Recently I gained 10% on my front squat, as an advanced weightlifter.
I jumped it from 100kg for 2 reps to 110kg for 2 reps, and this was in a 5-week period.
I know your probably short on time, so I’m not going to waffle on about why this was the greatest thing ever. I’ll cut straight to the basic breakdown of the principles I used to get this result so you can hopefully take something away and implement it in your training.
Specificity
Now, I would not say I’m completely new to the front squat and that these are “newbie gains” on this lift, but definitely getting specific on this movement has helped massively.
As part of my training to get this result, I cut out the junk exercises and volume (more on this later) in my training and got specific on what I wanted to achieve strength wise;
Front squat
Clean and Jerk
Snatch
Bench press
Hip Thrust
Shoulder press
This meant I had to cut out rear squats, deadlifts, chest press, direct arm work etc. The list could go on.
Why did I select these movements? Because they give me the biggest bang for my buck with what I wanted to achieve. Each movement has some cross over with another and subsequently synergise with each other, with 3 of them having a lot of carry over to the front squat.
This list is specific, and in fact, I could probably shorten this.
Prioritisation
Rewind and notice how the front squat is at the top of the list?
The reason for this is when I built the program, the first movement I wrote on the page was the front squat.
This was the priority for me, so it went in first and the rest of the strength program was built around it. So how does this look in practice?
Well, the day that contains the front squat has a rest day either side where my legs and glutes have time to rest and then recuperate. This makes sure I’m always fresh for my front squats and can give it my all on that day.
It sounds cliché, but the principle of prioritisation is often the simplest way to improve something.
Cut out the junk
I cut out the junk volume.
When I look back and see the volume I used to do, I get quite scared about ever doing that much again. A lot of it was what I now classify as “junk volume”.
Junk volume is that 6th set of tricep pushdowns you do after already doing bench press, shoulder press and overhead tricep extensions. Believe me when I say, you do not really need to do these sets. The muscle is already fatigued and broken down by this stage and really all I was doing was feeding my ego and delaying recovery.
I now spend my time making sure my top sets are executed 100% with controlled concentric and eccentric portions. As I like to say, bang for my buck.
One more principle.
MEV and MRV
Minimum Effective and Maximum Recoverable Volume. This can get quite complex and it’s really something I won’t go into here. Why?
It’s a big concept, very individual to each person and takes a while to figure out for each trainee. But trust me when I say, this is something which helps you cycle movements and maintain muscle without burning out.
That’s it.
It may sound simple, but dialling back training and doing less, being specific, prioritising and cutting out the crap volume really helped me improve my strength in just a 5 week cycle.
I hope it can do the same for you.
Paul
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