Exercise Guide

The Front Squat:

As you may have already discovered, the squat is at the top of the heap (along with deadlifts) as one of the most effective overall exercises for stimulating body composition changes (muscle gain and fat loss). This is because exercises like squats and deadlifts use more muscle groups under a heavy load than almost any other weight bearing exercises known to man. Hence, these exercises stimulate the greatest hormonal responses (growth hormone, testosterone, etc.) of all exercises. In fact, university research studies have even proven that inclusion of squats into a training program increases upper body development, in addition to lower body development, even though upper body specific joint movements are not performed during the squat. Whether your goal is gaining muscle mass, losing body fat, building a strong and functional body, or improving athletic performance, the basic squat and deadlift (and their variations) are the ultimate solution. If you don’t believe me that squats and deadlifts are THE basis for a lean and powerful body, then go ahead and join all of the other overweight people pumping away mindlessly for hours on boring cardio equipment. You won’t find long boring cardio in any of my programs!

Squats can be done with any free weighted objects such as barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, or even just body weight. Squats should only be done with free weights - NEVER with a Smith machine or any other squat machines! Machines do not allow your body to follow natural, biomechanically-correct movement paths. You also perform less work because the machine stabilizes the weight for you. Therefore, you get weaker results!

The type of squat that people are most familiar with is the barbell back squat where the bar is resting on the trapezius muscles of the upper back. Many professional strength coaches believe that front squats (where the bar rests on the shoulders in front of the head) and overhead squats (where the bar is locked out in a snatch grip overhead throughout the squat) are more functional to athletic performance than back squats with less risk of lower back injury. I feel that a combination of all three (not necessarily during the same phase of your workouts) will yield the best results for overall muscular development, body fat loss, and athletic performance. Front squats are moderately more difficult than back squats, while overhead squats are considerably more difficult than either back squats or front squats. I’ll cover overhead squats in a future article. If you are only accustomed to performing back squats, it will take you a few sessions to become comfortable with front squats, so start out light. After a couple sessions of practice, you will start to feel the groove and be able to increase the poundage.

To perform front squats:

The front squat recruits the abdominals to a much higher degree for stability due to the more upright position compared with back squats. It is mostly a lower body exercise, but is great for functionally incorporating core strength and stability into the squatting movement. It can also be slightly difficult to learn how to properly rest the bar on your shoulders. There are two ways to rest the bar on the front of the shoulders. In the first method, you step under the bar and cross your forearms into an “X” position while resting the bar on the dimple that is created by the shoulder muscle near the bone, keeping your elbows up high so that your upper arms are parallel to the ground. You then hold the bar in place by pressing the thumb side of your fists against the bar for support.

Alternatively, you can hold the bar by placing your palms face up and the bar resting on your fingers against your shoulders. For both methods, your elbows must stay up high to prevent the weight from falling. Your upper arms should stay parallel to the ground throughout the squat. Find out which bar support method is more comfortable for you. Then, initiate the squat from your hips by sitting back and down, keeping the weight on your heels as opposed to the balls of your feet. Squat down to a position where your thighs are approximately parallel to the ground, then press back up to the starting position. Keeping your weight more towards your heels is the key factor in squatting to protect your knees from injury and develop strong injury-resistant knee joints. Keep in mind - squats done correctly actually strengthen the knees; squats done incorrectly can damage the knees.

Practice first with an un-weighted bar or a relatively light weight to learn the movement. Most people are surprised how hard this exercise works your abs once you learn the correct form. This is due to the more upright posture compared with back squats. To see photos of proper form on the front squat, visit http://truthaboutabs.com/Front-Squats.html.

Visit http://truthaboutabs.com/Training-and-Nutrition-Articles.html to receive your own personalized metabolic rate calculator as well as 4 of my secret hard-body workout routines - all FREE.

Michael Geary is a nationally dual certified personal trainer (NCSF-CPT, AFAA-CPT), and author of The Truth about Six Pack Abs ©2004-2006.

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An alternative name for this article could have been, ‘How to undo Generations worth of Damage Caused by sitting on our Backsides and Letting Machines Teach us Not to Stand up Straight’.

That doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue though, does it?

The point is the same, however. Before we were even able to stand fully erect we could literally fight for our right to live on a daily basis. Now, we are again barely standing up straight due to bad posture and bad habits, but we can hardly walk across town without pulling a muscle or throwing our back out!

Why? We are weak - from the inside out! In today’s image conscious society, we are so concerned with the way we look that we ignore the fact that we are falling apart from the inside. For lack of a better term, we are “rotten to the core”!

What IS “the core”? Why does everyone keep talking about training ‘the core”? What does any of this have to do with cavemen?

Basically, the idea here is that there was a time in human evolution when we literally had to fight to survive. Although actual battle was certainly part of life back in the Stone Age, we are also talking about the day to day struggle that was involved in just making it to see another sunset!

Walking, running, climbing, throwing, pushing, pulling, balancing, lifting, pressing - the list goes on and on. These activities were all a daily part of life way back when the human body was being “programmed”.

Compare that to the present day activity level of an average person in a civilized culture, and what do you get? A MAJOR difference between the way we were built and the way we are actually called upon to perform! If you took your average office worker in 2005 and threw them back in time to a point when fur was “in”, they probably wouldn’t last for very long.

Is it wrong that modern technology has made our lives so easy? Probably not - depending on who you ask. However, is it wrong that we don’t keep our bodies as strong and vital as we used to HAVE to keep them? YES!

Just because you CAN sit down all day, and just because you CAN eat 1,000 calories in less than 20 minutes, and just because you CAN pay someone else to mow your lawn doesn’t mean that you SHOULD do those things.

Allowing our easy lives to make us weak is OUR fault. It’s not your boss at work who tells you that you can’t exercise when you aren’t pulling desk time. It’s not your mother or father who is making you eat at fast food restaurants every day. It’s not your car that is making you drive it

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