I am a weightlifter and a weightlifting coach and I do know about hang cleans.
that video was a joke! The technique was TERRIBLE!!!
most people here have been correct in their post saying that the “jump” hamstring curl foot lift whatever? is totally wrong!
yes, using proper technique you may get airborn but hopefully a few inches at most and NO kicking movement back towards your butt. done properly just enough to move your feet out a few inches into recieving position.
that whole double knee bend rotary hip movement bulshit is a joke it is wrong again.
like buffalokilla said you are in position for the 2nd pull already no need for DKB…so don’t fuck with it.
and yes 60 kg for a highschool girl is nothing to brag about. But I will brag about the 69 kg highschool girl I help coach who can clean 105 kg (and rack jerk it too!)
that coach sounds like an accident waiting to happen by not trying to improve his athletes form.
So is it okay to move the feet outwards for the catch? I’ve watched a bunch of OL videos, and it doesn’t seem like the thing to do, so I’ve tried to stop, but it’s a bit of a habit. My catch is terrible to begin with, but one step at a time.
On the big hip swing in the vid, it does look like a bit more than a normal hang clean. Its sort of including the double knee bend part, rather than just the second pull. To really neurally groove in my hang cleans, I personally like to start with a set or two from the floor and just go REALLY slow to above the knee and then explode on the second pull. That removes any momentum I would have gained from the floor pull and the knee re-bend and allows me to focus on the second pull.
On the jumping thing, I think that at lower weights its fine to jump a bit on the final hip extension. However, at higher weights, you definitely trade off that final bit of extension for speed in pulling yourself under the bar. I think some of the girls in the video understood that their feet were supposed to leave the ground for some reason (either the full estension, or the speed pulling underneath the bar).
But I think they failed to understand that the feet leaving the ground is the resultant effect of an extension or of a speed pull underneath the bar. I think they were incorrectly cueing their feet to leave the ground as an initiation of the movement to pull underneath the bar. Your feet leaving the ground for a pull underneath the bar should never result in the kind of leg curl action some in the video exhibited.
The lifting of your feet off the ground really is a action of the hip flexors flexing the hip into a squat position, not the hamstrings flexing the knee. The feet should for the most part stay in the same transverse plane it seems to me. They shouldn’t move backwards relative to the body, the way those girls’ in the vid did.
Also, pure efficiency in the movement I think would mean that you can continue to pull upward on the bar and subsequently move your body underneath it just as fast as you can lift your feet, so your feet will only lift off the ground a very small amount, not the several inches seen in the video.
[quote]veruvius wrote:
So is it okay to move the feet outwards for the catch? I’ve watched a bunch of OL videos, and it doesn’t seem like the thing to do, so I’ve tried to stop, but it’s a bit of a habit. My catch is terrible to begin with, but one step at a time. [/quote]
I think ideally, you don’t move your feet out very much at all. Think about the geometry; by moving your feet outward, you’re lowering your body more without having to bend your knees further. So moving your feet out sideways is essentially just reducing the depth you have to bend your knees and hips to catch the bar in a squat. It makes the lift easier on your legs, hips, and lower back to catch.
This just reduces some of the benefits of the exercise and allows more room for error in the bar’s travel path(i.e. rocking back too far in the pull, or pulling too far away from your body, causing your catch to be too far forward or backward). If you’re really going to reach your full potential on heavy Oly’s though, you’ve got to get used to pulling in the proper line and catching really low anyway, so you want to catch in whatever is your strongest foot width for doing a full squat catch.
So I do think a little bit is necessary to move from a pulling width to a squating width, as some people find it easier to get a longer pull from a narrower stance than they would normally full squat at. But you shouldn’t be moving your feet out any further than what they would be for a full squat catch.
I noticed that after knee surgery, I lost confidence in my full squat strength. I used to be able to catch in a full squat. But now I kick out to the side more often because my body’s just lost confidence in catching in a full squat because my knee hasn’t regained the strength and flexibility needed for a full squat catch. I can do a full squat normally, but an Oly catch in a full squat is an entirely different story.