Quads exercise
Barbell Front SquatHow to do it, with form in numbers
- Also works
- Upper back, Abs
- Equipment
- Barbell
- Level
- Advanced
How to do it
How do you do the Barbell Front Squat?
- Rest the bar on the front of your shoulders, against your collarbones.
- Hold it with your fingertips and lift your elbows high.
- Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, toes turned out slightly.
- Sit straight down until your thighs are just below parallel.
- Drive up through your whole foot, keeping your elbows high.
Cues
- Elbows up, chest tall.
- Sit down between your heels.
- Knees follow your toes.
Common mistakes
- Letting the elbows drop so the bar rolls forward.
- Leaning forward and letting the hips shoot up first.
- Lifting the heels at the bottom.
Form in detail
What does good form look like?
Starting position
The bar rests across the front delts, touching the collarbones and the front of the throat. Clean-style rack: hands just outside the shoulders, bar on the fingertips or a loose open hand, elbows driven forward and up so the upper arms point straight ahead, close to parallel with the floor. The shoulders carry the bar, not the hands. Heels about shoulder-width apart, toes turned out a little, whole foot flat. Stand tall with the bar over the mid-foot.
The movement
Hips and knees bend together and the body sinks almost straight down. The knees travel forward over the 2nd–3rd toes, further than in a back squat, which lets the trunk stay more upright. The bar moves in a vertical line over the mid-foot. The elbows stay high the whole way. On the way up, hips and shoulders rise at the same rate; the chest does not tip forward.
End position
The rep turns round when the thighs are just past parallel (hip crease a little below the top of the knee). The trunk is more upright than in the back squat (parent spec: trunk parallel to the shin, about 35–45°), which is what [3] and [4] report.
Tempo
2 s down, 0.3 s pause at the bottom, 1 s up, 0.5 s stand.
Form in numbers
What are the angles and distances?
| Measure | Target | Good range | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stance, heel to heel | 1.0 × shoulder width | 0.9–1.2 × | [1][2] |
| Toe-out, each foot | 10° | 0–20° | [2] |
| Upper arm vs horizontal, whole rep | 0° (parallel) | 0–25° below | [1] |
| Depth: hip crease vs top of knee | 3 cm below | 0–8 cm below | [1][2] |
The targets our 3D demo was built to, from the references below. Bodies differ, so treat the ranges as a guide for your own build.
For coaches
Use this demo in your clients’ programs
The Barbell Front Squat is in Trainaq’s exercise library. Add it to a workout, and your client sees this demo in the free Trainaq app above the sets they log.
Sources
Sources
- ExRx, Barbell Front Squat
- Myer et al. 2014, Strength Cond J, "The back squat: a proposed assessment of functional deficits and technical factors that limit performance"
- Gullett et al. 2009, J Strength Cond Res, "A biomechanical comparison of back and front squats in healthy trained individuals"
- Diggin et al. 2011, ISBS Proceedings, "A biomechanical analysis of front versus back squat: injury implications"
