Front squats
Ok, so I have seen quite a few people in the gym perform the front squats so I thought I'd create a topic to explain a better way of performing it.
Most perform the front squat with their arms crossed. Now, you can perform front squats this way but it's not the best execution. Honestly, I believe this is not the safest way. Let's see why..... What happens when the weight gets heavy? Your elbows begin to drop, which pulls you forward, lower back loses it's arch, chest drops, upper back rounds, and all this causes you to dump the bar out in front of you.
I'm sure you're asking yourself now, well how the hell should I perform a front squat if not with crossed arms? Easily.... you'll use what I call the Olympic style (clean grip). The Olympic style is where you grip the bar with both hands (but not crossed). You'll keep your elbows high, chest up, arch in your lower back, and keep your feet shoulder width or closer. You'll rack the bar on your clavicles. There is a fine line with the rack position. Rack to far back and you literally choke yourself (I've seen people pass out because the bar actually caused a blunt choke) and possibly pass out with the weight on you. Rack it to far out in front and it will begin to pull your elbows down possibly causing you to dump the weight.
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I front squat using the oly style with only my pointer and index fingers. I love front squats and go heavy with them as well even with that method. the crossed method is way too hard to balance on heavy sets to the point that i would consider it unsafe. Once your wrists are flexible enough the 2 finger method actually helps keep your elbows high and chest up as they should. The front squat is also a very great exercise to perfect your form on backsquat not to mention add assistance to it. It's a pretty unforgiving exercise in the sense that if you have bad form the bar is most likely going to fall forward so it helps teaching you balance and coordination on that movement which I feel helped me a lot on getting my form on backsquats better
thanks bro, also correction ^ pointer and middle fingers not pointer and index which mean the same thing haha
I knew what you meant, lol
Nailed it!! You hit every point of explaining how beneficial front squats are, and how to do them correctly...and maybe easier Oly style, I will have to try the 2 finger technique.
you're right about doing these with your arms crossed, I have dropped my elbows before and the rest of the breakdown followed. Gripping that bar Olympic style is some tough shit though...pressure on your wrists and then the forearms begin numbing out. I need to gain some of my flexibility back and then try this again someday.
I read somewhere (t-nation i think) about using single loop wrist straps to make the oly style grip easier on the wrists and forearms. Basically you just wrap the straps around the bar then grab hold of the strap 'tails' and pull up instead of grabbing the bar.
I cant go above 225 with the olympic grip. I have to use the arms crossed method to get up to the desired 365 for reps. I also place 2 25lb plates on the ground touching one another and place my heels on them. This allows for a deeper squat even with the feet close together.
365 on fronts is pretty nice dude! Damn....
Only for 6 though, but yeah my legs have always been super strong at 181 in the joint in a weight meet I legal squatted 585 just a belt no knee wraps or squat suit. Now a days if I cant hit it for at least 6 I dont mess with it anymore. Getting those achy knees.
I been looking into competing someday in a raw meet(that obviously doesn't test my pee!!)...squat as well. Right now I can bang out 495 for some reps...and honestly I am holding back, so I really don't know what I could seriously do. I'm 33 and 230 lbs. Any advice/leads/suggestions?
495 back squats that is!