to get those ankles nice and loose so we can get into a good pistol position during our Foundation work. What are we going to do, you say? I’m glad you asked:
(Don’t worry, I won’t quit my day job…)
