Front Barbell Squat

Starting position:

Select the appropriate weight matching your type of training and your fitness level. Take a stance facing the bar on the rack adjusted to your shoulder height. Grab the bar with an overhand shoulder-width medium grip. Rest the bar on top of the deltoids so that the bar is firmly placed on the shoulders. Step away from the rack to perform full motion. Take a shoulder-width medium stance with the toes slightly pointed out. Maintain the stance and a neutral pelvis position.

Exercise:

Breathe in and begin to lower your torso without arching your back. The front of your knees should make an imaginary straight line with your toes. Keep your body upright without bending forward. Continue lowering your torso until it gets slightly below your knees. Breathe out as you go back up to the starting position in the same way. Repeat as required without changing technique.

Note:

Keep your torso upright, your pelvis in a neutral position and eliminate lower back lordosis. Keep your knees in an imaginary straight line with the toes and avoid rocking throughout the motion. Your knees, torso and head should not go beyond the imaginary straight line with your toes. Keep your heels on the floor all the time.

Recommendation:

Watch yourself sideways in the mirror to make sure you maintain the correct technique. To learn the technique, you may put a bench behind you and sit and rise from it. As your motion gets more fluent and your technique improves, you may lower the bench.

***

Front barbell squats seem to have several advantages and perhaps a few disadvantages comparing to the “regular” barbell squats with the barbell behind neck.

This short description doesn’t allow us to fully explain the differences but in short, the center of gravity is placed more in front with front squats; that forces you to keep the back more straight to keep the balance.

You can’t use the same weight for front squat as you would for back squat. There are two possible grips: either clean grip, basically an overhand grip with the barbell on your shoulders and crossed-arm grip which puts the weight on the shoulders and doesn’t damage your wrists.

While the crossed-arm grip enables for the best technique some consider it potentially dangerous. Use crossed-arm grip only when you are in full control of the weight.

A scientific study by J.C.Gullet & colleagues (A biomechanical comparison of back and front squats in healthy trained individuals) found that “The front squat was shown to be just as effective as the back squat in terms of overall muscle recruitment, with significantly less compressive forces on the knee”.