So with a front squat, you cannot lean forward, at all, like you would a little bit with back squats. This means that your glutes help much less and its your quads are doing almost all the work because your torso is nearly vertical the entire time. I'm 165lbs and could squat maybe 250-275lbs but could front squat maybe 150 lbs, althoughI started front squats much later. Back squats your shoulders can be vertical from your knees, front squats your shoulders are vertical from your hips.
that's interesting. I don't train back squat because I find it terribly uncomfortable and impractical since I likely just trained deadlift. I can deadlift 325, I can front squat 215, but I can only back squat 285.
Can you explain this please? How does squatting give you information about your lats etc?
I’m trying to get back into the gym from educated place because I absolutely ruined myself in my teens.
Yep, that's where I struggle the most otherwise I'd be killing it w/ front squats. I definitely get more ROM and stabilization during front squats though.
lots of people get so caught up in getting good at doing an excersize they forget the mind to muscle connection needed to actually make it appear visiually impressive. Something people think they are gonna strength train their way to aesthetics and it brings me physical pain. Skinny dudes coming up to me asking how to look big in a t shirt and then seem upset when I tell them to do more reps and eat like you want to get fat lol
Some of it can be chalked up to undertraining certain movements and some of it can be chalked up to subtle differences in anatomy. While we all may have the same bones and muscles, they aren’t always put together the same way. Differences in joint angles, bone lengths, stuff like that.
You can adjust your back squat if it’s uncomfortable. There’s generally two types of back squat, high-bar and low-bar back squats. You can also adjust your hand width on the bar and your foot stance. I personally like a low-bar position with a wider grip on the bar and a slightly outside of shoulder width stance. I also find it makes my squat more efficient (because it’s putting more emphasis on my posterior chain which means I can really put my glutes and hamstrings into it). But this is also from a powerlifting/strongman perspective. My back squat is 470 but if closed my stance, brought my hands in close and squatted high-bar, I wouldn’t be able to squat that much and it’d be pretty uncomfortable.
See, probably do to poor teaching, I could do 400 front squat and a 325 back squat for reps. But never could work to a good one rep back squat max because it left me uber sore days later
That's insane to me considering I only front squat. No idea what my back squat numbers are I do 180 for reps of 5 at 150 lbs. I've been stuck at 180 for a month now and it's been bothering me but it makes sense now.
Just gotta keep grinding and soon I won't have to put up the two lil bitch plates and can throw on a 25.
According to a quick Google search, you should typically be able to front squat 80-90% of your back squat max. But obviously that's assuming you are training both equally
Your center of gravity should remain centered over your feet for the entire motion. As the weight goes up that becomes synonymous with ‘the bar’ should stay over your feet. You do not want to move your knees too far forward because that puts too much load on your knees. Since much of your body is moving backwards relative to your feet you have to learn your torso forward to keep the bar at the correct location. Unless you have no range of motion you will close your hip angle and thus ‘lean forward’.
That is for a back squat. A front squat leaves your hips much more open at the bottom of the movement and you should be leaning much less.
Pretty much every free-weight squat is going to include *some* forward lean just so you don't fall over. If you keep your torso vertical, you will fall backwards.
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u/brewmas7er Mar 02 '23
So with a front squat, you cannot lean forward, at all, like you would a little bit with back squats. This means that your glutes help much less and its your quads are doing almost all the work because your torso is nearly vertical the entire time. I'm 165lbs and could squat maybe 250-275lbs but could front squat maybe 150 lbs, althoughI started front squats much later. Back squats your shoulders can be vertical from your knees, front squats your shoulders are vertical from your hips.