Cheers Duke, I’ll look at getting some straps. If all else fails and I can’t get pain free I’ll go to trap bar instead. I do squats for my quads but I don’t feel them there. I do feel my quads going up hill on my bike or by foot. I’m not even worried about quad development just about being unbalanced in my development.
Have you tried Bulgarian split Squats? They are absolutely killer on the quads.
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Don’t put the bar on your delts. Go behind your delts
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I learned from the Tough Guys to front squat with arms stuck out front like Frankenstein. Without your arms to worry about, you figure the delt part out pretty quick.
Later, any grip that lets you get any part of your hand on the bar feels Great.
Has anyone tried one of the Chris Duffin transformer bars? The concept is pretty awesome.
@chris_ottawa has one, I think (Duffin’s Transformer Bar)
I’ve never gotten a quad pump like I have from these. I feel like once I included these in my training my back squat really took off. Quads are on fire just thinking about it!
Behind my delts was just metal bar on bone. What am I missing?
But what do you do if you fail…
Do you become permanently front squat…?
Gasp
They look pretty rad. I’m kind of torn, a Titan Fitness SSB is like 165 vs. the Transformer at around 550.
Hard to say whether all the adjustment options make it worth the extra 400 or so.
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The Titan Bar is pretty solid for the price, gets a bit whippy up above 315 though…my first experience with that, ha.
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Yes, I have a Transformer bar. It’s good, does exactly what it is supposed to. The advantage over a regular SSB is obviously that you can put it in different angles to mimic different squat variations. For example, some people have arm or shoulder issues and use the SSB to work around that but in my experience that can be a problem because the bottom position is totally different from a low bar squat. The transformer bar can be set in a position that gives you nearly identical leverages to a low bar squat while saving you from externally rotating your shoulders, so it’s a win-win situation there. If all you want is a basic safety squat bar then there are cheaper options.
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You’re missing that front squats hurt 
it rests on my collar bone and often leaves marks.
Yeah anything over/around 4 feels sketchy with mine. I figured my reward for being able to squat 405x20 with an SSB is to buy a higher quality bar 
I think if one wants to torture themselves, do Bulgarian split squats.
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That last sentence, you talking about stretching the glutes? Mind sharing where someone can find said video?
I might have asked you this before, but what would/do you normally do as a warm up/activation for front squats? Front squats are the only squat I can do now and some days even those feel meh. Core activation, glute activation I’m guessing but care to throw out an example of your pre-squat routine?
Bird dogs feel like I’m not getting anything out of them cause they feel easy. But idk, they probably aren’t really supposed to feel hard I guess. Only thing I get is my arm gets tired from holding it out repeatedly.
Here ya go brother. You can look up Ben on twitch as well and he’ll answer your questions during streams and such. Good luck.
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Thanks, much appreciated!
I do very little warm up for anything to be honest but on a day when my back is a little achey I’ll do a few sets of bird dogs. They do feel easy, but they’re supposed to.
It’s like if you were doing glute activation stuff, you’d do some glute bridges and side clams. Both those exercises are easy too, but a few sets makes a big difference.
I used to get a benefit from doing glute activation work before squatting too, particularly glute medius stuff (bridges, side clams, those stupid lateral band walk things) as I had a problem with knee collapse for a while, but as I’ve gotten stronger (although my back’s still fucked and I’m not strong so you probably shouldn’t listen to me anyway) that’s stopped being an issue and I only seem to need core activation work now.
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