Posterior Chain Dominant Front Squats?

[theuofh]

Rip,

My training partner started powerlifting geared in high school, trained at westside barbell for a bit doing pretty much box squats and using a lot of band tension. He came up through 148, 165, and 181 and now is a heavy 181.

Anyway, he is switching over to raw powerlifting and olympic lifting. The problem is, his lower body is all ass and high hamstring with comically small quads. He can raw squat about ~100lbs more than me at pretty close to exact height/weight, but his front squat, is only a tad stronger than mine. We have a meet the 27th but I'm thinking he will squat 500-550. He squatted 487 last meet, awhile ago, and was doing speed box squats once a week only while doing most oly training.

Whenever he front squats or high bar squats, the first thing that happens out of the bottom is his knees kick back until his shins are nearly vertical, then he stands up using pretty much all glutes, but I don't the anatomy at play here. His back stays nearly vertical. I can get a vid if you are interested.

We've been experimenting trying to focus on recruiting the quads while front squatting, but despite however much cueing/coaching I give him, whenever the weight gets heavy enough to illicit a training response, he's back to his old form.

Any ideas on how to build up the front of his legs?

[Mark Rippetoe]

I'd need to see his front squat. Have you watched my video?

[theuofh]

Just watched it. Cueing the toes might help a bit and he could probably get his feet pointed out more.

I'll get a vid sometime this week and make a new thread with it.

Its really crazy to me how straight he gets his shins while still staying upright enough to keep the bar on his shoulders and I think it may be an interesting case.

[Mark Rippetoe]

He has very short femurs with long tibias.