I was wondering who here pulls with straight arms all the way through their snatch/clean pulls or pulls with straight arms then bends them at the top of the extension. I use straight arms all the way through so I don’t get into the habit of pulling with the arms to early. Also is their any merit to doing pulls with a arm bending at the end?
Your arms should not be kept straight. That is not proper form. You will never see top lifters using this form.
I am talking about the pull, you are supposed to keep the arms straight up to the top of extension, then after you contract the traps and calves you then use your arms to pull yourself under…you never bend your arms at any point before the extension what are you talking about???
Also I was talking about “Pulls” not the full lift, I might not have clarified that well
Well, I was taught by a Georgian who has snatched 200kgs and C&J’d 235kgs to do pulls with the arms straight the whole time, essentially just a deadlift with a fast shrug. But I have seen Kurlovich for example finish his pulls with his arms bent from pulling higher.
Yeah I agree with Galvatron if you are doing what are essentially deadlift to explosive shrugs or pulls the arms should always remain straight. Of course beyond this point your arms have to bend if you want the bar to keep going up! Then they’d be high pulls.
What do you guys think have more of a carryover to the olympic lifts, pulls with straight arms or high pulls, or is it based on the indivdual, like me for example my coach has me to straight arm pulls because I had a habit of pulling with my arms to early.
In your original question, you said nothing of shrug pulls. When you say “pulls” in oly lifting, it generally means high pulls. High pulls will have an arm bend, this is what i was talking about in my first post.
straight arms is what i was taughts and implement.
Pull with straight arms until full extension. The arms only start to bend as a consequence of momentum to the bar (the body has stopped moving upward but the bar continues to travel).
If you try to bend your arms before full extension, you will limit the amount of power you can apply to the bar.
If you try to keep them straight for the entire movement, you are ‘braking’ the bar.
So what you are saying is the arm should break at the end of the pull because of the cause of momentum or speed of the bar instead of pulling the bar more with arm
We’re talking about two different exercises here, similar but a bit different.
Speed DL: Straight arms and shrug.
High pulls: As speed DL but continue the pull using your arms (shoulders).
Bar should stay close to body, elbows out, it’s not a cheat reverse curl.
I usually use a wide grip when doing highpulls.
DavidL
That is a text book answer!
Logically with a very heavy load you’re only going to be able to straight arm pull anyway. High pulls can be done with lighter loads and are good way of overloading the muscle used for powercleans and snatches.
When do you think during the course of an olympic lifters career when would he use both style of pulls or should he just stick to one style?
Can’t see why you wouldn’t use both. You can handle alot more weight with the low pulls but generate more power in the high pulls so both are good for different reasons.
Look at that picture of the Russian doing a 500 pound snatch high pull. He has a huge brick of muscle hanging off his upper back. Do both exercises.