Air squats to improve performance? Or what else?

With no or limited equipment:

Skipping
Body weight exercises
Small dumbells (arm weights)
Leg weights as in the ones that you velcro around your ankles and do calf and hamstring exercise with. I used to find those v. helpful.
Exercises on a yoga mat like push-ups, sit ups, cycling legs, leg raises
Pilates and yoga (debatable).
Circuit training.
Things like lunges, burpees, any strengthening exercises
Stretching if you believe that helps (many don't)..

Good luck with the book..

I actually think you could stay really fit in a small box room even if you couldn't run, if you had a mat and a skipping rope.

Balance exercises ie. standing on 1 leg and bending down to touch toes, getting up from the couch using just 1 leg while watching TV, exercises for the feet while watching TV such as pretending to write your name, picking up marbles, lifting each toe up independently, or creating an arch with your foot. I have no evidence if they work but they're practical, time efficient, and need no equipment.

Focus on specificity of training. Single leg exercises are going to get you much farther (pun not intended) in running than double leg exercises. Some off the top of my head:

Lunges, step ups, single leg jump rope, single leg rdl, split squats, single leg squats.

My undeserved ban expires in 3 hours, but I have work to do and want to reply quickly now.

I understand your desire for simplicity, but there are two things I don't like about what you suggest. First, it is unnecessarily limiting to focus on one exercise, when one can as easily introduce variety for better ongoing stimulation. Second, I don't like the mindset of doing an exercise or a diet, or anything for 30 days and then you're done. A more subtle but consistent approach that becomes part of your lifestyle and routine is much better long term.

Personally, I have a fairly limited amount of equipment at home, most of which fits in a closet, and permits a full variety of PT type exercises.

A rubber mat, PT ball, bosu ball, balance pad, bands, 3 pairs of dumbbells, and jump rope. The only bigger equipment I have is an air bike that serves as a quick warmup, but optionally for sprint intervals or other workouts. I can do a variety of goblet and split squats, lunges, rdl, step downs, and balance work, band exercises etc.

I agree with what you've said here. My focus here is a little different and I'm still in the process of kicking around some ideas on how to best present this information.

As lifelong runners, we know anecdotally that all the things you mentioned will work. Some high school coaches devote an entire day workout doing nothing but these types of drills. Obviously, they work. The difficulty I have in writing about this is that this begins to sound perilously close to a workout when I start listing multiple exercises. People will complain that they don't have time to add an additional workout to their weekly routine. On the other hand, they do have 60 seconds here and there where they could do something to improve their running.

For example, when I'm waiting in line at a supermarket, I do multiple sets of calf raises. I'm currently playing around with the idea of setting my watch to beep on the hour and doing something running related... RDLs, air squats, jump squats, step ups, lunges...

The reason I chose the 30-day period is that there needs to be some sort of proof of concept. If it's going to work at all, there should be some improvement in 30 days. Once people are convinced that it actually works and they can see the benefit in 30 days, they're more likely to continue. The reason I chose the air squat is that in my experience I've seen many adult runners who couldn't do a single air squat!

Often, how information is presented has more to do with whether people accept it than the information itself. This is kinda a work in progress on the narrative.

Body weight squats are better than nothing, but for runners it doesn't go very far after the first couple of times doing them.

Without equipment the challenge becomes: How can we make this closer to what we would see in an actual weight room?

The two ways I see is:

1) Make the movement fast and explosive. This is easy to do by making the BW squats turn into squat jumps. You'll at least be generating more force and have a more eccentric landing component that we see with plyometrics

2) Make it seem heavier by doing it on one leg. The easiest start to this for most people is something like a Bulgarian Split Squat to make balancing easier. Skater squats are a personal favorite. All most people need is a rail to hold onto early on and ideally a pillow or foam roller that you can have below the knee as a target to go down to

Truthfully, if I read a book advocating for BW squats as a new key to improving my performance I'd be quick to put it down. For general health they're great, certainly better than doing nothing, but there are a lot of creative ways to artificially make the movement fill the role that we look to achieve in the weight room.

Looking forward to your results. I've tried doing air squats - maybe not quite fully parallel to the ground - 1600 times every other day ( just as easy cross-training) and it didn't seem to do much for me. But I didn't try to focus on, or measure, speed. They didn't seem to have any bad effects, other than occasional fatigue or sore knees. I tried to not spread my knees wide, like people commonly do during deep squats. Every movement was done in the sagital plane. My knees didn't quite like that, at first. But, it satisfied my need for exercise, doing about 400 at a time, several times per day. I'm tempted to do more, or doing them faster, but as a 76 year old, I don't want to invite knee problems.

Things I've done:
1- 10' running in place on carpet, alternating usual spm with high rate spm;
2- 10' of wood chopper / double polling exercise, i.e. like cross country skiing;
3- 10' of jumping up in the air, which can be quite strenuous depending on intensity;
4- 100 ups.

Also:
leg lifts;
occasional leg swings;
heel lifts (lifting knees, only touching floor with heels);
casual intermittent "running" from one room to another at slow pace.

Crowdsourcing material for a book based on anecdotal input from Letsrun is certainly a new one. It begs the question why write a book in the first place.

The same reason most people write books. As useful references for themselves and to establish themselves as an expert.

Maybe look for neuromuscular effects of body weight squats? Anecdotally speaking, I’ve noticed that within a week of routinely doing squats I feel “lighter on my feet” than I do when I haven’t done squats in a while. Any raw speed gains might partially attributed to this.

Broadly, I think that plyos help with coordination (in addition to strength) which likely leads to increased running efficiency.

I'm 57, been running competitively for 45 years but several months ago I saw a video of some guy going all out just running in place. 4 sets of 30 seconds with some knee lift, not just moving legs up and down by an inch. Took me several weeks before I could even go 30 seconds without dying and I'm still hugging my knees after each one. I'm still shocked at how much it works me. BTW, I just ran 1810 5k split in a longer race. I don't know if this all out running in place has helped, but I think it has. Highly recommend for older folks losing turnover speed and it's way harder than it sounds.

Air squats are only useful if they are done on the summit of a 14,000 peak. You must do this to maximize the recruitment of red blood cells. Filming your high-altitude air quats, preferably from a drone, is the expert recognized best way to do them. Anything else is a waste of time. Onward and upward!

I do something called the "21 gun salute" to get in a little strength training during the day. Over the course of 10-15 minutes, I'll take 3 very short breaks, in which I do a set of 7 push ups very slowly, going down all the way and trying to make my form as perfect as possible. By the end of a set, you are winded, but not sweaty, and the time in between sets when yo go back to being a normal sedentary adult, your heart rate goes down. 3 sets of 7 = 21.

Ok now that I typed this out it sounds really lame but whatever maybe it's helpful.

Great idea! I do a drill once a week on the track that is similar to this... high cadence, some knee lift, very little forward movement. At the end, I try to add more forward movement to the drill. It never occurred to me to just do it indoors and jog in place!

I agree that most runners would be shocked at how hard this can be.

peak fisky

You could join me and it would be n=2.

I think I'll measure before and after vertical jump height, max air squats, and max distance for 10x consecutive broad jumps. That, plus 200m time, should give me an idea if air squats by themselves are a significant benefit.

After reading these posts, I think that bench stepups might be a better drill, but I think I'll stick with the air squats for 30 days.

problem with skipping is it's high impact and the way you are jogging in place and on the balls of your feet isn't natural, it places more stress on the shin bones and achilles tendon. i now only skip whilst running forwards.