0:03 This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and today we're talking about another 0:07 progression for our lower body exercise. So, we've done squat in previous video 0:12 and all the modifications that come with a squat, including a ball wall squat 0:15 and did dumbbell squats. Now we're going to talk about how to switch it up, 0:19 progress in both load, as well as stability, in our dumbbell or kettlebell 0:24 front squat. I'm going to have my friend Laura come out. She's going to help me 0:28 demonstrate this exercise. So, the first thing we want to make sure of, is that Laura 0:32 has good form. We don't want to overload a compensation pattern. So 0:37 we're going to put her in her alignment, remember our kinetic chain checkpoints, 0:41 her feet are going to be parallel between hip and shoulder width, we're going to 0:44 have that first or second toe pointing forward ideally, and I'm going to have 0:48 her, just to start, put her hands behind her head. We're going to check 0:51 things out here. Let's see a squat. That looks pretty good. Laura's been 0:57 fighting a little bit of lower leg dysfunction that we've been working on. 1:00 But it looks pretty good. Let's see one more 1:03 that way good. Let's have you turn sideways. As you might remember from 1:09 your assessments with the squat, we want to make sure that she's not going into 1:12 an anterior pelvic tilt; we don't have an excessive forward lean. Once again, those are 1:16 two patterns that we don't want to overload. We see she has just a 1:22 little bit of an excessive forward lean, like I said, we are still working 1:25 with her lower leg dysfunction. Let me see one more. Laura's pretty strong, 1:31 she's been working on her squats, she's been doing her dumbbell squats. She had 1:35 been doing her ball wall squats, which we'll show again here in a second. I'm 1:39 going to go ahead and progress her. Now, a lot of you have probably seen the 1:44 dumbbell side squats, let's see those Laura. Just hold the dumbbells to the side, and squat 1:48 down. The next logical progression, you might say, would be a 1:53 back squat. Unfortunately I know a lot of you guys don't have a small enough squat 1:58 rack to get a body bar in it, and unless Laura is going to only do squats with a 2:02 body bar and her trainer to lift it on her back, I need to come up with 2:05 something that's a little bit more convenient for her to increase load 2:08 before I stick her into a squat rack with a 45-pound olympic bar. That would be 2:13 a huge jump in load there. So what I'm going to have Laura do is start working 2:17 on a front squat. So let me have you go ahead and pull these up this way. 2:22 I'm going to have her turn to the side so I can show you what you are looking at. 2:25 You can have them touch the dumbbell to the front of their shoulder, that's fine. 2:29 The thing you want to watch for is that she's keeping her wrist 2:33 straight, nice firm grip on the dumbbell, and keeping her elbow underneath the 2:37 dumbbell so we had this nice triangle with the forearm almost perpendicular to the 2:42 floor. She's going to have that on both sides. She should feel pretty strong and 2:46 cradled in this position. She's going to draw-in, so she's not leaning back. 2:51 I always try to get people thinking as if you were a football lineman. 2:55 How would you hit somebody? You'd hit somebody with your fists tight, this nice 3:00 little cradled position. I want that up here. So once we get her to this 3:04 position, it just becomes our normal squat mechanics again. We're still 3:07 looking for tibia-torso angle being the same, we're still looking for our 3:11 kinetic chain checkpoints. So let's see that Laura. 3:18 Nice and slow. Let's go down for two, a little hold at the bottom, and then 3:23 squeeze your glutes and thrust your hips forward on the way back up. I have 3:28 noticed more and more people as I start searching through YouTube, start talking 3:31 to more and more professionals, this thrusting the hips forward to get the glute 3:35 activated is actually a very common cue, and I think you will find it 3:38 extremely effective for getting the glutes involved. Now, if I wanted to 3:42 increase stability a little further, I could have her do a unilateral front 3:47 squat. So I could take one of these away, have her put one hand on her hip, I'm 3:54 going to have her go ahead and turn forward toward you, because now the most 3:57 important kinetic chain checkpoint thing to watch for, is I don't want her 4:02 leaning one way or another. I don't want her shifting at the hips one way or the 4:05 other. Now she has to work really hard in her core to keep symmetrical. So let's 4:11 see that. A little tough? Good. From here, of course, we could add for 4:21 a stability progression, we could go ahead and add something like 4:24 an Airex pad, or we can add dyna discs, or maybe even a balance board for some of 4:28 our more advanced athletes. Now, a couple more things on this front squat: 4:33 obviously a 10 pound dumbbell, some of you who are strength athletes, I know 4:37 you can use much heavier weights. You might wonder why I'm not using 4:41 a bar. Laura is not a power lifter. If you are practicing for your 4:46 sport, that's fine. You need to work on that front squat mechanic, that's your 4:51 sport, I understand that. From a performance enhancement standpoint, from 4:56 a sports performance standpoint, from a recreational workout person who's just 5:00 trying to meet their goals, it actually takes hypermobility of your wrist 5:06 flexors to get into a barbell squat position. This is going to propagate a 5:11 common postural dysfunction in the forearm that involves extensor 5:16 dominance, and underactivity here. So unless you have a sports specific reason, stay 5:21 away from the barbells. Stick with dumbbells. We've even worked a little bit 5:25 here with a kettlebell, although this is less comfortable for Laura, but a 5:30 kettlebell works out pretty well the way it cradles in here. I think you will 5:33 find that these feel great. Now, I had mentioned that this is a progression I 5:37 use going from a dumbbell squat to a front squat. Once again, going back to my 5:41 strength athletes, this is going to be a progression from the back squat. 5:46 If you're just talking about all-out stability, a back squat is probably more 5:50 stable than our front squat mechanic. So if you have been doing your 5:54 135-pound squats, and you want to take it up a notch and require more core 6:00 stability from yourself, go ahead and try your front squats and then your unilateral 6:03 front squats with either a dumbbell or a kettlebell. Once again you can do a ball wall squat. So if Laura was 6:12 coming in, and let's say she hadn't seen me in a while, we hadn't done any work on 6:16 her lower leg dysfunction, and she did have that excessive forward lean caused 6:19 from her lower leg dysfunction, I could set her up on this ball to ensure that 6:25 she didn't need quite as much dorsiflexion, and I can keep her tibia-torso 6:30 angle even. I can still have her do this front squat mechanic. 6:38 Hold the inside, it helps to hold the inside corner of those 6:41 kettlebells and then you can actually bring your fists a little 6:44 closer together. Let's go ahead and see that. And she's going to sit back as 6:49 if the ball weren't there, it's just giving her a little assistance to then squeeze 6:53 your glutes and thrust on the way up. So there you have it, we 7:00 went from a normal dumbbell squat, to our front squat mechanic. Our front squat is 7:05 a great way to progress in both load and stability, it's going to be less stable 7:10 than a back squat, but probably an interim for most people because of the 7:14 load required for an Olympic bar back squat.
