Challenge Yourself With Shrimp Squats
Squats are great leg strength exercises, but if you’re doing home workouts without weights, they’ll quickly get too easy. The one-legged pistol squat is classic, but incredibly difficult. For another one-legged challenge, try the shrimp squat.
It’s debatable whether pistols or shrimp is heavier, but I find the transition to shrimp squats – the moves you do when you can’t do everything to the fullest – is smoother and makes a little more sense.
In pistol squats, you keep one leg straight in front of you. In the shrimp squat, you are still on one leg, but keep the other leg behind you, usually squeezing your free toe with one hand. The other arm is extended directly in front of you for balance.
Shrimp squats are still tricky, but making them a little easier. You may have already tried some of them:
- Static lunges or split squats (when one leg is on the ground behind you and your weight is between your two legs)
- Bulgarian split squats where your free foot is on the bench behind you.
- Beginner shrimp squats where your free leg is bent behind you but not held.
- Full shrimp squats where you hold your free leg and squat until that knee touches the floor.
Shrimp squats are so effective for building strength that r / bodyweightfitness has them on the recommended program . (They say the weighted squat is still better if you have access to a barbell, but it’s another best option.)
If you want to understand how difficult it is, I can do a pistol squat: 2-3 reps on the right, zero, and sometimes one on the left. (That’s okay – we’re all a little asymmetrical.) I find the beginner shrimp squat challenging but doable, and I’m not quite ready for the full shrimp squat just yet.
But both exercises have their own problems. Balance is an important factor, and you may find that you have quirks in your strength or mobility that make one of these options more comfortable for you than the other. So if you’ve already given up on pistol squats, try the shrimp squats.