Sitting Back vs Down on a Front Squat

Hey all. I’m just starting out with weight training and I’d very much like to learn the olympic lifts. I’ve heard different things about whether you should sit ‘back’ into a front squat (initiating the movement from the hips) or whether you should sit ‘down’ into a front squat (lowering your torso between ‘open hips’). Perhaps it depends on what you are trying to do with your front squat… I’d like to clean one day.

Any thoughts on this?

Sit down inbetween your feet (about a bit wider then shoulder width apart, toes pointing outwards)

The further you sit back the greater your leaning forwards = bad for OLifting. You want to be upright as much as possible for less lever. Try having a heavy weight in the front squat position. Now sit down at the bottom. Tell me which is easier, when your upright or when you try leaning forwards? When the weight gets heavy it’ll make you drop the bar or your holding on with your arms = bad

The weight is suppose to rest across your shoulders.

Sure you will invariably lean forwards a bit to some degree but you want to limit this as much as possible. The goal is an upright trunk.

Koing

Koing said it all. Think about when you are in the bottom of a snatch or clean… your torso is an upright position, and thus you should squat this way to 1). get used to it, and 2). train the muscles/nervous system in a specific body position.

Okay, thanks.

I did indeed have the suspicion that I couldn’t both sit back and have an upright torso but worried that maybe it was due to the peculiarity of my levers or something…

I’ve been doing low bar back squats to try and activate my posterior chain as well as front squats. I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t try and learn both of those at the same time because they tend to interfere with each other - better to wait until one is really ingrained before learning the other. I was a bit torn between doing the starting strength program (because I’m so very weak) and focusing on learning the Olympic Lifts (because they look like so very much fun). I think I need to stop doing low bar back squats.

I’m using very light weight at the moment (10kg) on front squats because my legs aren’t strong enough to get me out of the hole with anything heavier. Actually, depending on the rate of my descent in a hang clean my legs aren’t strong enough to get me out of the hole with a broomstick. Sigh. I suspect I could get more weight up if I could bounce a little from my hamstrings instead of just my adductors, but I guess as the weight got heavier I’d drop the bar forward or fall over as you say.

I suppose… I’ll just have to keep on trucking with the front squats and my legs will get stronger eventually. Just checking that I wasn’t stabotaging myself in thinking that the bounce should come from my adductors rather than my hamstrings.

Tried sitting down with an upright torso today. My hips hurt. Feels like the tendons in my groin region. Like my legs have been ripped apart a little. I guess they adapt eventually?

I guess I’m most worried that people do sit back into their hamstrings / glutes at least a little, but because their knees also travel forwards in front of their toes things kind of even out. I have limited ankle mobility (orthopedic screws and stuff) so my knees simply can’t travel in front of my toes.

I get fairly tempted to do a wider stance so my knees can truck out to the sides but with a narrower stance I can get the bottom position okay so I guess I’ll get better with time.

Thanks for all the help, guys. Much appreciated. :slight_smile:

Throw some 5 lb plates under your heels or lift in oly shoes; either will help with your limited ankle flexibility. All the flexibility needed for oly lifts and assistance lifts (ie shoulder, ankle, wrist, etc.) will come with time and practice. This sport is definitely painful and humbling at first.

[quote]alexus wrote:
Tried sitting down with an upright torso today. My hips hurt. Feels like the tendons in my groin region. Like my legs have been ripped apart a little. I guess they adapt eventually?

I guess I’m most worried that people do sit back into their hamstrings / glutes at least a little, but because their knees also travel forwards in front of their toes things kind of even out. I have limited ankle mobility (orthopedic screws and stuff) so my knees simply can’t travel in front of my toes.

I get fairly tempted to do a wider stance so my knees can truck out to the sides but with a narrower stance I can get the bottom position okay so I guess I’ll get better with time.

Thanks for all the help, guys. Much appreciated. :-)[/quote]

Go a bit wider then. Some guys will squat a bit wider then others but don’t go ‘too wide’ unless you catch your Cleans and Snatch’s like that.

Koing

One exercise I found helpful for beginning front squats was wall-facing squats. Stand facing a wall, and without touching it, squat down. It will help to teach you to stick your butt out.

I guess it’s worth posting the somewhat obligatory Dan John squat video too:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-6529481301858251744#

[quote]el_presidente wrote:
One exercise I found helpful for beginning front squats was wall-facing squats. Stand facing a wall, and without touching it, squat down. It will help to teach you to stick your butt out.[/quote]

I’ve never understood the point of this exercise for an olympic style squat. It would teach you to not bring your knees forward, and also to initiate at the hip instead of the knee. I would think the reverse would be better (and in fact, its something I do with newer lifters) - try to squat with your back facing the wall and progressively get your feet closer to the wall, which would make you bring your hips straight down more and your knees more forward.

[quote]dfreezy wrote:
This sport is definitely painful and humbling at first.[/quote]

At first? Still is brah.

[quote]Dr. Manhattan wrote:

[quote]el_presidente wrote:
One exercise I found helpful for beginning front squats was wall-facing squats. Stand facing a wall, and without touching it, squat down. It will help to teach you to stick your butt out.[/quote]

I’ve never understood the point of this exercise for an olympic style squat. It would teach you to not bring your knees forward, and also to initiate at the hip instead of the knee. I would think the reverse would be better (and in fact, its something I do with newer lifters) - try to squat with your back facing the wall and progressively get your feet closer to the wall, which would make you bring your hips straight down more and your knees more forward.[/quote]
agreed, it may be good for hip mobility, but it is not something that should be used to teach the Olympic squat.

Doc are you a coach for a club?

[quote]PB Andy wrote:

[quote]Dr. Manhattan wrote:

[quote]el_presidente wrote:
One exercise I found helpful for beginning front squats was wall-facing squats. Stand facing a wall, and without touching it, squat down. It will help to teach you to stick your butt out.[/quote]

I’ve never understood the point of this exercise for an olympic style squat. It would teach you to not bring your knees forward, and also to initiate at the hip instead of the knee. I would think the reverse would be better (and in fact, its something I do with newer lifters) - try to squat with your back facing the wall and progressively get your feet closer to the wall, which would make you bring your hips straight down more and your knees more forward.[/quote]
agreed, it may be good for hip mobility, but it is not something that should be used to teach the Olympic squat.

Doc are you a coach for a club?[/quote]

I was the coach of Baltimore Gold (satellite of East Coast Gold) until recently (I moved to go to Med school).

[quote]Dr. Manhattan wrote:
I’ve never understood the point of this exercise for an olympic style squat. It would teach you to not bring your knees forward, and also to initiate at the hip instead of the knee. I would think the reverse would be better (and in fact, its something I do with newer lifters) - try to squat with your back facing the wall and progressively get your feet closer to the wall, which would make you bring your hips straight down more and your knees more forward.[/quote]

I guess it would depend on what the lifter isn’t doing. Back too rounded or tucked under? Wall-facing. Doesn’t bring knees forward? Wall-backed.

I actually only started strength training about 7 months ago after a life of being sedentary. Had no idea what one should do at the gym so did a machine weights program for 3 months and then moved onto dumbbell free weights for the 3 months. So… I really am pretty new to this.

The gym guy had me squatting facing a wall to start with. I found that my stance got really wide and I was really pulling myself down and back up again with my hips and my groin got really sore. Eventually I realized that it was sore in a bad way and when I mentioned that to him he said he didn’t mean for me to squat so low.

Then I saw the Dan John video and realized that while it was something like torture to pull myself into a deep squat with a sumo stance just sitting down (rather than back) into it was pretty natural to me. I do a lot of squat stretches with ‘big chest - buddah belly’ and I can get a reasonable bottom position with a more typical stance and an upright torso.

Still get something odd happening on my descent, though. Think it is basically that it will take some time to get rid of the ‘hips back’ motor program that I had going there. I was a bit worried about my hips after the other day, though, but I’ll go easy on them to start. Think it is some kind of tendonitis so I should just be a little careful with them.

I am pretty tempted to go wide on both a front squat and the catch for the clean. Think that might just be because of the wall work, though, so will continue to work on a narrower stance. I guess I’m aiming for heels in line with hips. That might still be a little wide. Perhaps I should mention I’m a female with long femurs in relation to torso.

My ankle flexability might improve a little - but in my case I have orthopedic limitations. There is only so much ankle flexability one can regain when some of the bones in ones ankle are fused with screws and plates. I will invest in some weightlifting shoes at some point… But I think I’d feel a little silly with all the gear hauling the broomstick around :-/

It won’t happen over night mate. I have a Rugby guy at the club doing loads of stretching and it’s been about the past 2months where he has seen marked improvement in his ankle and hip mobility. He has been one of the more religous guys in stretching properly. You have a lot of guys say they are stretching when in actual fact they are not. You only get in what you put out.

It’ll probably be another 6months of him working on it to have a perfect recieve position. He’s spent far far too much time bench pressing in the past and riding a bike with a rounded back (better position for cycling but rubbish for OLifting). He has to unlearn a lot of things but he is getting there.

It’s the same with asking someone to get down to do the box splits. It WILL NOT HAPPEN OVER NIGHT OR IN WEEKS. It’ll take months and months of focused, dedicated hard work but you CAN GET THERE :slight_smile:

And in your situation with your ankle issues you make the best of what you have. Go a bit wider. Theres no law that says you can’t go wider then a bit over shoulder width. Some people clean with really close and really wide grip. If it DOESN’T HURT YOU and YOU FEEL STRONG in that position go for it :slight_smile:

Koing

Thanks.

I’m going to start doing the hip mobility drills that someone posted a link to in another thread. Have realized that I don’t have a very good squat after all. Some butt wink and the hip pain is due to short and overactive hip flexors. I solemnly swear to do the hip mobility drills thoroughly at least 6 days a week. I also solemnly swear to be patient with myself and with the broomstick and get the front squat and overhead squat right before adding weight or trying to do hang power cleans. :frowning: Patience… Is indeed a virtue. And I can still keep up other strength training that doesn’t interfere since I’m pretty weak generally. Have a 1/3 body-weight strict military press, now, which I’m kinda proud of :slight_smile: I’ll just keep on truckin…

And I’ll try not to worry about my stance too much. Good to know there is some variation and people aren’t saying that I simply can’t do this with limited ankle mobility (fingers crossed I will find a way). At the moment I’m so weak that none of the stances feel strong. If I can start relaxing my hip flexors on the ascent then things might start feeling different, though. I guess time will tell. Looking forward to progressing enough so that I think I’m perfect and I can post a vid for y’all to tell me how I’m not. :slight_smile:

Listen to Koing, he knows where its at. Patience is a virtue…injuries and lack of progress are not. Do your mobility work! :smiley:

About your hip flexors though. Why did you think its tendinitis? I wouldn’t worry about it right now as they are probably just tight as drums because of your sedentary life style and poor training advice. Just focus on your mobility drills and get your hands on a FOAM ROLLER.

PS: I hope you fired Mr. Gym Guy and nice military press btw (be proud, but never be content :wink: )

I strained my hip flexor at the comp and it makes squating MUCH MUCH MUCH harder then it is even with 120kg less weight! So I can only imagine how much harder it is when you have flexibility issues. But as my injury is healing up it feels A LOT better. I should be better by Thursday or so?

Keep at it and be patient. You will get there :slight_smile:

Ditch the power cleans. Do full cleans. Go a slow as you can and it will help your mobility also.

Koing

[quote]Koing wrote:
I strained my hip flexor at the comp and it makes squating MUCH MUCH MUCH harder then it is even with 120kg less weight! So I can only imagine how much harder it is when you have flexibility issues. But as my injury is healing up it feels A LOT better. I should be better by Thursday or so?

Keep at it and be patient. You will get there :slight_smile:

Ditch the power cleans. Do full cleans. Go a slow as you can and it will help your mobility also.

Koing[/quote]

I recently strained my hip flexor too (feb 12). They suck. How long ago did you do it and what did you do for recovery? Im finding squats are getting better, but I took an entire week off any sort of hip flexion/extension as they both bothered me and iced it a bunch.