Imagine this: It’s peak hour at your gym and also you’ve spent all day looking forward to attacking some front squats, however the wait for a squat rack is longer than the road on the smoothie bar on half-price day. Or perhaps you’re attempting to get a top quality workout in a sparse hotel or still-growing home gym. Perhaps you simply need a recent squat variation in your program.

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Consider the dumbbell front squat. It requires only a pair of dumbbells and minimal floor space. More importantly, it builds killer quadriceps, a powerful upper back, and a solid core. This text teaches you the way and why to perform and program the dumbbell front squat. 

Dumbbell Front Squat

Complete Dumbbell Front Squat Tutorial

See the detailed dumbbell front squat video instructions from Dr. Merrick Lincoln, then try the step-by-step breakdown below. 

Tips on how to Do the Dumbbell Front Squat Step By Step

The dumbbell front squat is a front squat alternative performed with a dumbbell racked on each shoulder. Follow these step-by-step instructions to make sure proper form. 

Step 1 — Clean the Dumbbells

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Before you squat, it’s essential to “front rack” the dumbbells. Within the front rack position, the ends of the dumbbells rest atop your shoulders and your elbows point straight ahead at shoulder-height.

To establish the front rack, perform a dumbbell clean — Start with the dumbbells at your sides. Drop right into a mini-squat and rapidly extend your legs by driving your feet into the bottom. Transfer the leg push into a strong shrug. At the highest of the shrug, draw your arms along your sides. Drop underneath the dumbbells by re-bending your legs and receive the weights atop your shoulders along with your elbows high and bent. (1) 

Form Tip: When cleansing heavy dumbbells, it might be helpful to take into consideration “jumping” up with the dumbbells to propel them into the front rack. Although it is best to barely leave the bottom, “jumping” the dumbbells into position can improve output and fluidity of the clean. 

Step 2 — Set Your Stance and Brace

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With dumbbells racked, place your feet at your chosen squat width and orientation. Typically, the front squat stance is shoulder-width or barely wider. Your feet should point straight ahead or barely outward. Brace your midsection by contracting your abdominals and back muscles at the identical time. 

Form Tip: Arrange a powerful foundation by achieving pressure through your heel, the ball of your foot, your big toe, and the bottom of your fifth toe. Principally, keep weight in your entire foot throughout the exercise without overemphasizing either your heels or the ball of your foot.

Step 3 — Lower to the Bottom Position

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While keeping a straight or barely arched back position, lower yourself toward the ground by allowing your knees, hips, and ankles to bend. Descend with control. Resist bouncing out of the underside of the squat. Also, avoid “cutting depth” (i.e. ending the descent before you’ve reached maximum comfortable knee bend with good control).

Form Tip: Achieve proper dumbbell front squat form by squatting “down” not “back.” This is just not a powerlifting-style back squat that calls for a forward lean to enhance leverage and move heavy weights. Your upper body should remain more upright. 

Step 4 — Stand As much as Lockout

Credit: Merrick Lincoln, DPT, CSCS / YouTube

Reverse the movement of your knees, hips, and ankles by standing tall. Keep the dumbbells balanced in your front delts throughout the movement. At the highest, take a breath and re-brace your core before repeating one other repetition. Don’t lower the burden out of your shoulder until you’ve accomplished all reps.

Form Tip: As you ward off to the standing position with forceful intent, take into consideration driving the dumbbells toward the ceiling or sky but don’t actually lift them off your shoulders. This external cue can promote a powerful front rack and improve power output. (2)

Dumbbell Front Squat Mistakes to Avoid

Steering clear of several common errors may help to keep up effectiveness and safety of the dumbbell front squat. 

Allowing Your Elbows or Chest to Drop 

The common barbell front squat cue applies just as well to the dumbbell front squat — “Chest up, elbows up.” Failure to keep up a high elbows position and a proud chest lead to the dumbbells traveling forward. An excessive amount of forward movement of the dumbbells may lead to compromised training stimulus for the quadriceps and even repetition failure with a lack of balance.

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Avoid it: Many of the dumbbells’ weight should rest in your shoulders, not your hands. Keep the burden involved along with your shoulders throughout the exercise. Don’t attempt to support the burden “freely” by holding your hands in the highest of a biceps curl. 

Low Back or Trunk Leaning Excessively Forward

Losing form at your hips or low back may cause all kinds of problems in the course of the dumbbell front squat. These include, but aren’t limited to, lack of stability, your heels coming off the ground, and needlessly failed repetitions.

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Avoid it: To correct or prevent this, reminding yourself to brace and squat down slightly than back is an excellent start, nevertheless it won’t be enough. Amongst lifters without orthopedic limitations (i.e. lifters without stiff joints or obvious weaknesses), a coordination deficit will be responsible for excessive forward motion of the trunk or low back. (3) Take a look at the “overhead squat RNT” exercise within the FAQs section for a potent corrective exercise. 

Insufficient Depth

Squats lacking depth? You may’t depend on your beauty and charm to repair this problem. For those who are consistently cutting depth within the dumbbell front squat, your muscle development may suffer. Deep squatting has been shown to lead to greater quadriceps muscle growth than shallow squatting. (4)

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Moreover, Kubo and colleagues reported full squat training resulted in greater than twice the glute and adductor hypertrophy in comparison with half squatting. (5) 

Avoid it: Many lifters without orthopedic limitations can improve their squat depth by repetitive practice focused on achieving “hamstrings touching calves.” If ankle flexibility is limiting your squat depth, consider the heels-elevated variation discussed below. 

Tips on how to Progress the Dumbbell Front Squat

Lifters recent the dumbbell front squat should begin with light weights to hone technique. Once this honeymoon phase is over, it’s time to go heavier and better rep to advertise strength and hypertrophy. 

Increase the Weight

Once the exercise form is familiar and consistent, load progression to a “working weight” is so as. Establishing your working weight doesn’t necessarily require repetition maximum testing.

A straightforward progression method is to find out a repetition range goal based in your goals (explained within the Programming section). Then, work as much as a weight that ends in a difficult set that lets you complete plenty of repetitions near the underside end of your goal range. For instance, in case your repetition goal for hypertrophy training is 8 to 12 repetitions, discover a weight that enables lower than 10 repetitions. 

Increase the Repetition Volume

As you get stronger with a specific pair of dumbbells, perform additional repetitions per set. Using the burden you identified above, you would possibly have the option to perform additional repetitions inside a couple of weeks. When you reach the upper end of your repetition goal (e.g. 12 reps within the above example), it’s time to increase weight again. 

Advantages of the Dumbbell Front Squat

The dumbbell front squat is a novel squat variation that biases the thigh muscles while requiring only light to moderately heavy loads, that are comfortably supported atop the shoulders.

Quadriceps Muscular Growth

The position of the load in front of the body in the course of the dumbbell front squat promotes a “knee dominant” squat by facilitating greater forward knee travel and a more upright trunk position. (6) (7) “Knee dominant” means this variation loads the quadriceps to a comparatively greater extent than variations where the load is held on the back, reminiscent of traditional back squats.

Consistently performing a squat variation that biases the quadriceps will construct the “quad sweep” many aesthetic-focused lifters are in search of. The dumbbell front squat could also be a very effective quadriceps-builder, since it trains the quadriceps through a wide variety of motion. (4)(8)

Spares the Low Back

The dumbbell front squat is likely to be a friendly option for those coping with low back pain or local muscle fatigue. The upright trunk angle diverts load from the low back and hips to the knees. (7) Reduced overall load used in the course of the dumbbell front squat can be likely to cut back mechanical demand on the low back in comparison with other common squat variations that use heavier loads.

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For instance, in comparison with back squats, barbell front squats resulted in reduced spinal compression forces when performed at the identical relative intensity. (9) The difference could also be partly attributed to differences in overall load, since participants on this research squatted greater than 25% more weight during back squats than front squats. (9) Naturally, the heavier squat imposed more overall stress.

Dumbbell front squats undoubtedly have a lower loading capability than barbell front squats, so the demand on the low back is probably going even lower. Give this squat variation a try once you low back feels “fried.” 

A Forgiving Front Rack

In comparison with the standard front squat, the front rack position of the dumbbell front squat requires less shoulder, wrist, and elbow flexibility. Holding the barbell for the standard front squat requires considerable shoulder external rotation, elbow flexion, and wrist extension.

Albeit barbell front squat variations reminiscent of gripless (i.e. “zombie”) front squats and cross-arm front squats avoid the difficult upper body positions of the barbell front squat. (10) But these gripless and cross-arm variations are inclined to place uncomfortable pressure on the deltoids or collarbones and will feel awkward. 

Muscles Worked by Dumbbell Front Squat

Like several squat, the first lower body actions resisted by the dumbbell front squat are knee extension, hip extension, and ankle plantar flexion. Nonetheless, the unique setup and execution of the dumbbell front squat may make this variation more “knee dominant,” biasing the quadriceps. (6) Trunk muscles deserve an honorable mention for his or her involvement within the dumbbell front squat, as these muscles facilitate proper form. 

Quadriceps

For aesthetics and performance, the 4 muscles comprising the quadriceps are undoubtedly an important muscles of the thigh. Although rectus femoris may experience little to no hypertrophy with squat training, squats promote substantial hypertrophy of the opposite three quad muscles: vastus medialis, vastus lateralis, and vastus intermedius. (5)(11) Fortunately, these muscles form the “quad sweep” many aesthetics-focused lifters desire. 

Glutes and Other Hip Extensors

The “glutes” — gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus — are trained as hip extensors in the course of the dumbbell front squat. The hamstrings are marginally energetic in the course of the squat as hip extensors and in addition act to counteract shear forces on the knee. (8)(9) Research suggests the adductors, or inner thigh muscles, are also trained as hip extensors in the course of the squat. (5) 

Postural Muscles and Core

The dumbbell front squat hits postural muscles reminiscent of the spinal erectors, trapezius, and soleus (a deep calf muscle). To keep up a “braced” midsection in the course of the squat, co-contraction of the abdominal muscles is mandatory, which promotes a powerful core.

Tips on how to Program the Dumbbell Front Squat

While it’s true the setup and execution of the dumbbell front squat limits maximum loading relative to barbell-based squats, appropriate programming of this exercise can deliver results. Specifically, lifters can program the dumbbell front squat for muscle gain (“hypertrophy”), strength, or as a part of a deload from heavier squat variations. 

Low to Moderate Weight, Moderate to High Repetitions

An exciting feature of coaching for muscular hypertrophy and muscular strength is that prime effort sets, or those carried to- or close to- the purpose of muscular failure, are effective using practically any weight. (12)(13)(14) This is especially relevant for an exercise just like the dumbbell front squat.

Because of the constraints of setup (the initial dumbbell clean) and equipment (dumbbells), the dumbbell front squat can’t be loaded particularly heavy, no less than not relative to the capability of the leg muscles of experienced lifters. Whether you’re training for strength or size, select dumbbells that allow secure setup and proper form, after which take that set to inside two or three repetitions of failure. Two to 4 sets of eight or more repetitions will promote strength and size, if each set is taken to shut proximity to failure.

Moderate Weight, Moderate Repetitions

A deload refers to temporary reduction in training to advertise recovery. The dumbbell front squat simply can’t be loaded as heavy as a barbell-based squats. That is due, partially, to the usage of dumbbells which supply less stability and lower loading potential than a barbell. Note: the front-loaded nature of the exercise also limits loading potential relative to back squats. (9)

Subsequently, even a somewhat difficult dumbbell front squat workout is more likely to provide a point of reprieve or recovery for intermediate and advanced lifters. Two or three sets of 4 to eight repetitions might function a pleasant deload week squat protocol. 

Dumbbell Front Squat Variations

The dumbbell front squat isn’t the one method to perform an anteriorly loaded squat with dumbbells. Depending in your goals, preferences, and equipment, you would possibly select one in every of the next: 

Heels-Elevated Dumbbell Front Squat

Performing squats on a wedge will be helpful to further bias the quadriceps or work around ankle dorsiflexion range of motion issues. (6)(7)(15) The wedge or heel lift projects your lower leg forward on the ankle’s resting position, reducing the necessity for added dorsiflexion. (15)

When squatting along with your heels elevated, your trunk tends to remain more upright and your knees travel further forward. Together, these features promote greater concentrate on the quadriceps (resulting from increased knee motion). (6)(7) 

Dumbbell Goblet Squat

Goblet squat — not “goblin” (this isn’t Middle Earth). The normal goblet squat uses a kettlebell to bolster deep squatting mechanics with an upright torso. For those who don’t train with kettlebells, a dumbbell works just as well.

Goblet squats are performed with the burden held under the chin, as if it were a big drinking glass (“Lord of the Rings” fans, consider a vessel Dwarves would drink from within the Mines of Moria). Keep your elbows tight to your ribcage and squat down between your legs. 

Dumbbell Zercher Squat

This unique variation was popularized by strength coach Nick Nilsson. The term “Zercher” refers back to the carriage position of the dumbbell. It rests in your arms at, or simply in front of, your elbows.

Hold the dumbbell vertically along with your arms in front of your body. For those who are unable to squat deep enough to retrieve the dumbbell from the ground during setup, simply place the dumbbell on a stable bench or box and retrieve it from there. Your arms must remain near your trunk along with your elbows flexed. Just like the dumbbell front squat, keep your trunk upright as you squat along with your feet flat on the ground.

Dumbbell Squat

The dumbbell squat uses two dumbbells held along with your arms hanging alongside your body. (8) While this variation avoids cleansing or muscling dumbbells to the rack position, it might not promote as upright of a trunk position as other front-loaded variations.

The dumbbell squat feels just a little like a trap bar squat, albeit with a lower loading potential. Altogether, the dumbbell squat could also be an amazing option for those in search of a user-friendly variation that promotes hip-, thigh-, and grip development.

FAQs

Why not only do barbell front squats as a substitute?

That’s an option. Each exercises construct leg size and strength while placing the load in front of your body. In reality, muscle activity levels for many of the primary muscles are similar between dumbbell front squat and barbell front squats when the identical load is used. (16)
But there are substantial differences between the barbell front squat and the dumbbell front squat: upper body position, placement of the load, equipment requirements, and loading capability, simply to name a couple of. Ultimately, the selection of whether to front squat with the barbell or dumbbells should take these differences into consideration. 

How can I make setup easier when going heavy on dumbbell front squat?

The dumbbell clean to the front rack position before squatting is essentially the most technically demanding portion of the whole exercise. It will probably impose a bottleneck on weight progression.
But unless you’re using light enough dumbbells to twist or have a partner willing to lift the dumbbells to the front rack position for you, the clean is an intrinsic feature of the dumbbell front squat setup. The dumbbell Zercher squat and the dumbbell squat discussed within the Variations section permit you to avoid the clean. 

I’ve seen the dumbbell front squat performed with a rather different front rack position. What’s the deal?

Traditionally, your elbows are held high in the course of the dumbbell front squat, as instructed. Nonetheless, it’s common to see the dumbbell front squat performed with lower elbows and the dumbbells parallel to the bottom.
While it might be effective with lighter weights, the lower carriage position may limit loading capability, because the dumbbells are held barely further in front of the body. The upper elbow position may help to encourage an upright and prolonged upper back position, which helps to develop postural strength and upper back muscle.

My trunk bends forward in the course of the dumbbell front squat — What should I do?

First, make sure that the burden you are trying to squat is acceptable in your current strength and skill. For those who’ve tried reducing the burden and also you’re still rounding forward and losing position, screen your ankle flexibility. Are you in a position to progress your knees over the front of your toes along with your heels on the ground? If not, calf stretching, foam rolling, or ankle joint mobilizations may help. (3)
After ruling out loading errors and orthopedic limitations, the likely offender is a coordination issue, specially deficient trunk control. Reactive neuromuscular training (RNT) is a broad class of interventions aimed toward restoring coordination and dynamic stability. (17) A typical RNT technique to deal with excessive forward lean or trunk “rounding” is the “overhead squat RNT” technique, shown within the video below.
Perhaps counterintuitively, a light-weight challenge tending to drag the trunk forward may also help improve position sense and coordination of the trunk in the course of the squat. Although immediate improvements in squat form may occur, lasting advantages may result from performing this corrective exercise three or more days per week for two to 4 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions.

Just One other Anteriorly Loaded Thigh-Thickener?

Like its barbell-based brother, the dumbbell front squat places weight in front of the body. But unlike the barbell front squat, it doesn’t require extreme positions of the shoulders or wrists. And it doesn’t even require waiting for a squat rack. User-friendly and convenient, the dumbbell front squat is in a category of its own. 

References

1. Hedrick, A. (2015). Dumbbell power clean, front squat, and power jerk. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 37(3), 84-88. 
2. Nadzalan, A. M., et al. (2020). The consequences of focus attention Instructions on the movement kinetics, muscle activation and performance during resistance exercise. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1529(2), 022008.
3. Bishop, C., & Turner, A. (2017). Integrated approach to correcting the high-bar back squat from “excessive forward leaning”. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 39(6), 46-53.
4. Bloomquist, K., et al. (2013). Effect of range of motion in heavy load squatting on muscle and tendon adaptations. European journal of applied physiology, 113(8), 2133-2142.
5. Kubo, K., Ikebukuro, T., & Yata, H. (2019). Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 119(9), 1933-1942.
6. Barrack, A. J., et al. (2021). The relative orientation of the trunk and tibia will be used to estimate the demands on the hip and knee extensors in the course of the barbell back squat. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(4), 1004-1010.
7. Fry, A. C., Smith, J. C., & Schilling, B. K. (2003). Effect of knee position on hip and knee torques in the course of the barbell squat. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 17(4), 629-633.
8. Graham, J. F. (2011). Exercise Technique: Dumbbell Squat, Dumbbell Split Squat, and Barbell Box Step-up. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 33(5), 76-78.
9. Gullett, J. C., et al. (2009). A biomechanical comparison of front and back squats in healthy trained individuals. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 23(1), 284-292.
10. Ronai, P. (2022). The Front Squat Exercise. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 26(2), 44-50.
11. Schoenfeld, B. J. (2010). Squatting kinematics and kinetics and their application to exercise performance. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 24(12), 3497-3506.
12. Schoenfeld, B., Fisher, J., Grgic, J., et al. (2021). Resistance training recommendations to maximise muscle hypertrophy in an athletic population: Position stand of the IUSCA. International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, 1(1), 1-30.
13. Lasevicius, T., et al. (2018). Effects of various intensities of resistance training with equated volume load on muscle strength and hypertrophy. European journal of sport science, 18(6), 772-780.
14. Spiering, B. A., et al. (2022). Maximizing Strength: The Stimuli and Mediators of Strength Gains and Their Application to Training and Rehabilitation. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 10-1519.
15. Charlton, J. M., et al. (2017). The consequences of a heel wedge on hip, pelvis and trunk biomechanics during squatting in resistance trained individuals. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 31(6), 1678-1687.
16. Wu, H. W., et al. (2020). Effect of loading devices on muscle activation in squat and lunge. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation, 29(2), 200-205.
17. Guido Jr, J. A., & Stemm, J. (2007). Reactive neuromuscular training: a multi-level approach to rehabilitation of the unstable shoulder. North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy: NAJSPT, 2(2), 97-103.

Featured Image: Merrick Lincoln, DPT, CSCS / YouTube