Front squats are easy. You juse use the bar and build up form, strength in the correct positions, strengthen your joints (ligamens and tendons also) with lighter weights and then lift heavy months later. I'm a conditioned athlete but before I use to lift light and high volume to get myself use to lifting heavy. People get injured because they did not do any 'foundation' work in getting to lift heavy.
I also have a coach that has taught me a lot so I know a lot through him.
Originally posted by: b0mbrman
A bit off topic, but you look incredibly supple for someone your size.
What does your stretching routine look like?
I've always been very supple and considering I use to be rake thin it wasn't too hard to keep my mobility as I've put on muscle. But you do have to work at stretching.
I do dynamic stretchs whenever I train so thats also 2x a day for 4 days a week and 1x a day on two further weeks.
Windmills with your arms.
-START SLOW and build up speed.
-both arms GOING BACKWARDS
-try and get your arms to BRUSH YOUR EARS,
-keep arms straight
-I can not stress enough to start SLOW THEN TO BUILD UP SPEED GRADUALLLY!
Body twists with your arms
-START SLOW
-Feet about shoulder width
-Rotate to your left and swing your left arm around your body, keeping it straight
-PAUSE as you face behind yourself. Your head follows your arm along with your body
-DO NOT OVER ROTATE, make sure you do a PROPER PAUSE
-Rotate around to your right, following your arm with your head and body.
-Follow the same as above and repeat from side to side
-As you get warmed up add some speed
-Feet stay PLATNED AT ALL TIMES
-Again DO NOT OVER ROTATE!
Leg swings:
-stand tall
-keep hips square
-keep legs straight
-swing one foot up and swing it back also.
-do this more and WHEN YOU FEEL LOOSER start to swing up/kick up HARDER AND FASTER,
-don't ignore the kicking on the way back also
-KICK HARDER ON THE WAY BACK ALSO
-repeat for 20-25 times for BOTH FEET
Leg swings across the body standing up. More of the same. This time lean against the dipping bars or something like that. Use the Smith machine (actually useful for once!). Set the bar to about waist height
-Start slow with one leg. Swing left acros your body then to kick right to your side. Repeat. As you get MORE WARMED UP kick harder and faster. Again go for 20-25x on each leg.
Seated legs spread apart
-sit on the floor, sit legs apart,
-reach right arm swining across to my left foot
-now my left arm swings across to my right foot
-repeat
-as I get more loose I build up more speed, I use to do about 20 of these, now I do about 8-12 or so
When you get better you can easily kick past your head kicking forwards. You can kick to about your head height and past going across your body also.
These are the best stretchs. I get all new lifters at the club to do these. With time and commitment they all hit the correct positions.
I use to stretch hardcore when I was doing Gymnastics as you will pretty much injure yourself if you don't warm up properly! Nothing that fancy, just stretching everything properly. But I never do these unless I go to the Gymnastics club. The Dynamic stretches are great though.
Originally posted by: HamSupLo
do you plan on competing in the olympics?
Hopefully in 2012 as England but if not I'll hopefully do some Commonwealth, European and World Champs within 3-5yrs time.
Koing