Squats:Back or Front?
Front work quads, core, hit the posterior chain and require greater mobility.
Back work posterior chain (hams, glutes, erectors), quads and require less mobility.
If you had to pick one...
Better overall
Squats:Back or Front?
Front work quads, core, hit the posterior chain and require greater mobility.
Back work posterior chain (hams, glutes, erectors), quads and require less mobility.
If you had to pick one...
hack squats
I'd pick the back squat if I had to pick one. It's a more balanced exercise. Olympic lifters who only front squat sometimes get bad strength imbalances in their hamstrings which causes all sorts of knee issues down the line.
Also you can overload more in a backsquat.
hacksquats would probably be the worse overall. Since they barely work your hamstrings at all.
>It's a more balanced exercise
You should do hamstring work anyways this is cope.
>You should do hamstring work anyways
Why?
For sure the hack squat. Must be my femur/torso ratio but these are the only ones that don't kill my lower back once the weight goes into the 200s.
Jefferson squats
Take the zercher pill OP
Back squats don't work hamstrings, as you decent your hamstring shorten from the knee and lengthen from the hip and overall stay the same length.
source: Yuri Belkin interview, and I also read same in other sources
> Front hit the posterior chain
Barely
> back squat doesn’t work hamstrings
You’re wrong. You don’t even know the difference between high bar and low bar eh? All squats involve posterior chain, some variations more so.
>You’re wrong.
No, I'm right
>"It's a common belief that the stress placed on your legs during multiple-muscle, lower-body movements—like the squat—increases the size and strength of your hamstrings, even if you're not hitting them directly," says study author Brad Schoenfeld, C.S.C.S., Ph.D., and author of The M.A.X. Muscle Plan. "But that's not the case."
>Your hamstrings contract when you bend your knee and lengthen when you bend your hips. To fully recruit them, you need to either dramatically shorten or lengthen the muscle during an exercise, explains Schoenfeld. When performing a squat, however, you bend the knee and the hip at the same time, so the length of the hamstring barely changes, he says.
>Schoenfeld
front squat: quads, adductors, glutes, and spinal erectors
back squat: quads, adductors, glutes, and spinal erectors
main difference is that front squats require more upper back strength (thoracic spinal erector)
> Front hit the posterior chain
>Barely
wrong, front squats hit the adductors and glutes as well as back squats.
>difference between high bar and low bar
high bar is slightly more limited by upper back strength and typically has a large range of motion
>All squats involve posterior chain
true, but only adductors, glutes, and spinal erectors. hamstrings aren't worked much.
>some variations more so
front squat more thoracic erectors, low bar more lumbar erectors. high bar in between.
>If you're a beginner, even the isometric work suffices,
not even beginners get significant hamstring muscle growth from squats
>Olympic lifters who only front squat sometimes get bad strength imbalances in their hamstrings
same applies to back squats. you should always do some sort of hamstring exercise if you squat/leg press.
>discussion about low vs high bar
>posts high bar study to prove a point
OP asked about front vs back squats.
anyway, low and high bar squats barely differ in hamstring activation. these studies didn't find any significant difference in hamstring activation between low and high bar squats: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8775157/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32551198/
I hate retards like you so goddamn much, did you even read the links?
> Our results confirmed significant differences in muscles activation between both squat techniques. Muscle activity during eccentric phase of squat motion were significantly higher during LBBS than HBBS. The differences are crucial for posterior muscle chain during eccentric phase of squat cycle.
>significant differences in muscles activation
>The mean peak moments of force at the hip were for the weightlifters 230 Nm (deep) and 216 Nm (parallel), and for the powerlifters 324 Nm (deep), and 309 Nm (parallel). At the knee the mean peak moments for the weightlifters were 191 Nm (deep) and 131 Nm (parallel), and for the powerlifters 139 Nm (deep) and 92 Nm (parallel). The weightlifters had the load more equally distributed between hip and knee, whereas the powerlifters put relatively more load on the hip joint. The thigh muscular activity was slightly higher for the powerlifters.
Fucking retard
You're the retard here. If you'd read the whole study and not just skimmed the abstract, you'd see that in both studies there was no significant difference for the hamstrings (biceps femoris muscle) between the low bar and high bar position.
Also, you can't judge muscle activation and load distribution solely on hip and knee peak moments of force. Bi-articular muscles (like the biceps and rectus femoris) allow the hip extensors to contribute to knee extension and vice versa. Thus hip and thigh musculature are similarly activated even if the (peak) hip and knee torque demands are significantly different. This may seem unintuitive, so here's an article explaining it: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/squats-are-not-hip-dominant-or-knee-dominant-3/
That’s your adductor magnus, not your hamstring retards
absolute moron
Just think about the physics of the situation. Your hamstrings work enormously in low bar squats
hamstrings probably are working isometrically during the squat. so they are working, but not optimally. If you're a beginner, even the isometric work suffices, and you're doing deadlifts which work the hamstrings concentrically because your hip angle closes much more than your knee angle.
Otherwise yes do stiff legged deadlifts or curls or whatever.
also
>Back squats
all squats
...
>source: Yuri Belkin interview, and I also read same in other sources
Do 5x8 low bar back squat below parallel with decent weight and tell me they don't work hamstrings the next day.
>Do 5x8 low bar back squat below parallel with decent weight and tell me they don't work hamstrings the next day.
I did, they don't. Also Belkin squats low bar
>To best recruit the hamstrings, and let them contribute the most they can to hip
extension, we need to use a squat form that produces a more closed hip angle and a more open knee angle. At
the bottom of this squat, the hamstrings are contracted isometrically – that is, they are stretched out proximally, by
the attachments at the pelvis, even as they are shortened distally because of the flexing knees. As the knees and
hips extend during the ascent, the hamstrings have to work hard to maintain tension on the pelvis, and to control
the effects of the increased leverage demands of the more-horizontal back angle. The back angle largely
determines the hip angle, and the back angle enables the hamstrings to contribute more force to the squat.
>the hamstrings have to work hard to maintain tension on the pelvis
no they don't.
>the back angle enables the hamstrings to contribute more force to the squat
not really. you can change the back angle quite a lot without changing hamstrings activity as long as knee flexion is the same. SLDLs, RDLs, and good mornings only have a bit of knee flexion, which allows them to use the hamstrings fully because knee extension demands are low and they're not interfering much. regular deadlifts have higher knee extension demands, so the quads are more engaged, and thus the hamstrings can't contribute as much off the floor. squats have even higher knee extension demands, so the hamstrings can contribute even less. so you can see that back angle doesn't matter much, because the limiting factor to hamstring contribution in the squat and deadlift is knee extension demands which the hamstrings counter.
Imagine being this fucking gay.
Just back squat you actual homosexual.
You can also elevate your toes or heels.
I prefer high bar back squats
>easy on the wrists
>less stress on lower back than low bar
Yeah low bar back squats are just stupid unless you're powerlifting imo
The risk vs reward seems poor. If I fail a high bar I can just drop the weight off my back. In a low bar you're not really meant to do that and you bail forwards. This scares the shit out of me because I'm failing into a weaker and more compromised position.
I get there's more hamstring activation in the low bar squat, but you can just do more pulling exercises.
Someone else who low bar backsquats more than me might be able to chime in with 'safety'. This is just personal experience.
Don't go that close to failure in a squat. Also what's wrong about falling forward into the rack?
?? you are 100% literal squatlet
the bar is in the middle of your foot
if you cant lift it and you "fail the lift" you just break the knees and straight down with control into the safety bars
0 risk with right technique
learn to fail and watch more rippetoe
>im scared
holy shit zoomers
High bar back squat for quads and a tiny bit of ass
RDL for hammies and a little bit of ass
Slow, full ROM BSS at the end for all of it
Back squat will always be better if only doing one. It hits the areas everyone has weak points in these days.
However if you are back squatting and doing those weird ones with your back super upright, your knees way over your toes, just do front squats because you're just trying to turn your squat into a front squat anyway and you'll get more out of front squats.
>those weird ones
you mean a normal squat?
>Zercher
Squats and deadlifts are for incel losers. I have never seen or heard anyone who got laid doing those exercises.
FACT
>exercising the get laid
Ngmi
Ok incel
You're gonna have to try harder than that
>lowbar back squats as main squat movement
>front squats as an accessory
This is the only correct answer.
I alternate between low and high every two weeks and also do front squats the weeks I do high bar and deadlifts on low bar weeks
Leg work is the biggest gymcel cope. Unless you're an athlete or a stage-show bodybuilder, nobody cares about how a guy's legs look. Only lower body worth focusing on are glutes.
Literally google it. Women find upper body size and strength attractive. The only lower body that they might look at is glutes, plus strong glutes help you fuck better. Ultra-heavy squats to build quads is only going to get you comments from other gymcels, so unless some guy on YouTube with a Goku avatar saying "sick quads bro great form, ur really getting huge" is your weightlifting goal, then cool it on the lower body and save energy for more productive lifts.
You're just lazy
>If you had to pick one...
Why do I need to pick one?
Why does this shitty fucking thread get made every other day here? This is the second or third front vs back squat thread this week.
Back squats are the single best exercise you can do. Nothing else will change your body. Taking someone from 135x5 at 13 years old to 500x5 at 20 years old is the most important thing you can do physically.
depends how much you are deadlifting
if you are low on dl volume then you should do low bar squats more
if you do alot of dl then front bar squats more
however its best if you do them all
Front squats turned backwards
>Front work quads, core, hit the posterior chain and require greater mobility.
The shit you read on this board I swear. Front requires more mobility for wrists and shoulders, maybe. You could even argue that lowbar requires more shoulder mobility to properly keep back tight. But back squat 100% requires more lower body mobility.
Kek
Obviously low bar back squats
The more weight you move, the bigger the jump on your testosterone production
THIS NIGGAS SHILLIN KETTLEBELLS
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This is what I do for Leg Day 3 times at week
First day:
Snatch only
Triple Hang Snatch with light and medium weights
Single snatch for heavy weights
Ending with 4x12-15 reps in machines for hamstrings and quads. Medium weight
Second day:
C&J only
C&J with double front squad with light and medium weights
Single c&j for heavy weights
Machines for quads and hamstrings 4x12-15
Thrid day
Squat and Deadliff
Heavy deep squatting 5x5
Deadlifting 5x5 for 2.5 plates onwards (I'm not that strong yet)
Machines for quads and hamstrings 4x20 with light or medium weight, depends how I feel.
And always before starting my leg day at least 10 - 15 mins of stretching and flexibility.
Maybe I'm lacking something but so far I feel good with this routine.
Wtf do you only train legs? With that volume there's not nearly enough rest to train upper body as well
I try to train 6 times a week.
Mostly because I like to squat and Oly
I switch between upper and lower body everyday.
When I do upper body most of the times is chest and some arm filler
There's literally 0 benefit of doing high bar squats, unless it's a mobility issue. Low bar recruits the posterior chain better, which allows for heavier squatting, which in turn makes the entire exercise more efficient.
>cheating the ROM makes the exercise more efficient
I don't agree with that dude either but low bar is not cheating the rom. The bar doesn't move a longer distance if it's high bar. It moves the same distance. The difference is the mechanical advantage of the body position.
>i can legpress 1000lbs so it's obviously a better exercise
a 15 year old olympic weightlifter will mop the floor with you in every aspect
Neither.
unless you're on a lot of gear you won't progress very far doing only front squats. you still have to do back squats just to make your front squat go up. so the matter is moot.
Front squat, it helps improve posture and you can't cheat by doing a squat morning like in back squat. Plus, it's less loaded, so more unlikely to fuck your shit up.
>way more importantly, how far your knees travel forward and how much stress is being applied to your quads
quad activation is similar for all types of squats.
because squats, even low bar back squats, don't engage the hamstrings enough to cause significant strength and muscle increases, let alone enough to keep up with quad growth.
Untrue. As a general rule of thumb, knee travel forward defines how much knee extension there will be and how much ROM your quads will have to work through, even when EMG activation is equated.
>As a general rule of thumb, knee travel forward defines how much knee extension there will be and how much ROM your quads will have to work through, even when EMG activation is equated.
I didn't disagree with that. ROM is different, but "how much stress is being applied to your quads" isn't different; quad activation, load, and hypertrophy and strength gains aren't significantly different.
They're both DOG SHIT.