why are front squats wrecking me so bad

[tweakxc03]

Hey Andy, the other day I hit 4x2 front squats at 310lbs for a PR. This is probably 95% of what my 1RM is (guesstimating 325ish).

The last couple of weeks of progressing this up linearly, I've dropped from 300 for 3x3, to 305 for 4x2, then 310 for 4x2. I've noticed that after these front squat workouts, my legs are just absolutely wrecked for at least 3 days afterward.

I've never really done triples or doubles on back squats this heavy before, so I don't really have a comparison, but is there a reason why these front squats seem to be wearing me out so much more?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Cuz front squats are hard? Cuz you are working at about 95% of 1RM for 4 sets across?

It's not bad to be wrecked from them.....just as long as you aren't using it as a light day exercise. If you want to keep pushing them, you'll probably be switching to singles here very shortly and that'll be easier to recover from

[tweakxc03]

Makes sense... I'm currently hitting my front squats on heavy day since they seem to be on a roll. After I run this out on singles, I plan on switching back to the back squat on heavy day as that needs attention.

If I wanted to keep pushing my front squat higher using the 3 day HLM, what do you think about replacing the medium day back squats with front squats? doing something like this:

Heavy: Back Squat 5x5
Light: Front Squat 3x3 75%
Medium: Front Squat 4x2 or 4x3 at 85%

[naherron]

Cuz front squats are hard? Cuz you are working at about 95% of 1RM for 4 sets across?

It's not bad to be wrecked from them.....just as long as you aren't using it as a light day exercise. If you want to keep pushing them, you'll probably be switching to singles here very shortly and that'll be easier to recover from

I was wondering if you had to come up with a front squat only program for an intermediate lifter. What would it look like? An exact program would be nice but if you even talked about it in general terms, that would be cool, too. How much posterior chain work (RDLs, Deadlifts, SLDLs) would you add in?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Makes sense... I'm currently hitting my front squats on heavy day since they seem to be on a roll. After I run this out on singles, I plan on switching back to the back squat on heavy day as that needs attention.

If I wanted to keep pushing my front squat higher using the 3 day HLM, what do you think about replacing the medium day back squats with front squats? doing something like this:

Heavy: Back Squat 5x5
Light: Front Squat 3x3 75%
Medium: Front Squat 4x2 or 4x3 at 85%

That's fine