Are they a must or can one live without them?
If your technique is good then its worth doing. Not form, but technique. Good form takes years and years and is a complete waste of time if you arent an olympic weightlifter. As long as you are exploding the bar up with your hips and shrugging it into the catch position with your traps, then go for it.
Power Cleans are an awesome change for speed days if pulls are getting boring or a great conditioning tool if you do a set weight for time or reps.
Are they a must though? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
They are very important if you want to be good at them. For powerlifting, they are of questionable value. I can count on no hands the number of elite lifter I know that use them as a regualr training lift.
my first leg day is a monday and my routine is:
squat 5x3 3x1 1x1
lunges with barbell 135xfailue 150xfailure 170xfailure
leg press 3x12
standing and seated calves 3x15
straight leg dead lifts 3x5
leg curls
but on friday i was thinking about switching leg press with some power cleans good or bad idea?
[quote]Pinto wrote:
They are very important if you want to be good at them. For powerlifting, they are of questionable value. I can count on no hands the number of elite lifter I know that use them as a regualr training lift.[/quote]
Subtle…
[quote]Brotha wrote:
my first leg day is a monday and my routine is:
squat 5x3 3x1 1x1
lunges with barbell 135xfailue 150xfailure 170xfailure
leg press 3x12
standing and seated calves 3x15
straight leg dead lifts 3x5
leg curls
but on friday i was thinking about switching leg press with some power cleans good or bad idea?[/quote]
Power cleans are a very technical lift. While I think you can get away with subpar form on them, having cleans as your 3rd exercise is not a good strategy. ESPECIALLY after going to failure on the lunges.
If you want to do them, put them before the squat.
BTW- your template sucks
[quote]Brotha123 wrote:
my first leg day is a monday and my routine is:
squat 5x3 3x1 1x1
lunges with barbell 135xfailue 150xfailure 170xfailure
leg press 3x12
standing and seated calves 3x15
straight leg dead lifts 3x5
leg curls
but on friday i was thinking about switching leg press with some power cleans good or bad idea?[/quote]
If you’re training for powerlifting, I would skew your work volume towards squats. It looks liek you still have a lot left in the tank after you squat. That’s fine. If I still felt froggy after my last heavy squat set, I would hit a couple down sets on squats. Some of the accesory work makes sense- stiff legs and leg pressing following heavy squats is a time-tested workout that strong lifters have done since the 70s. I think lunges have thier place- e.g. for someone coming off a back injury that can lunge heavy but not squat heavy without pain- however, I am yet to see someone add pounds to their squat/pull on account of lunges. There’s a number of reason for this- but the big one is that a lunge works nothing like a squat. That’s not to say you can’t do it just for the fuck of it. I just don’t think it’s going to give much back for your efforts.
[quote]Pinto wrote:
[quote]Brotha123 wrote:
my first leg day is a monday and my routine is:
squat 5x3 3x1 1x1
lunges with barbell 135xfailue 150xfailure 170xfailure
leg press 3x12
standing and seated calves 3x15
straight leg dead lifts 3x5
leg curls
but on friday i was thinking about switching leg press with some power cleans good or bad idea?[/quote]
If you’re training for powerlifting, I would skew your work volume towards squats. It looks liek you still have a lot left in the tank after you squat. That’s fine. If I still felt froggy after my last heavy squat set, I would hit a couple down sets on squats. Some of the accesory work makes sense- stiff legs and leg pressing following heavy squats is a time-tested workout that strong lifters have done since the 70s. I think lunges have thier place- e.g. for someone coming off a back injury that can lunge heavy but not squat heavy without pain- however, I am yet to see someone add pounds to their squat/pull on account of lunges. There’s a number of reason for this- but the big one is that a lunge works nothing like a squat. That’s not to say you can’t do it just for the fuck of it. I just don’t think it’s going to give much back for your efforts.[/quote]
I hope you werent writing this to counter my statement. I was not saying any of the lifts were bad, I just think the way it’s put together is poor. There is no chance you can give 100% effort to squats, leg press, SLDL, cleans, lunges, and leg curls all in one workout. You could spread it out over a few workouts or cut back volume, etc.
But back more to the topic, I think power cleans are a good lift. As Pinto said, they are no crucial for powerlifting. If you are doing this “powerbuilding” thing, they can be a great movement for trap development and can be beneficial to your speed. But for powerlifting- there are just better options.
i do not do all those exercises is one day it is split into 2 days…
mark rippetoe says power cleans can be used for speed work for deads, so your deads could probably benefit from them.
For the sport of powerlifting, I don’t know for what purpose someone would do them exactly. But for the strength enthusiasts who lift weights just for fun this is an awesome movement.
[quote]FROGGBUSTER wrote:
mark rippetoe says power cleans can be used for speed work for deads, so your deads could probably benefit from them.[/quote]
Rippetoe’s advice is primarily aimed at novice lifters, not experienced, competitive powerlifters.
I agree that they are of minimal value for competitive powerlifters. I’ve heard of individuals recommending jumps or some form of of CNS warmup for fast twitch potentiation before max effort lifts and maybe they can fit in there.
I disagree that they are that technical and hard to learn. The full squat variations are complex and more difficult, but the power variations are not that hard to learn to a degree of semi-competence. In fact, I think their inclusion in most athletic programs depends on the coaches level of experience w/ the lifts. A lot of strength and conditioning coaches don’t know how to coach it, so they don’t. The coaches with experience in the lifts usually end up including them in their programs.
As to the level of trap involvement, many lifters ‘shrug’ is simply a result of pulling under the bar, not trying to pull it up. The actually force moving the bar comes from the violent hip extension at the end of the second pull. Some lifters have more shrug than others, Pyrros Dimas comes to mind from some of the few olympic lifters I’ve seen and different coaches will coach different styles of pulling. I’m not saying hang cleans are not trap developers, but IMO that should not be the purpose of including them in a program.