James Wilson: The squat is one of the best overall exercises that you can incorporate into your program. And how that hard couple of things are considered. The first thing that you're going is the front squat or a back squat. Basically, you're going to hold the bar across your back, which would be a back squat that's the more traditional, better known method we'll do on your back and squatting or you're going to perform front squat. Basically, where you're holding it and balancing on your shoulders in next feeding in that way.
I prefer doing a front squat for a couple of reasons, primarily, safety when you do a back squat if you've been over too far where the bar is going to stay under back, so you can bend over too far and you've to use your lower back to come up, so the risk of injury is lot higher. When you do a front squat, if you bend over too much you're not going to get hold the bar, so it kind of has a little bit of build in safety factor and two, you're not putting direct compression on the spine, and so I actually prefer because you're having to stabilize the load in front of you and use that posture, your chain to help stabilize out. Though, which is being more specific to what most us do in real life.
You're necessarily putting a lot of things on your back and squatting, but you have to hold things in front of you and squat. So, it's a little more specific to everyday functions and stuff like that. A couple reasons for doing the front squat and set of back squat and you know, of course, if you're competitive power lifter or you've got a highly trained coach who has taken the time to really teach you proper execution of the back squat. It is a great exercise, but for most people, it's easier to learn the front squat and there are some functional differences between and that maybe an advantage versus the back squat.
So anyways, but you want to be able to execute front squat properly and there are some things that people do wrong when they're trying to do a front squat. Where I'm going to show you is how I warm up and I have all of my clients warm up to execute front squats and go over what we're thinking about and how we're preparing for this lift in order to make sure that we execute a good strong lift and so. Anyways, first thing that you want to do is always do just a couple of body weights squats.
And see I've got a box here, we would like to set up something about 12 inches off the ground that gives you a good idea if your squat debt and so you want to squat down to your butt touches that, that's a good functional range for most people, so make sure you got your feet set shoulder width apart, arms up in front of you, abs are engaged, you're going to squat down, likely touch the box and come back up. What you're looking for and you want to make sure that your knees should stand out of your feet, don't let them cave in and you want to make sure that you're keeping the weight back on your heels and you're keeping your back straight.
So, you don't want to do this where you come up on your toes and you don't want to let your back round. So, we're just trying to increasing the neuro group as this is called and it's surprising a couple of body weight squats and as I come up, I'm pushing through the heels and squeezing my gluteus together to make sure that I'm using my hips, not my lower back. You know, do a few reps, three to five, can you just getting a feel for the motion. So, now we're going to go to the bar, you know most people do wrong when they're doing front squats, is they try to hold the ball with their hands. We prefer the clean this is known as a clean rep method, this is known as the body building rep method, we prefer this just a little bit better for a couple of reasons, mainly you got to use your upper back more in order to stabilize the load.
So again, this is more specific to everyday life in sport function versus holding on like this where you're able to use more of the chest and shoulders and kind of not have to use the upper back as much. So, in order to get that upper back training effect to we prefer the clean grip method and what most people end up doing more and though is that they hold the bar with their hands, you want to balance that on your shoulders where I'm going to show you is a simple drill that teach you how to do that. We're going to step up underneath the bar and you're not going to get it with your hands.
We're going to balance it on your shoulders and so right now, with balanced on my shoulders as I can feel it against my neck a little bit, but it's not chopping me out, so I'm just balancing it to my shoulders a little bit of my neck, and then you're going to execute a couple of reps with the bar balance like that. Again, think about the same things, keeping the back straight, weight back on the heels, knees apart, do a couple of reps like that, walking in. Again because you want to sit back into a squat, you're going to have some forward trunk lean, so you need to compensate for that by bringing the hands up a little bit. So, if you squat usually with you hands neutral, its not going to work, its going to roll out and you're going to have to bring them up a little bit.
But once you get the feel for balancing it on your shoulders. Now, you can incorporate with hands into it. But again, I'm balancing it on my shoulders. My hands are just providing a little extra balance, but they're not supporting it, so again execute a couple of reps and trying to keep those elbows up as you come down, if you don't keep those elbows up, we're going to end up holding with the hands, so it's the other way - it's not shifting on and holding with my fingers, you want to have it back like I should be able to take away from the bar and have the balance on my shoulders. So, once you can execute that, then you're ready to start adding load them again, just making sure that you're keeping that back straight, knees spread and you're holding the bar on your shoulders and set it with your hands.
So, you make fine that you don't have enough mobility in your wrist to hold the bar like this and so in that case, what you can do is take a parallel lifting straps, things you put it on your wrist and you wrapping out of bar and trying to hold more away, which I never recommend for that purpose, but you can take a pair and fix them to the bar, were up on the bar and set of getting your wrist in that position, you can hold on to the straps and so you got the straps on the bar, you'll be holding the straps and so you got the straps on the bar, you'll be holding that's coming -- and that's coming off and bouncing on your shoulders that's how you can get going, if you don't necessarily have the risk flexibility right off the back to do that.
So anyway, so that's how, you know I always prepare and keep myself ready to execute front squats and how my clients prepare. You may find that, that's a good workout for you, but first you may need to work on some of those techniques as far as keeping your lower back straight, keeping your knees straight apart, keeping your weight back on the heels, getting down to a proper squat depth and being able to balance that on your shoulders until you can accomplish those basic components of the front squat, you don't need to worry about adding a whole lot of load. But once you get those down, you start adding load and you start to get strong in the front squat with those rules in mind, then this is one of the best exercise you can do. Anyways, once again, this is James Wilson with Elite training and that's how we execute a front squat.
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