I see early arm bend, a poor starting position (pretty round back), and falling forwards, but I’m sure the guys in this forum can do a better job than me
Those are major things!! You need to fix those first, because most everything else would be minor, or could be corrected by fixing those that you mentioned!!!
If you can’t get in a good starting position from the floor, just pull from the hang. Unless of course you are trying to train the full Olympic lifts.
Thanks for the advice. I don’t train the lift that often, it’s normally a focus on powerlifting type strength and I occasionally test the clean just to see how it’s improving as my squats/pulls go up. So it’s not a massive training priority, but I’d like to do the lift properly.
The starting position isn’t going to be a problem, I definitely have the mobility, just lacked the focus to enforce it this time.
Tips for preventing the arm bend?
Concentrate on extending your body–explosivly straighten your legs, try to go up on your toes as much as possible [will depend upon the weight you are using] and shrug your traps as hard as possible. All these are done almost simultaneously. When you are fully extended then is when your arms come into play to pull your body down under the bar–in the full clean. In the power version you still dip the legs a bit to catch the bar but you should concentrate on getting the bar as high as possible using the muscles of your hip joint–glutes–legs, and traps instead of your arms.
Best advice I ever found for cleans was to initiate the explosive pull at the last possible moment. Get the bar as high possible along your thighs before exploding upward.
My coach would tell me this, because your video is actually what my cleans looked like before he drilled it into me:
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Start it like a deadlift almost, slow controlled ascent until the bar passes your knees keeping your chest high and back arched.
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You’re pulling way too high, clean is meant to be caught in a squat, not standing up. You should only explode to about your belly button height, then sit fast to get under the bar for the catch. Remember, you’re pulling your body down, not pulling the bar up.
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You’re pulling high because your pulling with your arms rather than exploding with your hips and shrugging the bar. Also, don’t death grip the bar, it’ll help your hands transition as you sit fast under the bar.
After he cleaned me up with those tips (and about 2 hours of repetition), I increased my clean by about 15kg just on form tweaks alone. Good luck!
Focus on 1 thing at a time. Get your back flat and do plenty of volume with prefect form and light weights, maybe some pulls from floor to knee too eg 5x5 with a perfectly flat back. Not trying to be rude but looks like a classic case of too much too soon, which is getting dangerously common these days…
[quote]SJHunter86 wrote:
- Start it like a deadlift almost, slow controlled ascent until the bar passes your knees keeping your chest high and back arched.
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No. You can pull fast off the floor. The key is to make sure the bar is constantly accelerating on the way up. Fast or slow off the floor is preference.
He’s doing a POWER clean not a full clean.
[quote]Charlietr wrote:
Focus on 1 thing at a time. Get your back flat and do plenty of volume with prefect form and light weights, maybe some pulls from floor to knee too eg 5x5 with a perfectly flat back. Not trying to be rude but looks like a classic case of too much too soon, which is getting dangerously common these days…[/quote]
Not taken rudely at all.
I’ll have bumper plates when I’m home for the holidays, I might do some light pulls every day and try to make each rep perfect
Sounds good/good luck! As mentioned doing some very short range pulls just from floor to just below knee for 5s with perfect form should help. Get your weight mid foot/slightly forward and actively push your chest out as much as you can all the way throughout the pull/lift.