Front squats made easier

[big_swede]

Front squats also keep you honest. If you cheat, you drop the bar, simple as that. For this reason, many strength coaches consider the front squat to be a better lower body strength test than the mighty back squat. It also creates a built-in safety mechanism.

T NATION | Front Squats Made Easier

[PrimalBeard]

Thanks for posting this. I had been curious how to hold one of those. This should be fun.

[big_swede]

Front squats are fun shit, and my tip of the day is to practice the clean grip. Its well worth the pain =)

[Soldier]

I got lucky early on in my training by being a part of my high school weightlifting team. Unfortunately our coach had no clue how to train the clean, but I still had plenty of time with a bar on my chest. Now when I do front squats I use the cross arm grip, but that's just because I broke my wrist in high school and have never been able to maintain a good clean grip since.

It's true that if you have the bar in the right place you can actually take your hands off the bar. I'm always very lightly touching the bar, if at all.

The REAL trick is putting the bar down when your done and not using a squat rack or bumper plates. I've mastered the technique of actually dropping the bar and catching it with my hands. That movement alone has probably given me half of my biceps development.

[piatraelfa]

While I was into powerlifting, Judas from Fortified Iron adviced me to do a lot of front squats in order to improve the core. It was AWESOME!
However, what I wanted to say in the first place, was that learning the front squat using a smith machine doesn't seem doable at all, basically because the machine is drastically limitating the range of motion, and generally speaking, takes a lof of effort, effort that should have been made by the stabilizer muscles, not to say that you can't front squat properly at a machine.

[emekajokammor]

Originally Posted by big_swede

Front squats are fun shit, and my tip of the day is to practice the clean grip. Its well worth the pain =)

Agreed. Couldn't agree more! Tremendous difference in form and weight for me when i use that grip