Damned octagonal plates!

This may be a weird question, but its the first time I’ve ever run into this problem.
My back training centers on the deadlift. But every 4 - 6 months I take 8 weeks off and substitute the clean and press for rest/variety/my own sanity.

My new gym has those goddamn octagonal plates w/ the cut-out handle (once again, fixing a problem that never existed) that cannot be used for any type of pulling movement off the floor. Why? Because they have slight edges, and if you put the plate down on the edge, it moves towards you or away from you, which is not something you want to have happen when you’re deadlifting over 3 plates.

Now, i can do partial deadlifts in the cage to make up for not doing d.l. off the floor. But I want to continue using cleans. So how important is the first pull to the clean, and do lifters ever use a partial clean movement? Am i going to have to invent it? Am i going to have to track down the person who invented the octagonal plate and shove an olympic bar up his ass? Any suggestions?

Thanks for any help.

Yes, there is a partial Clean movement. It’s called a Hang Clean. You start with the bar hanging just below the knee, pull the bar up in an explosive manor, raising up on your toes then catch the bar as you move underneath it. It’s a great supplemental lift to develop explosiveness. You can also try the Hang Snatch. I started doing them after the recomend from Charles Poliquin. Hope that helps.

yes, people do cleans from varying hights. The only thing that I would be concerned with in your case is that you seem to be doing cleans predominantly for leg development. the higher you do the clean from the less the leg involvements. You will notice it more in your back. Also most people who do cleans like this, hang cleans, cleans from blocks and the such are looking for improvements in their overall clean. Meaning they’re trying to augment their powerclean or squat clean. That being said, I’ve found that few exercise hit my trap as hard as cleans from the blocks.
If you’re looking to learn variations of the Olympic lifts, get the Weightlifting Encyclopedia, by Arthur Dreschler, or find a Weightlifting coach in your area. Hope this helps to some degree.

My suggestion would be to leave the Octagonal plates on the bar while shoving it up his ass. I hate those things, too.

They have the same octagonal plates at the gym
I go to and I have experienced the same thing
(although overall, for most things I actually
prefer those plates). There is a simple
solution to this problem: at the bottom of
each deadlift rep, just “tap” the plates to the floor, and don’t set the bar down or let it rest on the ground in between reps. If you
don’t set the bar down, it can’t roll on the
edges because the plates never support any
weight until the set is over. This makes for a better workout anyway, in my experience.

I do deads from the floor with 4 octagonal plates and I’ve never had a problem. Just do the work and stop complaining.

Thanks for the advice, guys. Well, except planner. I’ve read a lot of Bill Starr’s writtings, and he’s always mentioning hang cleans, but I had no idea that that’s the movement. Guess I’ll have to pick up a copy of that Dreschler book.

eag- T-mag has pictures of hang cleans. I think it was in that last Staley article. If not there, try the last King article.

Use the “cage”, stand on some sort of platform, set the pins at bottom of your foot---- NOW_DEADLIFT

This is why I love this board. In a million years I wouldn’t have thought of something as simple as standing on a box/ platform to do my deadlifts.

And I found the article with the hang clean photos. Big help. Thanks guys.