Olympic Lifting Progressions

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

Hey,

Just thought that I would post the teaching progressions that I use to teach athletes the power clean and power snatch to see if anyone else had any good ideas.

Power Clean

  1. Practice jumping into the catch position without the bar
  2. Jump and shrug with bar from high hang
  3. Jump and shrug with bar to catch (hang clean from high hang) - once athlete shrugs with straight arms and catches the bar move on
  4. Hang clean (mid thigh) - emphasize knees back and knee shift under the bar then jump, once athlete has good knee shift move on
  5. Hang clean (above knee) - practice this step for a couple of weeks until the hang clean is fairly automatic
  6. Floor to hang clean (above knee) (first pull) - get athlete to practice taking bar from floor to hang clean position emphasizing constant back angle, knees back and hands following knees
  7. Power clean with verbal jump cue - perform floor to hang clean (step 6) then when athlete hits hang clean position shout jump, at which point they should be cued to perform a hang clean, once this is pretty fluid and the first pull is correct move on
  8. Power clean - allow the athlete to perform a full power clean without verbal jump cue

Power Snatch

  1. Power snatch balance - Practice jumping into the catch position from a position with the bar racked across your shoulders as if about to back squat
  2. Jump and shrug with bar from high hang
  3. Jump and shrug with bar to catch (hang snatch from high hang) - once athlete shrugs with straight arms and catches the bar move on
  4. Hang snatch (mid thigh) - emphasize knees back and knee shift under the bar then jump, once athlete has good knee shift move on
  5. Hang snatch (above knee) - practice this step for a couple of weeks until the hang snatch is fairly automatic and the knee shift allows the bar to slide all the way up the thigh to the hip
  6. Floor to hang snatch (above knee) (first pull) - get athlete to practice taking bar from floor to hang snatch position emphasizing constant back angle, knees back and hands following knees
  7. Power snatch with verbal jump cue - perform floor to hang snatch (step 6) then when athlete hits hang snatch position shout jump, at which point they should be cued to perform a hang snatch, once this is pretty fluid and the first pull is correct move on
  8. Power snatch - allow the athlete to perform a full power snatch without verbal jump cue

Sorry for the length of the post. Just hope to generate some discussion on the best way to teach Olympic lifting to athletes.

For anyone trying to learn the Olympic lifts I feel that it is very important to have competent supervision before trying to learn the lifts. I would not advise trying to learn the lifts on your own, but if you are tempted to use this progression, you should try to get all the way through the progression just using a bar (if unsupervised). Once you can perform a power clean or power snatch with just the bar with good technique (which is harder than with weight) you should be OK to add some weight.

Cheers

Dan

2

IMHO a simplier approach is better.

If someone asks me this is what I do:

  1. Power snatch from blocks. Set the barbell on blocks just above the knees. Tell them they have to lift the bar fast but just with their legs.

  2. Power snatch from ground. When they get used to throwing the bar from this position start the lift from the ground. Tell them to deadlift the bar (slow/strong) to the knees and then fast from there up.

  3. Power clean from blocks. Same as snatch but work on a catch with high elbows.

  4. Power clean from ground. As above.

  5. Power jerk. When they can rack the barbell with high elbows. Dip on the balls of the foot (I find this very important, if I try and keep the weight on my heels it hurts my knees and can’t lift much weight) and explode up.

All the way through stress NEUTRAL BACK position.

3

When I was learning I found the shrug command a disaster, as it caused arms to bend.

Now I don’t try and shrug my shoulders at all. Just drive through the hips.

Maybe the shrug will help advanced lifters lift more. But it is very hard to time right.

4

Also I don’t like lifts from the hang. IMHO your should be thinking about UP, UP, UP when lifting. The first move of a hang lift is to go down. To me this feels clunkey. Also I don’t think it teaches the right motor habits for the full lifts as if I work on lifts from the hang I see no improvement in the full lifts.

5

Bluey,

Cheers for your reply. Few thoughts:

  1. Breaking the lift down into many different stages is in my opinion simpler. The progression above teaches just one or two aspects of the lift in each step before moving on. This allows key coaching aspects to be mastered individually before moving on, eg., jump and shrug with straight arms, then catch, then knee shift (double knee bend), then first pull.

  2. I would worry that teaching the first pull as a deadlift would result in the athlete not getting their knees back and therefore not achieving a good scoop.

  3. I feel that olympic lifts from the blocks are harder to get right than the hang movements due to difficulty in starting position, knee shift and the lost ability to use an eccentric pre stretch.

  4. The shrug is part of the lift and in my opinion should be taught early to athletes. As for timing, I have found that in the majority of cases, this can be learnt crudely quite quickly if the athlete is only concentrating on jumping and shrugging (step 2).

  5. The initial pre stretch of a hang clean/snatch allows you to train the stretch shortening cycle. Once the bar has reached the knee, if the hang clean/snatch is being performed correctly after the bar has reached the knee it shouldn’t be moving down. The knee bend should be accompanied by hip extension that actually starts the bar moving up from the very beginning of the concentric portion of the lift. Hang cleans/snatches are an important part of learning the full lifts, are good training movements in their own right and can be used to improve the power of your second pull in the full lift.

Just my methodology though, interested to hear others.

Dan

6

Dan,

It sounds as if you have had some experience teaching the lifts, and if your method works, that is what is important.

One general question: how long, i.e. how many sessions and weeks, does it take for your athletes to learn the lifts?

I have only limited experience teaching the lifts. I worked with a number of collegiate wrestlers who wanted to learn how to do cleans, and over the years, in those rare places where a platform was available, have had a handful of people ask me to teach them cleans.

I noticed that you start off both progressions from the catch position. Why is that? I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with it, but from my personal experience and from what I have seen, people pick up the squat and catch in both the clean and the snatch relatively easily. Hence I would not worry about it until they were already lifting such weights that they needed to work on the catch.

The one method that strikes me as dubious is giving the verbal command during a clean. After already working on the hang clean, an athlete should be able to feel when to jump/shrug. Telling the athlete to wait for a command seems counter-productive, as it teaches the athlete to be tentative (a big no-no when doing the lifts), and not to rely on their own body sense. Do most of your athletes respond well to this?

I am also not sure about the necessity of dividing the hang clean into two parts, above and below the knee. I do see the logic of it, but am not sure how necessary it is. Is your experience that this is always effective, or just sometimes effective?

Depending upon age, strength, experience of the athlete, I have noticed that at times it helps to put a few kilos, say another ten or twenty onto the bar. An empty bar can be too light for an athlete to really sense what he is doing, and sometimes bad habits can creep in that way. That was my personal experience, and most of the athletes I taught had the same reaction. A 30 kg or 40 kg bar can be easier to work with in some situations.

Two other general comments: I have noticed that the start position can be one of the more difficult parts of the lifts for athletes to learn, and working on it can take some time. Its time well invested, of course, since you can’t make a good lift from a bad start. I mention this because it surprised me at first. Its not at all what I expected.

One thing that helps immensely is to have the athletes watch high-caliber lifters repeatedly. I had the rare luck to learn the lifts at a place where I had top-level lifters lifting all around me, so I could constantly study the motions.

Video technology today is a huge boon since you can show lifters what properly executed lifts should look like. Even as they pick up the technique and steadily improve they should benefit from watching since they can further refine their technique. Of course, it goes without saying that you or someone else at least should be demonstrating to them live in-person, but videos can be great pedagogical aids.

One of the most common mistakes I notice among untrained athletes trying to do cleans is that they have no explosion. They look like they are trying to dance with the bar rather than dominate it. In part this is because they tend to round their backs and perform other biomechanical mistakes, but it is also because they get the mindset that “technique” is key, and lose sight of the fact that the technique is there so that they can assert ultimate force. And that is what makes the lifts so fun and rewarding. The sight of athletes performing the moves rapidly, explosively, and with great power gets this across far better than any words.

7

[quote]Ajax wrote:
Depending upon age, strength, experience of the athlete, I have noticed that at times it helps to put a few kilos, say another ten or twenty onto the bar. An empty bar can be too light for an athlete to really sense what he is doing, and sometimes bad habits can creep in that way. That was my personal experience, and most of the athletes I taught had the same reaction. A 30 kg or 40 kg bar can be easier to work with in some situations.
[/quote]

I had this experience recently. I started getting coached on the O-lifts a few weeks ago, and as I’m trying to learn to rack the clean, I can easily reverse-curl an empty bar rather than pull and get under it. After years of weight training there’s just no resistance to give me queues. Coach would tell me to get under the bar, but I couldn’t feel what I was doing wrong, the damn thing came up no matter what I did. So he threw some weight on and on the next attempt I could easily feel myself wrestling with the bar, pulling it everywhere but up. Sure he wants my technique right with an empty bar, but at that particular time, I couldn’t feel for myself what was going on without some resistance.

Nick

8

Ajax,

Thanks for all your points:

  1. I find that the time taken to learn the lifts is highly individual, as is the time on each step. I have had athletes (often gymnasts) who learn to hang clean well in one session and are doing power cleans within three or four. Others are much more recalcitrant. Also the time taken at each step varies. Some athletes need to spend a lot of time jumping and shrugging to learn to not pull with their arms whereas as others do the movement straight away. Generally in session 1 I would hope to get an athlete cleaning from the high hang, and in session 2 doing a full hang clean. I would then allow a few more sessions until the hang clean is pretty proficient before attempting the power clean.

  2. In my progression I teach the catch first to allow the athlete to safely receive the bar and finish a lift. I don’t spend a huge amount of time on this - maybe 5 or 6 reps for the average athlete. The reason for teaching it first however is that you can’t complete the lift without it. Later the catch may have to be revisited as you suggest as the athlete starts to get more weight.

  3. My progression is based upon a number of other people’s but the verbal cue is one I added. I can see what you are saying and I try not to spend too long using it (again maybe 5 or 6 reps) but I find that it enables the athlete to get a feel of the motion. I emphasize to them that they concentrate on getting to the right position in the first pull and then when they hear the jump they are as explosive as possible. If athletes are allowed to go straight from the floor without it, they often concentrate on just lifting the bar and then miss the scoop.

  4. I do sometimes skip the hang clean from mid thigh, it depends on the athlete. However, this type of progression is not unusual and some have even more. For example the USA Weightlifting Club Coach course progression for a full snatch is as follows (if memory serves): OH squat, pressing snatch balance, heaving snatch balance, snatch balance, muscle snatch, jump and shrug, hang snatch from high hang, hang snatch from mid thigh, hang snatch from above knee, hang snatch from below knee, power snatch.

  5. I agree with you on adding weight sometimes making it easier. In fact I think it takes very good technique to just snatch or clean the bar without cheating. With supervised athletes I will use more weight but for those trying to learn the lifts alone they should try and learn the complete lift with just a bar (or broomstick).

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments.

Dan

9

Re what dancleather wrote:

1 With the olympic lifts the focus should be on on lifting the bar from the floor to overhead. Breaking it up into a lot of learning or assistance exercises just distracts. Also the complete lifts teach themselves. For example there is no way that you can power snatch with an sort of weight on the bar and not do it properly if you try to the bar does not go anywhere.

2 If you think about the second pull you are finished. Just think strong to the knees, fast/jump from there up.

3 The neutral back posistion is easier to maintain as their is no movement before it. Also it is easier to put the bar in the right place (i.e. just aove the knees). If you focus on exploding upwards from this point the scoop will take care of itsself there is no need to think about it.

4 I found that trying to shrug caused lots of arm bend also I would question how much value it is in lifting anyway:

http://www.dynamic-eleiko.com/

Articles-Pulling exercises 2-the traps myth

5 You would think that “isolating” the second pull would improve it in the full lifts. But IMHO specifity rule (i.e. if you want ot improve the full lifts the full lifts are the best way to do it). I do think the motor habits between hang and floor lifts are quite different and thus doubt that there would be much of a positive transfer.

6 Don’t over think things. Put some weight on the bar and lift it (it would be better to think throw it) overhead, to your shoulders, and from your shoulders to overhead. You will learn by doing. As long as you keep a neutral back position you can’t go wrong.

10

Bluey,

There are a lot of different ways of teaching Olympic lifting, and its interesting to see other people’s methods. I have seen a variety of ways to teach the lifts and my approach steals from all of them to find the best approach for me. I have had good success with this approach in getting athletes to lift with good technique pretty quickly.

I have found that for me, breaking the lifts up is the quickest way to teach people to do the lifts properly. When I have seen coaches try to teach the complete lift from the floor athletes’ technique tends to be very bad. This doesn’t necessarily stop them getting a lot of weight - but they could get more with better technique.

However teaching lifts by employing a progression of stages is a very common method of coaching Olympic lifting. For example as I mentioned earlier in this thread, USA Weightlifting advise a very long progression of lifts to teach the snatch (there is a similar progression for both clean and jerk). Without exception the strength coaches I have worked with and been taught by have employed some type of phased approach to teaching the Olympic lifts.