The receiving position must be solid and sound for an athlete to support maximum weight on the shoulder level, and racked in the front to boot. The goal of the clean is to receive it at the chest, or more appropriately, shouldered position the torso close to vertical at the bottom of a squat position, initially, and then stand completely erect. Like working backwards on a map, we must know our final point of the lift. We start with the destination of the clean as our starting point to learning the technical pieces of the lift. Top Down Positions and Movements for the Clean In most instances though, limitations in shoulder external rotation will prevent athletes from racking the bar with an extremely wide grip.Ī wider grip in the clean may be employed to bring the bar closer to the hip during the pull, and also during completion of the jerk portion, to require a shorter distance until the bar is overhead. For most athletes, the idea of keeping the bar at hip level is not necessary for a good lift, although it can certainly be beneficial to bring the bar closer to the hip to complete the 2nd pull and begin the 3rd pull. Whereas the snatch requires a grip that keeps the bar close to the hip crease when fully extended to promote a correct bar path, in the clean this is not necessary. At this width, there won’t NEED to be any adjustment to the grip to complete the jerk. Generally speaking the upper arms should be able to be comfortably parallel to the ground in this position. If your hands touch your shoulders, this grip is too narrow. Find this out by bringing the bar to a front squat rack position and gripping the bar fully. The width of the grip in the clean should be wider than the shoulders. This does not need to be taught, as most athletes will do it naturally. Unlike the snatch, where releasing the hook grip is optional, the clean rack position will almost always necessitate releasing the hook grip at the shoulders. Asked if he was hook gripping, he responded “I didn’t know I should for the snatch AND the clean,” so I am not going to take anything for granted. Just last night I was coaching a young Olympic lifter who was attempting a PR clean and jerk, when all of the sudden the bar flew right out of his hands during the clean. Nonetheless, I won’t take anything for granted. I hope by now that it goes without saying but the hook grip should be used. How to Teach the Clean: Download the instructional guide here. It should go without saying that learning a sound technical base in the snatch will help your clean and vice versa. Many of the fine details of the two movements, positions and timing, are distinct. We teach the snatch in the same manner as the clean and with the same names: If you want to read it in the reverse order, scroll down and read the sections in reverse, it will work either way. From the top down, starting at the racked position and progressing to the floor. This was chosen as the way to design this article so that you can learn the clean just as I teach the clean in seminars and to my athletes. How to teach the clean: we teach the clean to our athletes in a top down manner that is you will read of the technical elements of the clean from the top first, starting at the receiving position, and ending with the bottom, the start position at the floor. The heavier loads in the clean typically mean that I teach it second, primarily because cleaning before you snatch leads to slow arms in the turnover portion of the lift while going overhead in the snatch. The clean is one explosive movement to bring the bar to the chest, and because of its shorter nature than the snatch, significantly higher loads can be completed in the clean than can be completed in the snatch. Since you were first introduced to its ugly cousin the power clean in high school weightlifting class, crossfit class, or by a random person in the gym (ugly referring to the level of technique that we all started with). Of course, you probably have known the clean for much longer. It is sometimes considered the king of all lifts because in weightlifting competitions, they are typically won by the guy or gal with the biggest clean and jerk (and not necessarily the snatch). The clean is the first portion of the second lift, the clean and jerk, contested at competitive weightlifting competitions.
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