Front Squats

[Campbell]

I had a guy correct my front squats the other day and i noticed that in a front squat your knees come way forward of your toes (to the extreme that you need lifting shoes to get your heel up to do it properly).

My question is: how come we try so hard to avoid this in the back squat because it is bad for our knees but in the front squat it is not bad for our knees any more?

[Pjotor]

AFAIK knees coming forward is not bad for the knees, just bad for the weights you can lift. What IS bad is if your knees travel in a direction other than that of your toes.

[Kyle Schuant]

If your knees going over your toes is dangerous, I suggest we all avoid taking the stairs.

[MazdaMatt]

I would have thought that we covered the whole "knees over toes" to death around here. Look at the cover of the book for your answer - you don't have to read very far.

[confuzzl3don3]

I think we should give campbell the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he's not meaning knees aren't meant to go past the toes on the back squat, but rather go extremely forward. Then again i don't know how people can throw their knees excessively past their toes while keeping their heels on the ground, or maybe it's just me.

[Carnivroar]

[Thrasher]

In a low-bar back squat, if your knees are traveling too far past your toes, then your hamstrings are being shortened at the bottom of the squat, and you lose your hip drive. The point of the low-bar back squat is to strengthen both the quads and the posterior chain simultaneously, to get the most bang for your novice-strength-training buck, and to have balanced musculature for knee health. This requires hip drive.

[gzt]

The answer is that we don't, we let our knees go as far in front of our toes as they need to and no further. Going too far gets the bar out of position and makes things awkward. This is determined by anthropometry, bar position, basic physics, etc. Sliding forward at the bottom, which is what we're really trying to avoid, is bad for the knees for the reasons indicated in the book. See the image already posted.