FRONT SQUATS with Shane Robert

FRONT SQUATS with Shane Robert

I love front squats. They don’t get enough respect. People are enamored with traditional back squats, where the bar is behind the head on the top of the traps or rear delts, because they can use so much more weight and feed their egos by doing ugly reps where their hips shoot up and they bend over (called the “Good Morning Squat”), grinding out reps that get shallower and shallower as the set progresses. 

Not so with front squats.

Front squats are anteriorly loaded and rest on the front delts/collar bones (with a variety of options on how to hold the bar), called the “front rack”. If the weight is too heavy you’ll lose the rack position right away. If you have any squat technique weaknesses, such as the good morning squat, they become magnified many times over when you front squat. Because of this, relatively lighter loads are used. Combined with greater mobility requirements, front squats also tend to beat you up much less than back squats, certainly less than low bar squats. This allows you to train at a much higher frequency if you so choose.

In these images, I'm demonstrating two grip options for a front squat.

There is absolutely no science to back up my statement, but the fact that strongmen tend to favor the front squat to the back squat is a clear indication, to me, of their overall benefit to being stupid strong and jacked. Olympic weightlifters reserve a lot of their training volume for front squats since the movement is so similar to the clean catch and recovery. I think that this emphasis on heavy fronts is one of the things that helps them build so much strength for their size. Check out this example here.

As for training them, I see no benefit in training fronts for high reps. Since the upper back will fatigue long before the legs while doing front squats, I define high reps as anything above 5-7 reps for most populations. Trying to do 8+ reps will likely require too light of load to still present a challenge to your legs before the upper back and/or core gives out. Another benefit of front squats is that the upper back and ab strength you build will carry over well to deadlifting and overall “armor” building.

Here is a program that is my go to when I really want to push my front squat numbers higher. The first 4 weeks are a preparatory block using fairly low percentages to get you used to 3 days per week of front squatting. The format is based on the Texas Method of volume day/light day/heavy day. The volume day weight will remain static and increase in volume over the 4 weeks, where the heavy day will increase in intensity each week. After the 4 weeks, the program rolls into the classic 1976  “Russian Squat Routine.” This is a very challenging program as it uses both high volume and high intensities. However, I have found few programs that work as well as this one does for front squat gains, especially when combined with the first 4 weeks. 

Percents are based on a conservative 1RM. Something like a single 8/10 effort, not a true 10/10 max.