Hi Coach, would Barbell Clean Jumps and Snatch Jumps be useful exercises to increase power and explosiveness or would the Barbell Squat Jump be better served for this purpose?
They both work and I use both. The jump snatch and jump clean are more of a hip hinge (when you lower the bar to the knees you should to it like a RDL not a squat) and the jump squat is obviously a squat pattern. Just like with training for strength you want both a hinge and a squat in your program, the same can be said for power.
Christian, I’ve been meaning to ask for a while. Are snatch high pulls an arching or squatting pattern? When I set up if I bend much at the waist at all, my knees are almost straight. If I bend the knees I am almost upright. Either way, the bar is not much below the bend in the hip so I find it hard to get speed generated either way or getting my hips into it. It could be from not lengthening the back enough. On a kettlebell swing for example, my hips fire vary hard and snap hard to swing the weight up but not in the sghp. May be a different discussion but if I had to summarize into a simple question, should I be feelings my hips snap hard at the top of the sghp like I do on a kettlebell swing?
You should set up like a romanian deadlift… the bar should be around knee level when you initiate the pull
OK that makes sense. I had been doing sghps from mid thigh level