What's up, guys? Jake Hutton from Fitness Culture. So we've gotten a lot of
requests on how to improve your front rack. People are having trouble getting
the front rack on their front squats, so we're gonna go over three of my favorite
things to do to improve your front rack. I've had a ton of problems with my front
rack over the years when I was doing CrossFit, so I used these and they helped
me a lot to get my front rack better. First of all, obviously front rack
there's a lot of things that are going to go into it. A few of those things are
gonna be your wrist mobility, even how tight your triceps are all the way into
your lats. So first thing you're going to want to do
before you do these things is make sure you have mobility in those areas. So we
have some other videos if you want to check out how to improve your wrist
mobility and your overhead mobility, your shoulder mobility, things like that.
I would work on those first, but these are good ones that are just for your
front rack, completely front rack based. And so we'll get into it.
One of the biggest things when you're getting your front rack, the
biggest thing you want to think about, a lot of people will start breaking down
and they have a hard time in the front rack, like even if they
do have a good front rack just because of the position that they're getting in
with their thoracic spine. So when Brody gets into a front rack position right here,
a lot of people will be rounded forward here to be able to get into that
front rack, so their shoulder comes forward and it rounds their upper back.
You want to squeeze your upper back into a good position and that's gonna
be basically the first chain link that's gonna break down. So if
that's broken down then everything else is gonna break down. It's gonna put a ton
of pressure on your core and you're gonna be fighting it the entire time.
So you really want to get enough mobility in your front rack, you can get your
elbows nice and high, but also erect your thoracic spine at the same time.
So I just wanted to cover that because your front rack may not be the issue, it may
just be the activation of your upper back when you're setting up. So make sure
you look at that first, make sure that you're squeezing your upper back into a
good position. So get your front rack here, squeeze your shoulder blades in a
good position, and make sure your thoracic spine is in a good place before
you get into it. The first drill is going to be a simple band drill. So we're gonna
set the band up low on the rack. Depending on how mobile you are you
might want to bring it up a little bit, Brody's pretty mobile here. So you're
gonna set up with your hand in the band open hand, just like this, turn it over,
and then from there he's basically over his shoulder with his elbow, and he's just
gonna work on stretching it out. So this one's gonna be good just because it's
gonna open up your lats and stretch your triceps and your wrists. Because you'll
notice if you come back here that his hand is open and that'll help just
open it up, stretch his fingers a little bit and his wrists, and if he wants to he
can grab overhead, grab his elbow and increase the stretch a little bit.
So once he spends about a minute here then we're gonna actually put him in the
front rack, so keeping that hand open so that band's gonna be pulling his hand
into a good position, stretching his fingers out here, he's gonna sit in the
front rack position for another minute and grab his elbow right here, just pull
it in a little bit just to get some rotation. He's just gonna work, keep it
nice and tight, he's gonna drive his elbow up. Spend a minute overhead, about
a minute in that actual front rack position. If this is way too hard
you'll just want to start with the band a little bit higher, or you could even
put the band at a higher position on the rack and just start with
just stretching it out with your arm over your head like that. All right guys,
the next one we're gonna be doing is a stretch with a PVC pipe on the bench.
So what you're gonna do, grab right about shoulder width, you can go even
a little bit wider, it's gonna put a little bit more tension on, and what
you're gonna do is set up with your elbows on the bench, you're gonna keep
your arms straight at first, go ahead and sink down with your head past the bench,
and from there you're gonna get a nice stretch right here in your lats and also
in your thoracic spine. And you can increase the stretch by keeping those
elbows nice and tight and then bringing that PVC pipe just as far as you
can go. Brody's gonna be able to take it all the way down to his back because
he's got great mobility. But in this position I would not be able to do that.
And then if you want a little bit more stretch even, you could have someone
press down on your back just a little bit, or even just put a small
plate on your back to get you deep into the stretch. So this one's great, because
like we were talking about before, you're gonna need a lot of thoracic mobility to
be able to have a great front front rack position and a
nice strong upper back, so this will help with your thoracic mobility a little bit,
and it's gonna work that front rack position. So the last one's gonna be kind
of a weird drill, but you're gonna be setting up a band. So we looped two bands
together and then you just throw them over the rack like this, and you're
gonna be using the band to help you get your elbows up in position. You can just
stand here and really get it to stretch you, so it's kind of like your partner, if
you don't have a partner to sit there and press on your arms. I'll show you
what traditionally we would do. So go ahead Brody, set up in
the front rack. Brody has a really good front rack.
Rack it up, and then a lot of the times what we would do is just have a
partner. Brody's already in a good position, but push
into a better position and just hold it. And then you can press against
me and do some PNF stuff and then relax, push a little further, just to work
on that front rack. So if you don't have a partner, which a lot of the times
we know people don't, you can do a similar thing with bands. You're gonna
set up in the bands, we set two bands up, you loop it over the rack, you're gonna
step in under the bar, get your elbows in there, and you'll set up on the bar like
you normally would, get in a good position, and let those bands pull your
elbows up a little bit. So if this is stretching you a lot, for me if I just
stood off, the bands pulling me up at all
would stretch me out quite a bit, but once you get into it you can also kind
of work on keeping your thoracic spine nice and high, squeeze
your shoulder blades together if you can, and then from there you're gonna sink
down into a couple squats. If there's way too much tension obviously
it's gonna be hard, but you can even just go into a quarter squat just to
challenge yourself. Quarter squat, pause, drive those elbows up in a good
position just like that. So really hold down there, hold the stretch, there you go.
Just hold and do a good stretch right here, get a good stretch and then come
back up. All right guys, hope these three drills help you out with your front rack.
There's a lot that goes into your front rack. Like I was saying, wrist mobility,
basically just your overall mobility in your upper body's gonna really contribute to your
front rack position, but these three drills have helped me out a lot to
improve my front rack, even though it's still pretty bad, but it's a lot better
than it used to be from using these drills. So I hope you guys like it, I hope you
can use it in your training, and if you guys have any other topics you want
me to cover just go ahead and leave them in the comments.
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