Yesterday I dropped in for a free class at Crossfit 5th Ave, and I really enjoyed it. I was pretty proud of myself for still having ring muscle-ups down, and I was able to do the prescribed 15 in the wod. Also in the wod were a ton of front squats. The Front squats is a tough movement, and one of the best parts of crossfit that I really miss is having my form critiqued, especially for the more difficult / technical movements. No matter how long you've been working out it can be useful to think about any feedback from the trainers and be especially aware of things they point out. Here's what the trainer pointed out to me.
Hips Back and Straight Down
I was always told that you should start the movement by bringing your hips back. This is true, put the trainer pointed out that I was sort of overdoing it by bringing my butt back too far. The way he described it was, "start with the hips back, and then drop straight down".
Don't Let Your Back Curve In
Maybe it was just because we were doing a relatively low weight, but he noted that I was going way down ("ass to grass") which is ok if you do it right, but I guess I wasn't. Lol. He pointed out that when you only go down just past parallel then it's much easier to keep that tension and hold your chest up with your back straight instead of hunching over at the bottom. He also said that you want your back to be 100% vertical, straight up, while you are doing front squats.
Elbows Up
This isn't really something he said to me, but it's a good tip to keep in mind. Once you have the wrist flexibility from doing cleans then you'll be able to hold the bar the standard way for crossfit front squats. While you're doing them you want to keep you elbows up with your forearms parallel to the ground. Rookies normally aren't good at doing this, but you should be. ;)
Example Video
There are tons of great videos out on the internet that go into every single exercise in excruciating detail. Here's a example of one really good video that goes over the proper form for front squats.
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