Cases where the bones are actually malformed are rare. In these cases such as the one FatherDog described, shoe inserts are a good idea. However, shoe inserts and heel lifts are over-perscribed by Chiropractors. Just because one hip is higher than the other - doesn’t necessarily mean that the bones are longer on one side. When I started the Rolfing course, I had a leg length difference of nearly 1/2 inch. By the time I was finished, this was less than 1/4 of an inch. The length of your femur, tibula and fibula are fixed, however, the arch of your foot can change, the joints can expand, the tilt of the hips and tailbone can change, and the alignment between the shin bones can change.
I looked at the picture of Matt Furey doing the Hindu Squats.
I agree this is a great exercise. With one caveat, his knees are in front of his toes. This will cause repetive stress injury to the patellar ligament (the big central ligament on the front of the leg running from knee to tibia). Stress to the patellar ligament is one the main causes of knee joint destabilization and subsequent development of ostearthritis. If you want to avoid abnormal joint function and pain later on, do the exercise right today! That means, do it with your heels flat on the ground and your knees dehind your big toe. This will also make you stronger in the long run because it elongates the gluteals and bring the muscles on the inner thigh more into play. It also increases balance. I have this very same exercise in a qi gong routine excet we do it with our arms in front like lightly hugging a tree. If you want to bring your calves into the exercise maintain a soft (slightly bent knee) at the top of the exercise and flexx the feet so that you come up to your toes. If you want to bring your shoulder more into the exercise widen the stance a little and when you come down pretend to scoop up a big basin of water bringing hands over the head at the top of the exercise i.e. you are making big circles with your arms. The right arm making a clockwise circle and the left making a counter clockwise circle.
Enjoy,
Eric
Shiatsu has caught some major influence from acupressure.
I guess if one could say it is close to acupressure and chinese tuina massage,a mix between these.
Tried hindu squats,makes my left knee crack in a nasty way… :eek:
Never heard of Swedish massage,even though I should have.
(Just rambling and adding stuff from here and there)
I prefer not to go down and sit on my calves when I squat, for the reasons above and it takes the strain off the quads down there. Do them with weights and you’ll soon exceed 500.
You guys are hardcore - 500 
They always feel like they’re damaging my knees but I’m probably doing it wrong. Keeping your heels flat seems like a really good idea. Cheers.
The thing is, if you keep your heels flat, you can’t go down as far, because it would actually strain your knees more, because your weight is pulling back on the joint.
I feel that it is really important to concentrate on form. That’s one of the reasons I like the exercise.
****, after reading this I figured I’d give it a try. Did them pretty slow with a stop at the bottom. Only did 50 but I could really feel them in my legs and it got my breathing going. I can definitely see how it would be a mental thing also. Need to do them with the TV or music on. I’ll try to see if I can get to 100 or so later. No way I could do 500 now. Would love to be able to do the 1 leg squats though. That’s a power move…think I’m going to start working them.
speaking of which, what are some tips some folks used to be able to do pistols?
I think in order to do the pistols (one-legged squats) with the proper form, and not be damaging my knees or encouraging uncontrolled tension in my body, I am going to follow the advice of Matt Furey and wait till I can do 500 of the 2-legged variety
I wanted to keep this to myself, but I can’t resist sharing with you guys - I just found a way to greatly increase the effectiveness of my Hindu Sqautting routine. First I do my set of Hindu squats to exhaustion (about 135 now), then now that my quads are tired, I go over and do body-weight box squats using my bed. This engages the other muscles like glutes and hams, lower back better, making for a more complete lower-body workout. I can crank out about 30 more this way. Then I rest and do another set of both.
500 hindus
I think hindu squats are good in building up endurance but it will not develeop maxium strength or hypertropy. There are other ways of developing endurance which isn’t so boring. I can understand the benefits of bw squats, but you dont have to do three or five hundred be weight squats to get to single leg squats. I have successfully got myself to do single leg squats without reaching 100/500 mark bw squat.
How? There are many factors, flexibility, core strength, and the body’s coordination of lower and upper body.
It is important to develop your core. My abs are pretty strong in my case, so I worked on my weakest link, my back. I developed my back flexibility and max. strength by doing certain exercises such as dead lifts, reverse hyperextensions. Using PFN and Ai stretch tecnhiques for my back. This helped alot and improved my functional strength big time.
Balance. I workout my core using stability ball daily. But if you are not familar with stability ball work, then I do this basic exercise called single leg dead lifts. I did many single leg deadlifts with my kettlebells this is will develop your core, back, hams, and balance which is an aspects of single leg squats.
Finally, I developed max strength in my legs by doing front squats 4sets of 3-5 reps resting 5-6 min between sets, then I would used an technique of doing single leg squats using a cable system to assist me (three sets of 2-5 reps) until I did it on my own which less then three weeks for me under my new program I started in Jan 6, 03. Now I can sinle leg squats and press a dumbell over my head at same the time.
My friends were impressed that I do a piston and a dumbbell press at the same time. A couple of co workers (personal trainers) bigger than I tried the same thing and they couldn’t do it and almost dropped a the dumbell on their heads. And when it came time for me to front squat, they saw I wasn’t lifting baby weights neither. LOL. But asked me why I did I rest long and said I was being lazy. I told them I working on developing my power and not looks. I am training for load and not reps. They said, “ok professor, whatever you doing it seems to work…” Well I hope this helps.
Yes, I think that sqautting w/weights would be better overall, I’ve done it before - but right now I want to increase my tendon strength and endurance more. I want to put my knee problems behind me forever, they’re doing pretty good right now but I want to have really strong knees before I go back to the weight room.
Fa Ging:
I hope you go seek a doctor and get those bum wheels fixed. Best of luck. Cheers.
Oh, I’ve had the knee problem for about 12 years - it is basically a result of my Patellar Tracking Dysfunction - as I bend my knees (which are knock-kneed) the patella jumps the track to the outside - the solution has been to exercise the inner head of the quadricep by doing leg extensions only for the last 30 degrees of the movement. They offered to cut the tendon on the other side to lengthen it, but I didn’t want to do all that. After I started the exercises, I never had major problems, but just some minor irritation. I was able to do squats when I was lifting and I completed a ten-mile race. Still there’s too much cracking and rubbing going on, so I am concerned over the long term - you won’t see me training snap kicks on the wall again like a TKD artist. thus I’m trying to build up the tendon strength as much as possible.