Looking for a reasonably safe bodyweight style exercise for your quads and legs? The Blast Strap Sissy Squat is a great option for you to explore. I have done Sissy Squats using a number of different hand-holds, from doorways to bars to railings, but none of them gave me the full range of motion and focused the movement on the quads like the Blast Straps have (and as of this writing they’re on an awesome sale).

I hooked my straps to the top of my power rack, and there’s enough other weight on the rack that it doesn’t slide or tip when I use them.

For those of you who already have, or would rather have them, the TRX Pro Pack + Door Anchor would work just as well plugged high on a sturdy doorframe or other support.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHWSXdITMw

The only tricky part is to line up your feet under your hands so that you have full range of motion up and down without sliding or tipping, or putting way too much weight on your arms. With the straps your hands go up and down quite a ways that they wouldn’t be able to on a static surface like a doorway.

Go slow, figure out your alignment, and remember that my full range of motion and yours might be quite a bit different. Another alignment issue is to point your toes so that they are lined up with your knees so as to avoid knee pain or stress that might lead to or irritate an injury. This may be straight or not, depending on your own joints and muscles and mobility.

In general bodyweight exercises are a good choice for warming up the joints and muscles for larger weights, or even as your main workout. If you can do 10 full range of motion controlled reps, you can either call that a warmup for something else, do 10 sets of 10, or work into sets of 25 and then up to 4 sets of 25. Research has shown that a good effect can be gotten from lighter weights at 4 sets of 25, and if that works for you then by all means, go for it.

Be careful, go slow, stay in control, and don’t get hurt.