How to Implement Assessment and Corrective Strategies into Your Box: Part 3 – Assessing Front Rack Mobility

In last week’s article we talked about implementing assessments for overhead mobility into your box, this time we’ll talk front rack (Front rackanese?).  One of the first things I’ll ask when going over the front rack is, who out there has a perfect front rack position?  Usually the answer is not too many.  Improving front rack position is something that most of us can probably benefit from.

How much faster would you be at Fran if you could just get yourself into a solid front rack position?  Of course it would be faster.  What’s exciting to me is that we can improve our Fran times with a through evaluation and corrective strategy without having to pound a thousand reps (although mobility is not an excuse not to train hard).  What’s also interesting is that if you do have a significant restriction, you’ll never reach exercise mastery with exercises that require a sound front rack.

I also tend to see a decent amount of pain associated with the front rack position.  The pain is typically in the shoulder while in the rack and while pressing out of and returning into the front rack during overhead press.  Give them a set of dumbbells and ask them to do the same and they don’t have the pain anymore.

I also see a decent amount of medial elbow pain in the front rack.  It makes sense, if you’re missing motion from the joint that’s supposed to rotate (The shoulder into external rotation) you’ll try and get motion from the next joint down the line which is the elbow (Which last time I checked doesn’t rotate too well).  You’ll also see individuals with poor shoulder rotation end up in thoracic and lumbar extension with their ribs flaired up.  We know this isn’t efficient.

Assessing front rack position is actually pretty …read more

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