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