Barbell front squat
Squatting with the bar across the front of your shoulders — more upright than a back squat, and limited by whether you can hold it.
- Pattern
- Squat
- Equipment
- BarbellSquat rack
- Space
- Standing room
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Load
- External load
What it is
Set the bar in a rack at upper-chest height. Take it across the front of your shoulders, resting on the shelf made by your deltoids and collarbones, elbows driven up and forward so the upper arms are roughly parallel to the floor. Stand it out and step back.
Squat down, keeping the torso as upright as you can and the elbows up. Stand back up.
Two grips:
- Clean grip — fingers under the bar, hands just outside the shoulders. Needs wrist and shoulder range many people do not have.
- Cross-arm grip — arms crossed, hands on top of the bar. Much more accessible, slightly less secure.
The bar is held by the shoulders, not the hands. The hands only stop it rolling.
What it demands
The same ankle and hip range as any deep squat, and a much more upright torso, which the front load enforces — the same counterweight principle as a goblet squat scaled up.
Thoracic extension to keep the elbows up. Rounding forward drops the bar.
Wrist, elbow and shoulder range for the rack position, which is the usual limiter and the reason most people front squat less than they back squat.
What usually goes wrong
The elbows drop. As the set gets hard the elbows fall, the bar rolls forward, and it either lands on the floor or pulls you with it. This is the signal to stop the set.
Fighting a clean grip you do not have. Cross-arm is a perfectly good answer and not a compromise worth being unhappy about.
Leaning forward. A front squat that pitches forward has already failed; the position is the exercise.
Not practising the bail. Easier than a back squat — the bar goes forward off your shoulders — but still worth doing deliberately before it is heavy.
Where it sits
Between the dumbbell front squat, whose ceiling is set by how much your shoulders can hold, and the back squat, which carries more weight with more forward lean.
For anyone whose shoulders dislike the back squat's bar position, this is the alternative rather than a lesser option — and its more upright torso makes it a genuinely different demand rather than a scaled-down one.