I tried front squat about a year ago when I wasn’t serious about bodybuilding and I didn’t feel comfortable doing it because of the pain on my shoulders. Does this pain go away after a while and how do some of you guys deal with this. I remember backsquats hurting but now that I’m used to it I can do whatever weight without any pain.
any advice on the proper way to perform this workout before I try it?
Read Poliquin’s Question of Strength - January issue regarding front squats and using straps to hold the bar and staying under 6 reps per set.
Make sure the bar lies in that little divot between your deltoid and ac joint. I had trouble with that at first. Make sure to keep your elbows high during the movement.
Just do 'em!
Most people have pain when they first start front squatting, but for most it goes away after 3-5 sessions. My suggestion would be just to keep the weights light and use them as a warmup every time you back squat for the next 2-4 weeks. After that, you should be able to do them without the wrist/shoulder pain.
Also, make sure you really keep the bar high. It should practically be choking you. A problem I often see is that people don’t put the bar high enough and it digs into their front delts and hurts their wrist. It will also make you unstable when you are squatting and take poundage off.
Just keep doing them. After a while your tolerance for pain will increase and you will hardly notice.
Embrace the pain.
It always hurts when I front squat. For some reason my right clavicle sticks up farther and the bar rests right on it. You just deal with the pain.
The Sting Ray by Advanced Fitness is excellent and solves all problems. The only reasons I know of to work on front squats without it are 1) if personally simply having no problems without it, or 2) being an Olympic lifter and thus needing to be able to come up from the clean obviously without it.