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Bodyweight Pistol carryover to squatting and jumping

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Zirbo

Level 4 Valued Member
Dear all,
I've read in quite a few places that although pistols and barbell squats train the same muscles and make the legs strong in a similar way, there is limited carryover among the two. This is the most extreme among the resources that I've stepped into:
Unilateral Movements Make You Weak | T Nation
I am quite curious about the opinion of Strongfirst on this, although that's not my main question.

In May I restarted playing basketball in a team after 10 years of only pickup (I just turned 29, btw). I've been doing unweighted pistols since years (for bouldering) und occasionally also double KB front squats, so my legs were not weak, but I could barely reach the backboard. Since July I started doing gradually heavier weighted pistols, 3 sets of 3-6 reps, 2-3 times a week. I am now using 10 kilos for sets of 3-4, and I can again grab the rim, which is a nice start, but I would like to improve much more.

Now, my question: do you think this increase is also due to the weighted pistols, or it is just the more frequent jumping practice which woke up my jumping technique? More directly: does it make sense to keep doing weighted pistols, or is it just a waste of time?

I am aware that heavy barbell exercises work amazingly (that's what the pros are doing, after all ;D and also what I did as a springy teenager) but I don't have the time to play/practice 3 days a week AND go to a gym, while my time-friendly home-training sessions [pistols+pullups+pushups (or C&Ps)+KB snatches] are over in 40' and I can even cook meanwhile :D
Buying equipment other than the 2 KBs I already have is also out of the question, my flat is too small...
 
As a lifelong basketball player (now 52 years old), IMO your improved jumping is probably due much more to playing ball and jumping more than to the pistols. 10kg is not that big a change in loading. In fact, a lot of people would find pistols with 10kg EASIER than bodyweight pistols, because the added counterweight helps with balance, but isn't all that much added resistance (relative to the bodyweight you are already lifting).

My two biggest bang for the buck exercises for carry over to basketball are double push press and double clean and front squat. Ideally the double C&FSQ would be a challenging weight for sets of 3-5 reps, and the double PP would be a lighter weight that you can mostly launch to lockout without having to actually press out much. However, you could make do with one pair of bells that splits the difference.

The C&FSQ trains explosive hip extension, and overall leg and core strength, with a lot of carry over to getting down in a defensive stance and to getting/holding position. The PP has a lot of carry over to jumping for basketball, due to the quick, shallow dip and drive, especially jumping in traffic where you don't have space to wind up with your arms or deeply hinge or squat.

Although I was pretty good at pistols before knee and ankle injuries over the last 10 years made them impossible, I think double front squats have a lot more carry over to basketball (even more than barbell squats). My top barbell exercise for basketball is DL/trap bar DL. In my observation and experience there is no real carry over between pistols and barbell squats.
 
In my observation and experience there is no real carry over between pistols and barbell squats.

I feel like I got some carry over from barbell squats back to pistols. I could do them for a while... (2015).. then couldn't for a while (2016-2017), then did barbell squats for a while (mid-2017), and went back to doing them recently when I found that my legs were strong enough to do them again.

However that doesn't help OP much with the jumping question. I still suck at jumping. 3 x 5 24" box jumps is about all I can do. ;)

And I'm not sure if continuing to do the pistols will help my barbell squat, but I feel like it will.
 
Hello,

@Zirbo
If jumping is the goal, maybe this article can interest you:
How to Get the Benefit of Depth Jumps Without Jumping

Otherwise, pistol can transfer pretty well to jump if they are done explosively: control the eccentric phase (when getting down) and fast motion during the concentric phase (when getting up)

However, the good thing about bodyweight pistol is that they work a lot on the balance because you do not have any counterweight.

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
I do not play basketball, but did once make a bet I could train to touch the rim. I did a lot of jumping, running and jumping etc and did just manage to touch the rim - I am 5'10".

At the time I could do a few pistols and was only doing MA and bodyweight work for fitness, as well as some duckwalking on the wife's elliptical runner (improve my ability to creep around in a crouch for indoor paintball). The actual time spent jumping made the most difference.

I would agree with the article to some extent, no doubt bilateral work is the way to get max strength and build max size. At the same time I honestly believe the unilateral work is what makes bilateral strength "functional". In life almost nothing we do is bilateral except maybe for pushing a stalled vehicle. Bilateral work doesn't improve balance. Also in life (aside from athletes) almost nothing we do is an application of our 1rm effort.
 
My sport is soccer and i play at defense position, which require lots of high jump. Pistol seems not very helpful for jumping ( it does build shooting power) hard style swing is more helpful :)
 
@Zirbo, welcome to the StrongFirst forum.

Lots of great advice for you in this thread so far.

I like @Steve W.'s suggestions here.

-S-
 
Hi, thanks to everybody for the suggestions!
@Steve W. I have done my fair share of DFSq in the last years (though not so often in 2017), but I had never tried PPs... your comparison between PPs and jumping in traffic is really enlightening! I will start as soon as I see my vertical not growing anymore, to make it easier to check progress =D
@pet', you say
Otherwise, pistol can transfer pretty well to jump if they are done explosively: control the eccentric phase (when getting down) and fast motion during the concentric phase (when getting up)
I also never tried these, I will after the DFSq+PPs that @Steve W. suggested... so I guess in a few months ;) doing them jumping would also be a good idea or is it too much? Landing is better on two feet or one?
 
I trained pistols for a while and I don't think it improved my jump at all.

Pavel's article is quite spot-on, jumping will make you jump more but you gotta be careful. I sucked at basketball, so most of my improvement in vertical came from volleyball I think. I'm short, but I have long arms, so they usually put me in the front for volleyball (most of the time the spikes hit my head though) :D
 
I've also wondered about a correlation between pistols and jumping (if there is any). The research is clear about static stretching having a negative effect on the vertical jump and dynamic activity (usually hopping in place or something to that extent) having little to no effect. (I haven't read too much about the vertical jump TBH).

Practicing pistols improves the lengthening ability of the calf muscles under tension, but I feel like without an explosive component as @pet' suggested, the pistol may actually hurt vertical jump performance through this "lengthening".
 
I can't add anything regarding pistols but I did spend some time reading research on vertical jumping and there were a few patterns that I noticed between different studies:

The first was that pretty much any strength or jumping program improved vertical jump to some degree but a combination of strength plus ballistic training always gave better results than either one by itself.

If you're only going to do one exercise, weighted jump squats seems to be the best bet.

One study divided people into strength only and strength plus ballistics. Some of these people were also volleyball players who were doing a lot of jumping in their regular practice sessions. In this case, the volleyball players in the strength plus ballistics group had no more improvement than the volleyball players in the strength only group. The researchers concluded that if you're already jumping a lot, there's no benefit to adding additional plyometrics.
 
Mike Boyle trains hockey players (who require very explosive leg power) without using any bilateral back squat. They almost entirely do unilateral exercises, and are not weak. This article, besides the click bait title, is a rant, not very substantive. He essentially says if you want to excel at powerlifting or olympic weightlifting, you should train the competition lifts...

I think I remember Karen Smith sharing that for a while she was doing a lot of single leg deadlifts and came back to barbell deadlifting with a PR. I'd imagine that due to the stabilizer training in the single leg deadlift, the sld probably has more carryover to the conventional deadlift than vice versa for many people.

Mike Boyle participates in just as exaggerated and extreme positions ("the death of squatting"), but he is the kind of guy who tries everything and keeps what works, and the resilience of his athletes speak for his decisions in programming, so I don't discount exclusively unilateral leg training (and discounting rear leg elevated squats as unilateral is getting nitpicky).

Also, weren't there strong dudes before the obsession with single plane, bilateral movements? Strong men training with dumbells and all sorts of one arm feats?
 
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Keep in mind that Boyle is always concerned about the injury rate. He's commented before that it's hard to watch a room full of high school kids and make sure they're always using good form. When he dropped squats from the program the injury rate went down and that's the most important thing for him. He also said their performance on the field didn't decrease so maybe he's on to something.
 
I wouldn't think there would be much carryover between pistols and jumps. At least when I do them--rarely and with difficulty--pistols are a grind and not an explosive movement.

I'd assume hardstyle swings would have more carryover. They're an explosive movement in the same hinge pattern as jumping.
 
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