Jan 16, 2012

Do you come forward on your front squats? I know I had that problem for awhile. Coming forward will often cause you to lose the bar forward even if your legs are strong enough to lift the weight. There are three ways that I approached fixing my problem. The first is mobility work. I found that my hips and ankles were very tight, thus limiting my ability to squat deeply without coming forward.

The second way was adding in back extensions and reverse hypers to my training. These two assistance exercises helped me to strengthen my hamstrings and glutes; therefore making me strong at the bottom of the squat. Before I added in these exercises, I would come forward because I wanted to use my stronger quad muscles to lift the weight. Now that my leg strength has equalized (my anterior/posterior… aka. front/back muscles are now balanced in strength) I don’t feel the need to learn forward because of a lack of strength.

The third way was the “lean back” cue. This cue was the most effective of these three methods. After I unrack the bar and walk into position, I think about sitting straight down and leaning back a little bit. It is this leaning back feeling that helps me to stay upright during the squat. I’m not actually leaning back; the cue helps me to counteract the impulse to come forward with a net result of causing me to squat with a vertical torso, the most effective way to perform a front squat.

This is my heavy triple backsquat at the end of a week filled with snatch and clean & jerk maxes.

Where are your elbows on the backsquat? Are they pointing down to the ground? If so, you have a wonderful technical deficiency to correct. In order for you to be able to carry the weight optimally during the backsquat, you must have you elbows pointed backwards (although not parallel to the ground).

Why? In order to fully support the bar, your elbows must be angled backwards to that they create a shelf for the bar to sit in. When your elbows drop, it allows the bar to roll down your back. A higher elbow position will feel much more stable and will make it easier to feel balanced under the weight.

If you have trouble getting your elbows into the right position then mobility work is a must. I know that I have to do shoulder flexibility work so that I can move weight overhead and lift more in both the front and backsquat. A temporary fix while you are waiting for your hard mobility work to pay off is to widen your grip on the bar. This lets you point your elbows back further, although it may make it harder to keep your back tight. I find it much easier to squat with a wider grip on the bar, and with a little focus the loss of back tightness won’t effect your lifts.

A common squatting fault, both in the front and back squats, is not finding the correct balance and weight distribution on your feet. In order to teach the proper technique, coaches will often use the cue “heels” to remind you that you should distribute your weight evenly across your feet. The ideal balance in a squat is to have the center of mass of you and the barbell over the middle of your foot. Why is the cue not “middle” or “balance”? There are several reasons, the first of which is that both of those are incredibly lame.

They also don’t help to correct the main problem, which is that you are attempting to balance yourself and added weight over the ball of your foot. In order to correct this, the best cue encourages you to over-correct and shift the weight to your heels. Hopefully you will try, and more importantly succeed in making a change that places the weight over the middle of your foot.

It may be hard for beginners to squat to full depth due to flexibility or strength imbalance. If flexibility is an issue, cueing may not improve squat technique. Instead it is more important to get into a good stretching routine that will loosen up hips/quads/hamstrings so that you will be able to reach the bottom of a squat easily.

If strength imbalance is the limiting factor, cueing may be a good way to solve the problem. usually people who squat on their toes are attempting to use their stronger quadriceps (the front part of the leg) to move the weight instead of engaging the hamstrings. Over time, and with constant reminders, cueing to place weight on the heels will strengthen the back of the leg enough so that the balance comes naturally. Other assistance exercises can be used to achieve this balance; however the squat, when properly executed, will usually the be most effective training tool for a begginer.

In the front squat a strong rack is crucial. There are two things that are important about the rack position. The first is that you need to have the bar balanced on your shoulders, not in your hands. The second is that you need to have a strong upper back to help hold the weight in place.

Keeping an upright posture is the best way to ensure that the bar stays on your shoulders. The best cue for this is to try and lean backwards. Don’t worry you probably won’t fall back (emphasis on the probably, don’t be an idiot and overdo it). With larger weights your center of mass changes, and although you will never truly be leaning back it may feel like a substantial lean is necessary in order to keep the bar lined up over the center of your foot. The tendency that you need to fight with an load on the front of the body (anterior, if you want to use a big fancy word) is a lean forward caused by the bar being positioned in front of your spine. It is obviously impossible to place the bar at shoulder height directly over your spine, at least I would hope this is obvious, but the closer the bar is to being over your spine the easier it will be to keep in place.

Another word of warning, if the bar is racked too deeply on the shoulders you may be at risk of passing out due to the loss of blood flow caused by embedding the barbell in your neck. In the event that you feel feint, bail the bar. Take a minute to recover an try again. There is no need for you to pass out, it does not make you a badass, it just makes you someone who missed a rep and risked injury for nothing.

A second component to the rack position is a strong upper back. This is important in both the front and backsquats, but I’ll address the backsquat in a later article. A strong upper back serves two purposes. The first is to better translate the power from your hips (the real core strength) by turning your torso into a solid block. The second is to act as a buffer to the inefficiency of the front rack position. Due to the position of the barbell there is inherently more strain on the rack position than in the backsquat. Therefore it is crucial to have a strong upper back to hold the bar into the proper position. Arm strength is mildly relevant; however if you are using your arms to hold the bar in position then you are most likely not keeping a high enough elbow position.

Now on to the 1 rep max; this IS your squat, the only measure that truly counts. A 1 rep max is a big deal, warming up for it doesn’t have to be. In earlier posts you learned how to warm up for other attempts and the 1 rep max is very similar to these.

Again it is best to start with the empty bar and then a set of 5 with a light weight. From here the reps should drop immediately to doubles and after a few sets of those you should drop to singles. Doing one rep allows for maximum concentration of technique as well as time to mentally prepare yourself for the effort without tiring physically.

It is best to find the right amount of volume for a 1 rep max through trial and error; however there are some general rules. A less experienced lifting with a lower squat weight may need more warm-up sets, possibly with more reps, than a more experienced lifter. Although the experienced lifter will probably be able to lift more he (or she) will be more likely to perform well with larger jumps and lower volume because the technique is much more ingrained and the body is trained to warm up and get to a working weight much faster.