Front Squat Form Check

[lmram]

http://youtu.be/tmZFl9JihhE

I just started doing these. It just feels really awkward now. Sorry for the quality of the video. Things I noticed were I should unrack it better and my right foot doesn't seem aligned with my left foot while squatting.

[lmram]

Any help on this please?

[ned]

I'm no expert on front squats, but an obvious problem is that you are looking up. Maintain a neutral neck, which for the front squat means looking more or less straight ahead.

[mrflibble]

[lmram]

Sorry I didn't have a good camera with me so this is what I got. I can take another video if needed. It just feels like the weight is going to fall over, that's why I look up. Placement feels awkward too.

[ned]

It just feels like the weight is going to fall over, that's why I look up. Placement feels awkward too.

Sounds like you need to keep your elbows and chest up more to create a stable shelf on your anterior deltoids for the bar to rest on. Have you read the section of the book on the front squat?

[stuffedsuperdud]

The short story is, do like Cao Lei.


This fine lady unfortunately left the sport relatively young to pursue other opportunities, but in her short prime she was an absolute machine, and by that, I mean every rep of every exercise was banged out with textbook precision, independent of weight. (She's cute too but that's neither here nor there.) This includes front squats. Compare where the bar sits on her shoulders vs how you're doing it. All of the weight is solidly on her front delts and her elbows are positioned such that her hands are there to stabilize the bar, but not to bear any loads. Also, notice how she has all four fingers on the bar, but her hands are open; ideally you'd have the flexibility to have the hands closed around the bar, but open is fine too. What's less okay is to have only three fingers on the bar, as I've found stability rapidly degrades that way, or the way you seem to be doing it, where a lot of the weight is on your hands themselves. Your initial racking looks especially uncomfortable: it seems like you take the bar into your hands first, and then it sort of settles into a kind-of-stable-but-not-really position right before your 1st rep. It's also pretty disconcerting how you bend backwards like you're trying to limbo under the bar, with one foot forward of the other, right before you get it onto your hands: from now on, get under the bar symmetrically and have it pressing against your front delts before you lift it off the hooks. If you don't have the flexibility at all to rack the bar on your shoulders properly, nothing wrong with a little static stretching, like how Rip is doing:



Also experiment with rolling your forearms and triceps; in the case of my right arm, what I thought was a wrist issue was resolved by working out some kinks in the arm itself.

Don't worry too much about where you look. Ideally you'd look forward, but if looking up helps keep the bar racked, just do it. It's good enough for elite lifters, after all (below). I also have to do this myself sometimes: it helps me come out of the bottom a bit faster and prevents the bar from slipping forwards the way you are complaining of.



Aight that's just a list of some of my thoughts on the matter accumulated after a long time of avoiding front squats myself due to my poor positioning and flexibility. Play around with small weights and see how it goes.

[lmram]

Thanks for the help guys, especially for the effort stuffedsuperdud. I'm really just playing around with this as a secondary movement. I will incorporate your comments next time I front squat.