Fundamental FitShot Exercise: Air Squat
Rob PincusDescription
FitShot™ combines physical activities with practical shooting skills. Rob Pincus demonstrates one of the most basic FitShot™ exercises, the air squat, in which we move the hip below the knees, heels on the ground, back straight, chest up, and focus to the front. First we just do the squat, then repeat it with a firearm in the High Compressed Ready position — an air squat followed by a shot. It’s important to understand your range of motion and not to injure yourself.
FitShot™ is a program designed to promote fitness in the shooting community. FitShot™ exercises are not meant to be “defensive shooting training.”
All right, let's take a look at one of our most basic fundamental FitShot exercises. It's the air squat. Now the air squat is a great exercise anyway. It's a good full range of motion, full body exercise. What we're going to be doing is we're going to be taking and moving our hip down below our knee.
Keeping our heels planted on the ground, keeping our back straight, keeping our chest up. We're going to be focused out in front of us. Now, when most people do the air squat, they're going to put their arms out in front of them. To enhance that balance and that range of motion. We're going to go down and come back up.
Very simple, our knees track out over our toes. Of course, when we have the firearm, when we're doing FitShot, we're going to keep our hands in here, up close to our chest and that's actually going to affect our balance, affect our coordination. We're going to go down and come back up. Now when we're going to do it with the firearm. The way to make this from an air squat, just a standard, good, functional movement and make it part of our FitShot is to incorporate the firearm in the high compressed ready.
Our arms are going to be back, very close to our body, if not touching our body. We're going to be oriented towards our target. We're going to go all the way down, all the way back up. Now, this is where it's important to understand your range of motion and make sure that you're not going to injure yourself or do a poor rep. If you can't get the crease of your hip down below your knee, your air squat might be to here.
Your air squat might be to here, wherever your squat is. You want to lower yourself down, bend the knee, keep your back strong, keep the gun in and go down as far as you can, come back up. Once you get up and you opened up that hip completely that's when you're going to drive out, take the shot and come back in. Once your hands come back in and your forearms, the inside of your forearms touches your chest. You can go down and do another squat.
Come back up. Now notice that I am not extending the gun until I've opened up this hip. Normally in our defensive shooting position, we're going to be in a creased position. We're going to be weight forward, knees bent but this isn't defensive shooting practice. This is FitShot.
This is fitness integrated with practical shooting. So we do want to come up straight as you extend out. Sure, you can go back into your good shooting position. Drive back out, come back in, go down and do your squat. Stand up, drive out, take that shot.
Come back in. The air squat is a really good exercise. Obviously, even if you're not shooting. It's very easy to go ahead and knock 20 of these out every evening while you're watching TV, while you're watching the news. Do it in the morning.
It's a great full body motion. It's a great way to stay fit, a great way to get the heart going obviously and increase your flexibility. Increase all of your all around fitness. And when you integrate shooting, it's a great fun thing to do with the range. To help you be more fit in preparation for personal defense.
And that is the point of the FitShot program.
This is a great exercise and something I haven't done much especially with a weapon; even with decades of physical training and and combat experience My suggestion to this video and the instructor, and maybe it can be edited or added, is that to prevent injuries when doing any kind of squat or lunge exercise: the knees and quad processes should make right/90* angles. The instructor demonstrates a squat where his knees point out and away from his core. That is one of the most common and easiest ways to destroy your MCL/ACL ligaments in the knee processes. If we're to share and demonstrate exercises, we should ensure that we demonstrate proper technique right? Just like proper handling and care of a firearm, so too should proper handling of our bodies be considered.