i'm reconsidering the notion that the front squat is a quad only exercise. It's not.
Where did you get that from? The front squat is in many cases a superior glute exercise than the squat, since the low back and hamstrings do not contribute as much to the lift. Think of exercises in terms of movement patterns, not muscle isolation.
It's a commonly heard claim that the front squat isolates the quads. Logically that's not saying it's quad only - but it's not far from saying that. I dont agree with that at all, it's a very much full body exercise, you can't come into it with fatigued lower back or hamstrings or whatever and hope to get your programmed worksets - from my experience. Hell even if my chest is too fatigued from benching the previous day, i can't stand up with the bar thru the whole set!
A lot of the "glute soreness" people think they get from low bar squats is the glute/ham tie ins being overstretched at the end rom. You can get sore from static stretching too, doesnt do shit for hypertrophy/strength though.
I have a question - if the glute soreness is just purely incidental in the low bar squat - not associated with hypetrophy/strength, how come those vocal guys who do lbbs a lot usually have big asses?
That vert calculator is fucking trash, and the way it was made is laughable, ie. the POWER SNATCH FROM THE HIP correlating highly with the vert, so this genius goes "since most WEIGHTLIFTERS can power snatch xxx % of their snatch, and they can snatch xxxx percent of their squat, we can take the SQUAT, THE FUCKING MILLIONTH VARIAbLE DOWN THE LINE, and correlate it with the vert!". The one thing he always maintained was that a 2x bw front squat = 40 inch vert, and out of all the retarded calculations in there, that one is definitely the most "legit". I dont think I have ever seen a 2xbw front squat on athlete 6 feet or over at a decent fat % that couldnt fly.
Yeah on the internet i've seen people with say a 400+ lowbar (belted) backsquat, maybe just to parallel, maybe struggling with, maybe getting, a 300 front squat. If the LBBS squat is a double bw one, then the front squat isn't, it's like 75% of their low bar belted squat. So double bw front squats are kinda rare on the internet. You do have to be training specifically for it, otherwise you'd have to be a, i dunno, maybe, a guy weighing 200 with a 540 low bar belted squatter to do it, and that's kind of rare too, especially with an athletic bodyfat, and then I dont know if it would be a proper deep atg front squat of 405 either. I'd like to see that I guess. But I digress. Of all the athletic rules of thumb, the double bw front squat seems like the most honest ,most meaningful one. It kind of forces you to have a decent bodyfat % - because excessive bodyweight really makes the job that much harder, you can't fudge your way to it with depth/assistance/excess bodyfat gain like with other squats. High bar double bw is probably the next best goal, and then i dont even know what a double bw lowbar squat means, it's not something I can realistically hope to achieve but for those who can it seems too easy. I'm rambling, sorry.
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