Looking for Feedback on My Snatch

trying but doesn’t feel right… there is a whole bunch so you can get a general sense… also posted the weights in case things get particularly murky at a certain point (so it might be best for me to focus on triples around there or something).

constructive criticism most welcome!

from what i can see, i would say to start your hips a little higher… hips higher than knees, shoulders higher than hips. this will help put your shoulder more “over” the bar. and keep it from bumping out from your hips and looping into the catch position.

also sorry. you are jumping well, but its more of a hip bump than finishing the pull. notice your shoulders say firm and there isnt much of a shrug at the top. hrug high and keep the bar close. good lifting though…

yup, not finishing the pull. I know that one cuz I’ve got it too. My understanding is that the hips should be coming forward to meet the bar as it travels up, but that the contact has no part to play in actually moving the bar. It’s like a spring-hinge snapping straight.

[quote]blackbeardoly wrote:
from what i can see, i would say to start your hips a little higher… hips higher than knees, shoulders higher than hips. this will help put your shoulder more “over” the bar. and keep it from bumping out from your hips and looping into the catch position. [/quote]

Oh, i see, interesting.

DCA, what do you mean by not finishing the pull?

thanks very much for taking the time to watch and comment, i really appreciate it.

i’m really not very sure about anything at this point…

i used to have a problem of starting with my hips pretty high and then my hips would rise too fast so my back angle would become pretty horizontal around the second pull. i thought that was the idea - to keep your shoulders over / in front of the bar for as long as possible.

but then i read stuff on how that puts your back in a very precarious position and it is hard to generate much force on the bar from there. it is also harder to get yourself down under it quickly when your shoulders are out in front of it. so i’ve been trying to get a good back angle (fairly upright) in the starting position and to maintain that back angle (with shoulders vertically above the bar) until the second pull.

i feel like i’m not finding the second position properly. i tried to do some blocks work and hang work - but i still feel like i’m not finding the position properly. i also think i have a problem of getting the bar moving back towards me from the floor - because my knees seem to be in the bloody way if my back is more upright rather than horizontal.

the last three reps with just 20kg… how did they look (from 4:29)? i guess that is a bit more what i’ve been aiming to do…

but maybe i don’t know what i’m even aiming to do anymore.

Do you mean I’m not extending from the hips properly? I’m not sure about the role of shrugging (is it to help the bar go higher or to help pull you under? i was thinking of the latter). But seems you do want to use hip extension to generate force on the bar. I’m kind of half heartedly doing this…

I probably need to figure the power position and do some work from the hang on hip drive… Then try and get from the floor to the power position…

I can’t figure the difference between the one I got at 33.5kg and the ones I missed. They look the same to me. Maybe it is just that I was determined not to drop the one I got forwards whereas I kinda mentally bailed on the ones I missed.

if you watch the snatch you do at exactly 4 minutes, you can see the bar looping, and you pushing your bum really far back out. there isnt anything wrong with hip extension. as long as it doesnt throw the weight in a looping fashion.

this is 2x national champion mike soha Mike 100kg snatch - YouTube watch as the bar passes maybe a few inches in front of his face. good extension, fast under the bar.

work snatch high pulls. it will help learn to keep that bar close

[quote]alexus wrote:
trying but doesn’t feel right… there is a whole bunch so you can get a general sense… also posted the weights in case things get particularly murky at a certain point (so it might be best for me to focus on triples around there or something).

constructive criticism most welcome![/quote]

Lower the hips SLIGHTLY in your start and try to flex your ankle a little bit more so that the knee travels toward your toes. You have really long legs but you dont use them very much in the lift. The whole thing looks like one speed from floor to finish so once you get the bar to the hips you have to work harder to get it overhead and you end up swinging it out. You also end up delaying your descent because you have to wait for the bar to come back to you before dropping.

You need to push your legs aggressively to get the bar moving and then keep pushing harder throughout to accelerate the bar. You have a decent bar path for your build, but there is no aggression in this lift. Try ripping the bar off the floor and see what happens before you start making major changes.

ok. tried to pull it faster today and 30kg seems like a good weight to be working with for triples (feels like if i pull 25kg too hard it swings more). i’m not sure my ankles can come forwards anymore… but i’ll keep working on it. guess i was thinking ‘slow from the floor then fast’ but instead i need to be thinking ‘fast from the floor then fastest!’ really get the CNS fired up.

i read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to tell girls to be more aggressive… i had wondered if i was meant to be, though. i had a lot of fun, today. sounding less like a strangled poodle, anyway, i think. got some looks. maybe that means i’m doing it more right :slight_smile:

i think it might be possible to get the bar moving back more from the floor… but then i might need to rebend my knees once it is past them in order to get into the power position… alternatively, i guess i could play with my knees going out to the sides more - as in more of a frog stance. will work on getting it moving faster for a bit, though. see how far that gets me.

thanks.

[quote]DaCharmingAlbino wrote:
yup, not finishing the pull. I know that one cuz I’ve got it too. My understanding is that the hips should be coming forward to meet the bar as it travels up, but that the contact has no part to play in actually moving the bar. It’s like a spring-hinge snapping straight.[/quote]
I agree with this!
If you have access to blocks, try doing snatches from mid-thigh off of blocks. This will force you to fire the hips and finish the pull - from a dead stop if you don’t explode the 2nd pull the bar will not go high enough to catch.
Finish the pull - when the weight gets heavy enough you will get under the bar!

Onward and upward…

I personally think just one thing will make it way better… start raising your torso to vertical earlier in the pull. in your case MUCH earlier. the bar almost STOPS at your hip making the first and 2nd pull contribute almost nothing to the lift and you are just extending at the end.

[quote]alexus wrote:
ok. tried to pull it faster today and 30kg seems like a good weight to be working with for triples (feels like if i pull 25kg too hard it swings more). i’m not sure my ankles can come forwards anymore… but i’ll keep working on it. guess i was thinking ‘slow from the floor then fast’ but instead i need to be thinking ‘fast from the floor then fastest!’ really get the CNS fired up.[/quote]

Yes its fast then fastest. Too many pull deliberately slow, its ok in the beginning when youre learning positions but should be quickly weened off. If your ankles cant move anymore, then theres not much more you can do with your start position (you certainly dont need to raise your hips higher, youre correct on that). You should do some ankle mobility drills and see if those help, then worry about your hips later:

Take some videos of you pulling faster and dropping faster (dont just pull fast and drop slowly).

[quote]i read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to tell girls to be more aggressive… i had wondered if i was meant to be, though. i had a lot of fun, today. sounding less like a strangled poodle, anyway, i think. got some looks. maybe that means i’m doing it more right :slight_smile: [quote]

Who said that? The weight isnt going to move itself, nor is it going to be nicer when its heavier. You need to rip the hell out of it and show it who’s boss.

[quote]i think it might be possible to get the bar moving back more from the floor… but then i might need to rebend my knees once it is past them in order to get into the power position… alternatively, i guess i could play with my knees going out to the sides more - as in more of a frog stance. will work on getting it moving faster for a bit, though. see how far that gets me.

thanks.[/quote]

Youre overthinking this. Dont worry about rebending the knees, that will happen on its own. You can turn the toes out if you want, I prefer that, but just drive with your legs. Read this to get in a better start with the toes out:

http://cathletics.com/articles/article.php?articleID=49

Note this part: “So where are the hips? I donâ??t know; I havenâ??t measured you. If youâ??re on the short end of the scale, the hips will most likely be above the knees; if youâ??re a bit longer-legged, the hips may be even with or even slightly below the knees. Understand that hip height is a product of our two basic position criteria (bar over the base of the toes and arms vertical from side), not a criterion itself.” Again higher hips will get you nowhere (as will trying to shrug the bar up).

I’m working very hard on my ankle mobility (including daily softball / EVA foam rolling lower leg and feet and mobility drills / stretching). Have some claw/mallet/hammer toes stuff going on from an old traumatic injury. They jam painfully into the ground at the best of times and this gets worse with ankle dorsiflexion.

Doing what I can to stretch the tendons under my feet out and improve my dorsiflexion. It is a priority since if it doesn’t improve significantly I’m going to have to squat-jerk. And clearly my levers won’t like that.

Got my Oly shoes altered to about 2x standard heel raise (about 2.5cm now) because otherwise I can’t squat without adopting a sumo-wide stance. That does shift my balance forwards (compensating for my inability to dorsiflex) which affects the pull in ways that I’m not quite sure of… Still getting used to that fairly recent adjustment. Sometimes over-compensate too much and land on my ass.

Tried speeding the whole thing up today (the pull and the drop). I got 35kg!!! 1, 1, 0, 0, (wuss!!) 1! PB and a personal milestone since it is the bumpers on the women’s bar (instead of the crappy plastic training plates)!

I will take some vids, but I’m a bit of a slow learner so want to hold off for a week or two till I’m reliably faster (or at least think I am). Not very reliable with it at the moment, but feels like I’m getting there…

I think the worry was that if you tell girls they have to be more aggressive in order to do it they’ll drop out and take up crochet, or something. Tupperware parties. I don’t know. Whatever girls do. I actually liked the Natalie Woolfolk quote about the bar lifting itself. Guess I was kinda thinking that it would if I got my technique right… Silly, heh.

Thanks very much for the link to the article! Almost everything I thought I knew about technique and a whole heap more besides! I had been wondering about the pull / dead relationship, too. Think I had a bit of luck with getting the bar drifting back towards me today, too. Just thinking to ‘let it drift’ and occasionally it just seemed to do that and clear my knees. No idea how, but maybe I can get a bit more reliable with that. And speed it up.

[quote]alexus wrote:
Do you mean I’m not extending from the hips properly? I’m not sure about the role of shrugging (is it to help the bar go higher or to help pull you under? i was thinking of the latter). But seems you do want to use hip extension to generate force on the bar. I’m kind of half heartedly doing this…

I probably need to figure the power position and do some work from the hang on hip drive… Then try and get from the floor to the power position…

I can’t figure the difference between the one I got at 33.5kg and the ones I missed. They look the same to me. Maybe it is just that I was determined not to drop the one I got forwards whereas I kinda mentally bailed on the ones I missed.[/quote]

You pulled high enough, but looped the bar pretty far out on all the 33.5s. On the one you made, you jumped further forward than on the misses. Maybe Lordstrom is right about the vertical torso. On the lifts from the hang, there was no pause at the hips and much less looping of the bar. I’ll have to go back and look again to be sure, but it seems like on the hang lifts, your shoulders were slightly behind the bar at the second pull, as opposed to straight above or slightly in front on the lifts from the floor.

Agreed on the butt slightly lower at the start (I know there are physical limitations here, but keep working on it). And if you are shrugging, you should be on your way down under the bar.

If I think ‘chest up’ in the starting position my hips drop a little lower and I can get my torso more vertical. it probably looks really unbalanced since my knees are still pretty vertical, but my shoes make it possible. I knew I shouldn’t be aiming for horizontal, but guess I didn’t realize just how vertical I should be aiming to be. Feeling a bit of a fight with the bar where my hips want to rise earlier to make the pull easier - but if I fight that urge I think the bar is moving back from the floor much better :slight_smile:

So… ‘chest up’, ‘hips down’ and ‘faster!’. Trying to worry about the first two mostly, and will aim to speed it up once I’ve got those. Will post more vids soon and see how that looks.

Thanks very much for all the help, people. Appreciate it a great deal.

[quote]alexus wrote:
ok. tried to pull it faster today and 30kg seems like a good weight to be working with for triples (feels like if i pull 25kg too hard it swings more). i’m not sure my ankles can come forwards anymore… but i’ll keep working on it. guess i was thinking ‘slow from the floor then fast’ but instead i need to be thinking ‘fast from the floor then fastest!’ really get the CNS fired up.

i read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to tell girls to be more aggressive… i had wondered if i was meant to be, though. i had a lot of fun, today. sounding less like a strangled poodle, anyway, i think. got some looks. maybe that means i’m doing it more right :slight_smile:

i think it might be possible to get the bar moving back more from the floor… but then i might need to rebend my knees once it is past them in order to get into the power position… alternatively, i guess i could play with my knees going out to the sides more - as in more of a frog stance. will work on getting it moving faster for a bit, though. see how far that gets me.

thanks.[/quote]

My main issue is the lack of finishing the bar, Stand on your tip toes headup. THIS IS WHERE YOU WANT TO AIM TO BE at the 2nd of your 2nd pull, You should be here for a split second before your under the bar.

You got to really violently open up the hip angle to generate the power WHILST keeping the bar close to you, this is where you need to really with the bar, otherwise it just bumps out away from you.

Your mobility is holidng you back quite a lot once you can shift your knees over your ankles more you will be able to sit down as oppose to back so much. Makes a huge difference.

But in general it looks good.

I’m with GqArtGuy, try and increase the speed off the floor whilst maintaining your positions.

Keep it up and good vieos :slight_smile:

Do it with a broomstick to see how fast you can move the bar. I have a really good video of one of my lifters doing some bar work. Looks very slick. I’ll post it sometime when I’m not busy.

Koing

haha. i’m having trouble keeping my hips down for a good start position with the broomstick. not strong enough in the legs or something. having some weight (even the bar) to hold onto helps me balance, too.

i’ll post some vids tomorrow 'cause i’m keen to see what i’m up to now… had a couple days that went really good then things turned to complete crap and now things seem… hard. weird. not sure if i’m making things harder than they need to be or if this is (more) the way things are supposed to be…

not so fast :frowning:

but trying to keep hips down and torso vertical. can kind of run the bar up my inner legs to keep knees out the way. feels like hard work indeed to pull from there. maybe i’m over-doing it or something. i think (though i’m not totally sure) that if i do manage to extend properly from there then the bar path / catch is good, though. i guess the vids will tell.

if that is more right then i’ll work on speeding it up. if i try and speed it up now my hips shoot up and i make a complete mess of it, though, because the movement pattern feels so different :-/

Round 2:

Perhaps not that much different, but has only been a week.

Could be wrong but I thought a couple looked better. If I really do start with my hips as low as I can and maintain that and then extend properly then things seem better?

Still seem to be starting with hips a bit high and / or hips shooting up a bit fast and / or not finishing the pull → jumping forwards to catch.

My little girly legs don’t much like keeping my hips low, I’ll admit. Much more effort required to do things this way…

[quote]alexus wrote:
Round 2:

Perhaps not that much different, but has only been a week.

Could be wrong but I thought a couple looked better. If I really do start with my hips as low as I can and maintain that and then extend properly then things seem better?

Still seem to be starting with hips a bit high and / or hips shooting up a bit fast and / or not finishing the pull → jumping forwards to catch.

My little girly legs don’t much like keeping my hips low, I’ll admit. Much more effort required to do things this way…
[/quote]

Looks better with a lower start but you cant be afraid to apply speed even when tweaking things because EVERY change will feel hard if you do it slowly. This is why youre not finishing the pull. You have to commit to the lift and let your legs give 100%, otherwise you will compensate by letting the hips rise or something else and then wonder why things dont feel or look better.