I’ve noticed lately that when I do cleans usually when I get the bar up in the top position or when I’m putting the bar back down on the ground I start feeling lightheaded. A friend of mine told me that its probably because I’m not breathing when I’m doing the lift. Anybody have any ideas what it might be?
Also, I workout in the morning but I do eat before the workout so lack of nutrition can’t be the problem…
This is just an individual remedy that worked for me, but I usually load up on extra water when I know I’m doing any o-lifts or heavy squats/deads. It cleared up the light headedness for me, but who knows, you might have some sort of crazy brain tumor whose only symptom is light headedness during cleans.
Maybe somebody else has a better answer.
Oh yeah, if you practice a full out valsalva technique during the cleans, it will definitely make you light headed.
Sometimes I will clean the bar too close to my neck. It will be resting against my jugular and cut off the blood flow slightly. Might aplly in your case?
Just a thought if you have very low bllod pressure the rapid extention of your body might cause the light head. For example getting out of a chair quickly, the body goes up but the blood stays in place thus no blood in the head.
Hehehe, I always thought that the point of doing oly lifts was to get the buzz, man! Anyway, I agree with your pal about the breathing. Exhale on Effort, dude. If you’re still lightheaded (seeing sparklies) from pulling into the catch on the clean, get your blood pressure checked. I think maybe you’re just busting your ass real good, and not getting a good breath out there, you gotta watch that, especially on sets with reps over five, that’s where I start to get a little loopy and gotta really concentrate on my form and breathing more. I read somewhere that you shouldn’t even do oly lift sets with over five reps, because your form starts to break down. And I can see that it’s true, but I remember that the guy was referring to full floor to jerk overhead oly lifts, so I fudge a little and go a little higher volume when I’m doing just cleans or hang cleans. Good luck!
The Valsalva manouvre is a forced exhalation against a closed glottis. It just means that you hold your breath whilst trying to exhale. Its used in Olympic lifting to help stability. However, blood pressures up to 300mg/Hg have been found when Valsavaing so it does have risks.
I used to get light headed when cleaning but it just went away and now I rarely get that head rush anymore.
when you’re in the plan, on the way down, you do the valsalva to equalise the air outside your eardrum and inside your eardrum.
basically: you close your mouth, and pinch your nose, then you try to blow out of your pinched nose. don’t try too hard though, just carefully. your eardrums will expand from | | to ( ).