Hi All,
I have recently been attempting to teach myself the hang power clean and have been using the book “starting strength” as a guide. I have noticed that I am not achieving full triple extension in the second pull. Although I dont have a video of myself cleaning, my form currently looks somewhat like the athletes in this video: Women's Olympic Lifting - Clean - YouTube
I also do the same back heal kick thing that the athletes in the video do instead of exploding up onto my toes like o-lifters seem to. I would like to get my form looking more like this: Hang Clean Tutorial - YouTube
Has anyone else had this same problem and how did you go about fixing it?
I am thinking that maybe if i practice this rack shrug exercise: Rack Shrug form - Hang Clean precursor - YouTube for a few weeks, I may be able to teach myself to continue the second pull through to triple extension.
Any suggestions?
I think you’d get more help if you posted this in the olympic lifting thread: olympic lift numbers/log. I’d love to help, but I’ve only been doing oly for a few months.
One way to start would be to work on clean pulls from the hang- basically the same lift but don’t worry about dropping under the bar and catching it, just focus on a big shrug. It may be helpful to do a hang clean pull rep followed by the hang clean to get your muscle memory working on the full extension.
The second and third vids are not that bad. I do like the exercise in the 3rd video. Should surely help with with the trip ext.
As for the first video of Mike Boyle’s kids hang cleaning, it confuses me a bit. So many people refer to him as a great strength coach, yet those cleans are awful. Why anyone would teach that rocking motion is beyond me. They are nowhere close to at full extension? Kinda weird.
good luck
Do clean pulls, pay close attention to the shrug, and, most important, hold the shrug for 1 or 2 seconds. Pay close attention if you’re fully extending when doing this. Switch between clean pulls and hang cleans, and just pay a lot of attention to extending your body.
[quote]arnoud verschoor wrote:
hold the shrug for 1 or 2 seconds.[/quote]
I disagree. Holding the shrug at the top is just going to teach him to piss about at the top when he should be pulling under the bar. Speed under the bar is more critical than bar height. How often do you see people miss because the bar wasn’t high enough?
[quote]ninearms wrote:
arnoud verschoor wrote:
hold the shrug for 1 or 2 seconds.
I disagree. Holding the shrug at the top is just going to teach him to piss about at the top when he should be pulling under the bar. Speed under the bar is more critical than bar height. How often do you see people miss because the bar wasn’t high enough?
[/quote]
that’s why I’m telling him to mix it with normal power cleans. He’s asking to improve his power hang clean, that’s why I think it’s less important to work at the pull under phase.
[quote]arnoud verschoor wrote:
that’s why I’m telling him to mix it with normal power cleans. He’s asking to improve his power hang clean, that’s why I think it’s less important to work at the pull under phase.[/quote]
I agree. Anything to train the body to automatically shrug during the extension would be a good thing- something none of the athletes are doing in the first video. Learning to drop under is much easier to learn later and really isn’t that necessary for power cleaning.
Thanks for the advice everyone,
Over the next few weeks I will practice the exercises that dfreezy and arnoud have mentioned. Hopefully this will be enough to re-programme myself to explode through to triple extension.
[quote]ninearms wrote:
arnoud verschoor wrote:
hold the shrug for 1 or 2 seconds.
I disagree. Holding the shrug at the top is just going to teach him to piss about at the top when he should be pulling under the bar. Speed under the bar is more critical than bar height. How often do you see people miss because the bar wasn’t high enough?
[/quote]
I probably should have mentioned in my first post that my main reason for learning power cleans is to improve my sprinting speed (and also because I enjoy doing them). I don’t have any intension to learn full cleans in the near future. For this reason I think speed under the bar is much less important for me than it would be for someone who’s main goal is to increase their o-lifts.
[quote]ninearms wrote:
arnoud verschoor wrote:
hold the shrug for 1 or 2 seconds.
I disagree. Holding the shrug at the top is just going to teach him to piss about at the top when he should be pulling under the bar. Speed under the bar is more critical than bar height. How often do you see people miss because the bar wasn’t high enough?
[/quote]
Actually, a lot misses at high levels are due to the bar not being high enough. Many of the times people get pinned its because they didn’t pull the bar high enough and they racked it in a near rock bottom spot, giving them no chance to catch a bounce. Its a lot easier to bounce out of the bottom when you rack it around parallel and then amortize the weight.
Speed under the bar is important, but getting a very strong and vertical finish on your pull is a lot more important and harder to learn. Holding the shrug at the top is actually very useful for this and is important in most beginner’s/intermediate’s programs.
[quote]Dr. Manhattan wrote:
ninearms wrote:
arnoud verschoor wrote:
hold the shrug for 1 or 2 seconds.
I disagree. Holding the shrug at the top is just going to teach him to piss about at the top when he should be pulling under the bar. Speed under the bar is more critical than bar height. How often do you see people miss because the bar wasn’t high enough?
Actually, a lot misses at high levels are due to the bar not being high enough. Many of the times people get pinned its because they didn’t pull the bar high enough and they racked it in a near rock bottom spot, giving them no chance to catch a bounce. Its a lot easier to bounce out of the bottom when you rack it around parallel and then amortize the weight.
Speed under the bar is important, but getting a very strong and vertical finish on your pull is a lot more important and harder to learn. Holding the shrug at the top is actually very useful for this and is important in most beginner’s/intermediate’s programs. [/quote]
There’s an article over on Bud Charniga’s site that talks about some Soviet research that suggests that bar height is rarely the problem in a missed lift, and that the problem is nearly always poor reversal of direction. I’ll try and find the link.