Squats (front and back)

🇬🇧 English speaking Forum Training Q&A
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afternoon - can someone explain what muscle groups - difference are betwn front and back squats pls. Im struggling with the balance & wrist hand position on the front and cant tell when the diff is between the 2 re muscle groups. cheers

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The front squats will challenge more your core and rely more on your quads. Back squats will not focus so much on the quads and recruit more the hamstrings and glutes. So you will be able to lift heavier with back squats. That difference may explain your balance difficulties. Start light with the front squats. Also, if you don’t have great wrist mobility, it may hurt your wrists when you are doing it, especially if you are working heavier. An alternative is the crossed-arm front squat - Crossed-Arm Barbell Front Squat - Muscle & Fitness.

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Thx, make sense. Ill try the x-arm i think that willhelp…

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I also found front squats a little difficult to understand at the beginning and they felt awkward and wrong. It got better with practice. Some advice based on my past mistakes:

  1. do not strain your wrists, the weight of the bar should fall on your shoulders/top of the chest
  2. if you wrist mobility doesn’t let you keep all the fingers on the bar, you can take off your little finger and if needed then the ring finger as well
  3. definitely try the cross-arm position, for me it felt more secure when I started
  4. look straight ahead
  5. focus on posture, tall spine, lifted chest, very important in a front squat
  6. make sure you keep your triceps/elbows high enough (I kept dropping them which is wrong)
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