Front Squats and Pull-Ups

Supersetting’s great!

Its saves time, increases training intensity, and its flexible… there’s pretty much a superset combo to help you reach any goal.

But as you get stronger it becomes harder and harder to superset big compound movements due to their taxing nature, however there’s something awesome about the Front Squat / Pull-up combo that lends itself perfectly to it.

During the Front Squat the Lats are anatomically less effective as spinal stabilisers, which accounts for some of the discrepancy between the Front and Back Squat, it also means the Lats stay pretty fresh through the movement, even if you don’t.

In practice, just like the hamstrings and pairing a hamstring movement with the Front Squat, it means your Pull-ups won’t hugely be effected by doing your front squats first making it a great option for a strength based superset.

Personally I like to implement the pairing like this:

Front Squats: 

This is simple, the Front Squats ‘lead’ what the Pull-ups do, so follow your weekly set x rep @percentage scheme, or whatever your plan calls for on Front Squats.

Pull-ups: 

• Sets - Match the pull-up sets with the working sets of your front squat.

• Reps - This will be dependant on how strong you are at pull-ups, but 5 to 8 reps works well, or reps up to 8 to 9RPE… If you can do more than 8, add weight.

• Bonus: Finish the last set of Pull-ups with a mechanical dropset, so if you’re doing wide overhand it might go something like this:

  1. Wide & Overhand

  2. Close & Neutral

  3. Chins.

Written down it would look something like this:

If you can’t do pull-ups you can substitute it for Pull-up Negatives, Lat Pulldown, or Inverted Row, the pairing also works really well with front loaded lunge variations instead of Front Squats.

Adam Johnston, 4th May 2020