The clean & jerk, along with the snatch, make up the Olympic lifts — the only strength sport currently competed in the Olympics. The “C&J” is a complete movement which can develop strength, power, coordination, speed, and muscle throughout your whole body if you can master it.

No wonder it is used in many strength and conditioning programs to produce high-performance athletes, or that the exercise made its way into CrossFit training, which emphasizes challenging your entire body as often as possible.

The clean & jerk is composed of two distinct movements: the clean and the jerk (yes, it’s that simple). Each of these lifts is complex enough on its own, and combining both during a single repetition is a challenging task. But don’t worry, you’re about to discover a detailed breakdown on how to master this beast of a lift.

Clean & Jerk

• How to Do the Clean & Jerk
• Clean & Jerk Mistakes to Avoid
• How to Progress the Clean & Jerk
• Benefits of the Clean & Jerk
• Muscles Worked by the Clean & Jerk
• How to Program the Clean & Jerk
• Clean & Jerk Variations
• Frequently Asked Questions

How to Do the Clean & Jerk Step by Step

The clean & jerk is an explosive movement that requires (and builds) strength, coordination, and speed. You cannot perform a correct clean & jerk slowly. This is one of the reasons why it’s so demanding. The technique requires timing, mobility, and total-body coordination.

Ideally, you’ll load the bar with specialized, rubber-coated bumper plates which allow a safer and more efficient way to perform the final phase of each repetition, but the clean & jerk can be performed (carefully) with any metal plates.

Step 1 — Get Into the Starting Position

Stand in front of a barbell on the ground with a hips-wide stance. Angle your toes and knees slightly outward. Bend at your hips and hinge forward to grab the bar with a slightly wider than shoulder-width grip, using a pronated (palm down) grip. 

Squat down until your shoulders are slightly above the barbell. Your hips should be lower than your shoulders but higher than your knees. Keep your back flat, your chest high, and look forward.

Form tip: Keep the bar close touching, or almost touching, your shins during the setup. This will ensure a proper bar path with less lower back strain.

Step 2 — Initiate the “First Pull”

The first pull is the term for the start of the clean. It’s the moment you break the barbell from the ground and bring it to your knees. Brace your core, flex your lats, and drive with your legs by pushing your feet through the ground. Your hips and shoulders should raise at the same speed, while the barbell remains very close to your body. The first pull is not unlike the initial start of a standard deadlift.

Form tip: Because the clean & jerk is an explosive movement, you might be tempted to explode off the floor to generate force as quickly as possible. Don’t. Focus on being in control of the barbell with your whole body braced. Especially if you’re not sure about your technique, slow down your first pull.

Step 3 — Explode Into the “Second Pull”

In this phase, you’ll achieve triple extension — full extension of your hips, knees, and ankles. The second pull occurs as the bar passes your knees. Now you can explode up with as much force as possible by extending your whole lower body. 

While keeping your arms straight, extend your hips and knees forcefully. As you extend, push through the balls of your feet as hard as you can. Your heels should raise off the ground. If you’ve performed a complete triple extension, your body in a complete straight line, with only your toes and the balls of your feet on the floor.

Form tip: Think of jumping as high as you can to transfer maximum power into the bar, but don’t actually lose contact with the ground. Because the movement is a hip hinge, you could be tempted to explode your hips forward like a kettlebell swing to try to generate force, but it will result in an inefficient bar path. Once you pass your knees, think “up, up, up.”

Step 4 — Transition Into the “Third Pull”

Now that you’ve transferred force from your lower body to raise the bar, the third pull is actually pulling yourself “under” the barbell to catch it. As you finish the triple extension and rise onto your toes, shrug as hard as you can to give even more energy to the bar while “pulling” yourself under it.

End up with your knees slightly bent and your chest proud, ready to receive the bar in a front rack position.

Form tip: “Attack” the ground with force. Imagine you’re trying to hit the floor as fast as you can once you stand on your toes.

Step 5 — Catch the Bar and Stand Up

Let your arms bend and squat down to catch the bar between the front of your shoulders and your clavicles, keeping your elbows as high as you can. Perform a powerful front squat until you stand tall.

Form tip: How low you “should” squat to catch the bar depends on the weight relative to your strength, and how much force you applied to the bar. The harder and heavier it is, the deeper you’ll likely have to squat. If you have to squat to parallel or below, the movement is considered a “full clean.” If you receive the bar in a higher squat position, it’s called a “power clean.”

Step 6 — Dip Down

The clean phase of the lift is now complete. It’s time to tackle the jerk. From the front rack position, bend your knees and dip down a few inches to accumulate energy in your lower body. Only bend at your knees, not your hips, to ensure a vertical bar path and whole-body stability.

Form tip: Before initiating the dip, you can slightly lower your elbows, so that they are between a front squat (facing forward) and a push press (facing the ground) position. This will allow you to use a bit more shoulder power to lift the weight. Depending on your upper body mobility, you may also feel comfortable adjusting to a slightly wider hand position.

Step 7 — Jerk the Weight Up

Push as hard as you can through your legs to drive the bar up. Use the same triple extension as during the clean to generate as much force as you can — completely extend your hips, knees, and ankles — and then push the weight with your arms.

Form tip: Do not bend forward. That will sacrifice power, increase strain on your lower back, and shift the bar into a less efficient path that’s more likely to fail the lift. Keep a completely vertical bar path. 

Step 8 — Split and Catch the Barbell

From this position, transition as fast as possible into your catch position by splitting into a half-lunge. Quickly position one leg in front of you, with your foot flat and your knee vertical, and one behind you, slightly bent and with your weight on your toes. Assume a shoulder-wide stance. Straighten your arms forcefully and keep them straight the rest of the exercise.

Form tip: The bar should end up directly over your upper back, not directly above your head. At lockout, your arms should be vertical and not angled to the front or back.

Step 9 — Recover and Finish the Lift

Bring your front foot back in half of the way, and then bring it directly under you. Now, bring your rear leg forward and hold the position with the bar overhead briefly. That’s it, you’ve completed a clean & jerk.

From there, if you’re on a weightlifting platform and using bumper plates, gently guide the bar back to the ground with control — don’t let it free fall wildly. If you’re lifting with metal plates, lower the bar to the front rack position across the front of your shoulders, and then lower it to your hip crease before “deadlifting” it down to the ground.

Form tip: That entire sequence was one single repetition. When the bar is returned to the ground, take a breath and refocus before performing additional reps.

Clean & Jerk Mistakes to Avoid

This exercise is very technical, so minor mistakes are bound to happen until you really nail it. Try to avoid these blunders though, as they will hinder your progress and could potentially lead to injury.

Using Too Much Weight

Technique should always come before weight with any exercise, but it rings even more true with the Olympic lifts. Using too much weight will force your body to use the path of least resistance, instead of proper technique and efficient bar path.

This results in “muscling” the weight up and grinding a lift that should be performed smoothly. You’ll never learn the proper technique that way and you’ll only risk injury, especially at the shoulder complex.

Avoid it: Make sure you use appropriate weight and feel confident in your technique before increasing the load. If you change the weight and your movement is different, you have to spend more time at a lower weight. It’s not uncommon for beginning lifters to learn the clean & jerk with a broomstick before even using a 45-pound barbell.

Not Staying Over The Bar

During the clean & jerk, your shoulders have to stay slightly in front of the bar until you finish the second pull and completely extend your body. This will help you maximize bar height and path. If your body doesn’t stay in good alignment, you can’t effectively transfer force into the bar and the bar path is less likely to be vertical.

Avoid it: Keep your weight balanced over the middle of your feet. Do not put too much weight on your toes (unless you’re supposed to be in full extension) or on your heels. Do not rush the first pull. Control the bar until the moment you explode up.

Not Keeping the Bar Close to You

Keeping the bar close to you is paramount for optimal bar path, to optimize bar height and power, as well as minimizing low back strain and upper-body involvement.

If the bar drifts away from you, you’ll most likely end up performing a “muscle clean,” a technically easier variation involving much more shoulders and upper back muscle than lower body. While it can be a good exercise, it’s not a clean. You’ll never be able to use as much weight or develop total-body power.

Avoid it: Keep the bar close to you at absolutely all times. Slow down the start of the lift so that the bar is grazing you until you completely extend your hips. With some people, there’s even contact at the hips.

Squatting the Dip

When you dip and create the leg drive, you might be tempted to squat deep. But the dip is not meant to be a squat. If you bend at your hips, you risk losing your upright position and send the bar forward instead of in a straight line in the air.

The dip should be short and fast. You shouldn’t go too low or actually squat the weight down. You’ll simply lose strength and the catch will become that much harder. 

Avoid it: Only dip down a few inches while staying as upright as possible. Remind yourself, “quick dip, not a deep squat.” 

How to Progress the Clean & Jerk 

This lift being very technical, it might be useful to incorporate several of these progressions in your training to learn and strengthen key positions of the movement. You can incorporate the technique piece by piece. You could dedicate full workouts to the lift or you can add clean progressions to your lower body days, and jerk progressions to an upper body workout.

Clean Pull

Weightlifting is all about generating power, and the clean pull is amazing at that. This progression only consists of the first and second pull of the clean, followed by a powerful shrug and upright row.

Get into your clean position, raise the barbell to your knee with control, then violently explode up by extending your hips, knees, and ankles. Then shrug and let your elbows bend to raise the barbell to at least chest level, up until your chin. Keep the barbell close to your body at all times. This progression is great to learn how to generate power and the first part of the clean.

Hang Clean

Where most of the mistakes happen during the clean is actually at the start: during the set-up and the first pull. If you fail to execute this portion perfectly, the rest of the lift is bound to be subpar.

The hang clean avoids this by having you start the lift “from the hang”, with the barbell at around knee level — you only have to do the second and third pull and the catch. You can practice the end of the movement more easily this way. 

Power Clean

The power clean is the opposite, you perform a clean with a lighter weight and you catch it only with your knees slightly bent over parallel. Not having to squat all the way down makes the movement easier especially if you’re not the most mobile lifter.

You can make the exercise even simpler and perform it from “the hang”, combining both of the best worlds for developing raw power and simplicity. 

Muscle Clean and Press

Here we bypass the most technical aspects of the lifts to rely more on our muscles to perform it. You won’t be able to use as much weight, but this is a great exercise to add size to your frame.

To perform the muscle clean, get into your clean position, pull the bar up and explode like a regular clean. But, instead of positioning yourself into a squat after the full-body extension, keep your legs and torso straight and pull the weight up with your elbows as high as you can. Once they are at maximal height, quickly bring them around the bar into the front rack position to catch the bar while standing tall. From there, press the weight up by extending the arms until the bar is locked out overhead, then lower it with control to your collarbone.

Push Press

This hybrid between a press and a jerk teaches you to dip and use your legs to assist your upper body in lifting more weight. Grab a barbell with a full grip and assume a front rack position, with the barbell sitting between your anterior deltoids (front of your shoulder) and your clavicles.

Shrug your shoulders up and forward to create a kind of “muscle nest” for the bar. Lower your elbows a bit so that you’ll be able to use more arms. Dip down by bending at the knees for a few inches, then explode up as hard as you can. When your legs are completely extended, press the bar up as much as you can by trying to punch the ceiling. Then, lower it with control to the initial position. 

Power Jerk

This variation is equivalent to the power clean, but with the jerk. Begin with the barbell in a front racked position, either from a rack or after having cleaned it. Dip down, then explode up and forcefully extend your arms, like a traditional jerk.

But instead of splitting your feet and catching the bar in a deep squat, you attack the ground with both feet in a traditional squat stance and receive it with your knees slightly bent. This way, you bypass the technical split catch position and focus on the first part of the jerk.

Benefits of the Clean & Jerk

If this exercise is so complicated, why do so many athletes want to learn it? It’s simple: it offers benefits no other can reciprocate (apart, perhaps, from the snatch, which is even harder). Here is what this exercise has to offer.

Increases Explosive Power

Power is the capacity to move weights as fast as possible. It’s a mixture of speed and strength, and increasing your power means you’ll most likely improve your strength and speed as well! Indeed, this exercise will teach your brain to better recruit your muscles so that they reach a higher peak force and to reach it faster.

It is also very relevant for athletes who have to move their own bodies or implements fast: they aren’t weightless. It means that this exercise will help them run faster, jump higher, throw farther, and tackle harder. If you’re an athlete, this is one of the most efficient and effective exercises to make you better at your sport. (1)

Total-Body Strength

To grab a weighted barbell and balance it over your head requires tremendous strength from head to toe (or, more accurately, from traps to calves). With the clean & jerk, you can load relatively more weight than with the snatch, so it’s an explosive movement that tends toward building pure strength and power. This exercise recruits pretty much all of the muscles in your body and puts them to the test. Indeed, it alternates between pulling and pushing phases for the whole-body.

Improves Balance, Posture, and Coordination

Holding weight in the front rack position, then throwing it in the air and balancing it overheard requires a core and a back of steel and will build strong and stable shoulders. This will result in a better posture and a more resilient back.

Then, you need a great deal of coordination to move with precision, speed, and strength both upper-body and lower-body limbs at the same time. Finally, it takes a whole lot of balance to maintain the split position and catch a heavy weight that way. This exercise builds strength and speed, but for that you also have to build better body mechanics and athletic qualities. (2)

Better Cardiovascular Health

As this exercise recruits pretty much all of the muscles in the body, the demand placed on the cardiovascular system is tremendous because your heart has to pump blood everywhere. Studies have found that weightlifting improves resting heart rate, VO2 max, and blood pressure. (3)

Even with an empty barbell, properly done clean & jerks can leave you breathless. No wonder relatively high reps of these are frequently used in CrossFit to gauge the endurance capacities of athletes.

Muscles Worked by the Clean & Jerk

There’s no muscles spared by the clean & jerk. From your forearms to grip the barbell all the way down to the calves to project it in the air. Let’s cover the main movers of this exercise.

Quadriceps

The quadriceps are the biggest leg muscles, and are among the body’s strongest. They go from the femur or hip bone to the tibia in the lower leg. Their main function is to extend the knee. As such, they will be responsible for most of the power generated during the exercise.

They are extensively recruited during the triple extension to project the barbell in the air, and even more during the deep front squat that follows the catch. Then, they will also be mainly responsible for propulsing the barbell upwards during the jerk, just after the dip, and to get up from the lunge required to catch it during the split.

Pressing Muscles

During the jerk, these upper body muscles will be tremendously recruited to help pressing the bar overhead and hold it there with the arms locked out. They are your deltoids (shoulder muscles), pectoralis major (chest), and your triceps (the posterior arm muscles). 

The deltoid goes from the clavicle and scapula (shoulder blade) to the humerus — the arm bone. This muscle will raise the arm upwards. The front delts will be the most recruited, but they all participate in the movement. The chest is also attached to the humerus, then to the sternum and ribs. Only its upper fibers will be recruited here, assisting the deltoids. Finally the triceps goes from the scapula and humerus to the ulna (forearm bone). Its function here is to extend the arm to press the weight up and keep the arms locked out.

Posterior Chain

The posterior chain, as a whole, will contribute to the movement. In the lower body, the hamstrings and glutes will extend the hips and be mainly responsible for the deadlift portion and cleaning the weight, while the calves will contribute to the explosive portion of both the clean and the jerk through ankle extension.

In the upper body, the erector spinae will help with hip extension as well as back extension in the clean, and the trapezius for the final pull upward. The whole of your back will be recruited to maintain posture as well as arm and scapular stability.

How to Program the Clean & Jerk

Because of its technical component, this movement has to be done in a specific way. Generally you want to avoid too much fatigue for it might result in technical breakdown that will reduce neural efficiency and increase the time to master the lift, as well as risking injury. 

Medium to Heavy Weight, Low Repetitions

How heavy you can go will depend on your technical proficiency, but three to five sets of one to five reps should be the bulk of your programming. You want perfect technique on all repetitions, and this is why we avoid doing longer sets, as fatigue will generate form breakdown.

If you cannot move the bar fast, you cannot use good technique, and you’ll end up hurt. Staying in that one to five rep range ensures you’re performing mostly “neural” work, so muscular fatigue shouldn’t become an issue. Make sure to use ample rest periods of at least two minutes.

EMOM

The every minute on the minute format is an excellent way to learn the Olympic lift and practice technique, as the short breaks allow for quality work and increased density — meaning a lot of work in a short time. (4)

Set a timer that will ring every minute, or every 90 seconds if you want to go heavier. Every time the alarm rings, perform one to three repetitions and rest for the remaining time, for a total duration of ten to 20 minutes. You can get creative and use different weight and repetitions schemes during the period. You could also incorporate exercise progressions. Just be sure to always use perfect form.

For instance, you could do five minutes of three reps with the muscle clean and press, then five minutes of two reps using the power clean and push press, and finally five minutes of a one-rep clean & jerk.

Clean & Jerk Variations

If you don’t have access to a barbell, want to spice things up, or try a less challenging variation, don’t worry. There are several clean & jerk variations in stock.

Dumbbell Clean & Jerk

Changing the equipment will make the exercise technically easier while involving more muscles at the same time, especially in the shoulders and traps. Grab a pair of dumbbells and perform similar to the barbell clean & jerk.

To avoid having to go extra deep, have only one of the heads of the dumbbells touch the ground on each repetition. Because this variation is less technical and risky, you can actually use it for longer sets and enjoy muscular fatigue to build more muscle or endurance very easily. You can also do it with a pair of kettlebells.

Clean & Squat Jerk

Only the jerk portion of the lift is different with this movement. Instead of assuming a half-lunge position to catch the barbell in a split, catch it in a deep squat. After dipping down and exploding upwards, “attack” the ground forcefully with your feet in a shoulder-width stance and squat down at the required depth.

This variation requires extra mobility and balance, but has the advantage of not needing to elevate the barbell as much during the jerk in order to lift more weight because you can drop deeper in the squat position than in the lunge.

Continental Clean & Jerk

This brutal exercise typically requires an axle or fat bar. This specialized bar is used in many strongman or strongwoman contests because its two to three-inch thick grip will eventually make grip strength the limiting factor in any exercise.

To perform the continental clean, you use a mixed grip with one hand is flipped under the axle (palm up) and the other hand in a palm-down grip. Perform a traditional clean, and don’t forget to shrug hard at the top, then the bar should be guided and set at around lower sternum-level. It can help if you have a “power belly” to rest it on. Without that, a weightlifting belt can be used as a makeshift ledge.

As the bar rests, switch your underhand bar to a palm-down position, and use your hips to dip down and pop the bar up to the front rack position. From there, you can either press, push press, or jerk the weight overhead. This variation will build a bulletproof core and upper back, mainly because the continental phase is so difficult.

FAQs

A Big Lift for Big Gains

The clean & jerk is seen worldwide every four years during the Summer Olympics, but the exercise isn’t exclusive to the best weightlifters in the world. Whether you’re an athlete looking for top performance on the field or in the ring, a strength sport competitor looking to carry over strength and power, or a physique-focused lifter looking to pack on full-body muscle, adding the clean & jerk to your training menu will deliver world-class results.

References

1. Huyghe, T., Goriss, B., DeLosAngeles, E., & Bird, S. P. (2021). Exploring The Power Clean. International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.47206/ijsc.v1i1.95
2. Santos PDG, Vaz JR, Correia PF, Valamatos MJ, Veloso AP, Pezarat-Correia P. Intermuscular Coordination in the Power Clean Exercise: Comparison between Olympic Weightlifters and Untrained Individuals-A Preliminary Study. Sensors (Basel). 2021 Mar 9;21(5):1904. doi: 10.3390/s21051904. PMID: 33803182; PMCID: PMC7963197.
3. Stone MH, Wilson GD, Blessing D, Rozenek R. Cardiovascular responses to short-term olympic style weight-training in young men. Can J Appl Sport Sci. 1983 Sep;8(3):134-9. PMID: 6640815.
4. de-Oliveira LA, Heredia-Elvar JR, Maté-Muñoz JL, García-Manso JM, Aragão-Santos JC, Da Silva-Grigoletto ME. Analysis of Pacing Strategies in AMRAP, EMOM, and FOR TIME Training Models during “Cross” Modalities. Sports (Basel). 2021 Oct 20;9(11):144. doi: 10.3390/sports9110144. PMID: 34822344; PMCID: PMC8624389.

Featured Image: Photology1971 / Shutterstock

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Olympic weightlifting derivatives have long been hailed as the apex exercises for power training in strength and conditioning. There’s now evidence that’s probably wrong. For most people, most of the time, a simple kettlebell swing is a better power movement than any Olympic lift derivative.

Sport Happens in Full Hip Extension

Sprinting, punching, throwing and swinging a club or bat are all powered by your hips with full, powerful hip extension. Full hip extension is the part of lower body movements where you’re approaching and reaching fully stood up, fully extended.

In Olympic lifts, you have to catch the bar. Beginners and intermediate lifters almost never get to a full hip extension because they’re already preparing to dip again to catch the bar. In a kettlebell swing, it’s easy to get a full, snappy, powerful extension, even with beginners.

If you look at the finish position of each rep in the video you’ll see the body position mimics the drive phase of a log clean or stone load in strongman too, where you powerfully drive your pelvis forwards under the implement.

In the Swing, You ‘Catch’ the Weight With Your Hamstrings

One of the biggest injury risks in sport is tearing a hamstring. Recent research has shown that developing stronger and longer hamstrings are a way to minimize that injury risk.¹

In the swing video above, you see the kettlebell come backward and I decelerate it, ending the catch phase in a position where the hamstrings are on a stretch.

This loads the hamstring as it’s getting stretched, simultaneously strengthening and lengthening the muscle, exactly what has been shown to reduce hamstring tear risk. It’s also a movement that strengthens the inner hamstring more than the outer hamstring² which might also reduce hamstring tear risk.³

No Olympic lift derivative has this weighted hamstring stretch benefit, so no Olympic lifting variation helps reduce hamstring injury risk whilst also training power like the kettlebell swing.

Horizontal Work

Swings have an obvious horizontal drive aspect that Olympic lifts do not. In a swing, you powerfully drive the kettlebell forwards, away from you in a way you can’t with the bar in Oly lifts. If you did you wouldn’t be able to catch the bar and finish the lift.

This horizontal aspect is important for sports as it’s the same way the hips work in sprinting, punching, swinging, throwing, etc. There’s evidence that training horizontal strength movements instead of vertical strength movements is more effective to improve sprinting.⁴

This research compared barbell thrusters to barbell squats and the thrusters were more effective. It has been suggested the horizontal nature and the greater hip extension range of the thrusters may be the reasons why the thruster was more effective.

The implication to the kettlebell swing, as opposed to Olympic lifts, is that kettlebell swings have these horizontal and greater hip extension attributes in an explosive lift, suggesting they will have better carryover to sprinting and horizontal sporting movements than a vertical power lift like the Olympic lifts.

Kettlebells Are Easier to Learn

Anyone who has ever tried to teach the Olympic lifts to novices will be able to tell you how difficult it is. Those of us who have tried Olympic lifting can all attest to how technically demanding it is.

That can be great fun and rewarding as its own sport, but unfortunately, it massively diminishes the value of the Olympic lifts for strength and conditioning. A kettlebell swing is fairly simple and easy to learn to a level you unlock the benefits.

When directly compared in a study using participants with over a year of lifting experience kettlebell swings performed well in comparison to power cleans and high pulls.⁵

Even though much lighter loads were used by the kettlebell group their vertical jump and power clean improved at the end of the study as much as the group who trained the power clean!

Not only that, the barbell group barbell squatted, and the kettlebell group goblet squatted, so the barbell group got stronger from doing a heavier strength movement.

This begs the question if the barbell group squatted heavier and got stronger, yet the kettlebell group still improved as much at vertical jumping and power cleans in spite of being weaker and not practicing the power clean, how much more effective for power development was the kettlebell swing than the power clean and the high pull?! The kettlebell group got more power out of less strength, so that’s relatively greater power!

I think the relatively greater power benefits from the kettlebell group were down to how much easier it is to learn and train the kettlebell swing in order to get physiological benefits whilst the barbell group was still trying to master the technical aspects of the Oly lift derivatives.

The overall implication from the study is that a heavy barbell strength movement combined with a kettlebell power movement might be the optimum combination for strength and conditioning purposes.

The Reduced Risk of Injury

If you’re preparing yourself or a team to perform better in a sport then that’s your focus, not the tools you use for strength and conditioning themselves. Nobody cares how good your clean and jerk is if you’re a boxer who gets knocked out every fight.

A major drawback to Olympic lifts is the injury risk they have themselves. Even the simpler, power variations upset a lot of athletes’ wrists if nothing else.

Sometimes the injury risks we have from gym work are risked on purpose to condition the athlete against injury in sport. Unfortunately, some of the risks with Olympic lifting don’t cross over to much else, so just detract from their value as strength and conditioning tools.

Kettlebell swings have no such issues. As already discussed, the loaded stretching they create through the hamstrings is beneficial for most sports and they put no odd stresses through the wrists.

Less injury risk from the lifts themselves, greater injury reduction potential, and greater return from less time invested all combine to make it a no-brainer to choose kettlebell swings as your strength and conditioning power exercise.

Programming Kettlebells

When it comes to integrating the kettlebell swing into your training I have a couple of favored options. Explosive exercises may have a PAP effect,⁶ which means they ‘awaken’ your nervous system and make it easier to recruit muscle fibers.

That makes kettlebell swings a nice choice to slot between general warm-ups and your first main lift. If you do this go low volume. Work up through the weights with sets of 5 or 6 reps as fast and snappy as possible. When you get to a weight that slows you down, that doesn’t feel snappy anymore, stop there and move onto your primary lift for the day.

The other way that I particularly like is to take a kettlebell with you to wherever you’re doing your primary lower body lift. Whether it’s squats, deadlifts, thrusters, or trap bar lifts, as soon as your set is done, without rest bang out a set of kettlebell swings.

The weight doesn’t have to be massively heavy, so long as it’s heavy enough you feel you have to work to try to move it fast. Then rest as normal before the next set. This is contrast training.

However, you incorporate kettlebell swings it should be clear from this combination of research they’re no fad. A simple and effective movement that can help your hard-earned strength cross over into powerful sporting movements can’t be ignored. Swing to win!

References:

1. Short Biceps Femoris Fascicles and Eccentric Knee Flexor Weakness Increase the Risk of Hamstring Injury in Elite Football (Soccer): A Prospective Cohort Study

2. Kettlebell Swing Targets Semitendinosus and Supine Leg Curl Targets Biceps Femoris: An EMG Study With Rehabilitation Implications

3. Biceps femoris and semitendinosus—teammates or competitors? New insights into hamstring injury mechanisms in male football players: a muscle functional MRI study

4. Effects of 7-Week Hip Thrust Versus Back Squat Resistance Training on Performance in Adolescent Female Soccer Players

5. Effects of Weightlifting vs. Kettlebell Training on Vertical Jump, Strength, and Body Composition

6. Ballistic Exercise as a Pre-Activation Stimulus: A Review of the Literature and Practical Applications

The post Swing to Win – Kettlebell Swings Better Than Olympic Lifts? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

This is one of those topics that rarely come up in discussions of weightlifting technique, but it can prove to be the cause of problems. One of them is that it may inhibit a lifter from making a best effort to complete a lifetime PR. I unknowingly developed my escapability when as a youngster my parents enrolled me in judo lessons.

In the sport of judo, there is a constant dual taking place in an attempt to place oneself in a more favorable position so as to overcome the opponent. One athlete may be thrown by the opponent but can position the body so that a full point is not scored.

This can ultimately lead to a reversal on the mat. This ceaseless jockeying for position and leverage goes on throughout the match until one combatant is declared the winner or the time clock ends the match. A key skill that is acquired in judo is that of escapability—the ability to get out of a perilous situation, often in a very brief amount of time.

Rediscovering Escapability

So I knew I had this skill when I begin weightlifting. I didn’t think much of it, didn’t place any emphasis on it, and have never thought about coaching it until recently. I discovered the value of it one day, however, when I got into a situation that was potentially perilous.

It was a normal training session at the old Downtown LA YMCA. There were about 6 or 7 of the regular lifters there along with coach Bob Hise II, and we were working up in clean & jerk singles.

My legs had always lagged behind my clean, but anything I could stand up with, I could jerk with excellent elbow lock. This particular occasion was at the end of a week of heavy training and we were probably more fatigued than we realized.

I got up to 110 which was a 90% weight. I cleaned it with some difficulty and did a typical grinder to stand. At that point, I figured that I had the jerk nailed. I drove the weight straight overhead and to my surprise, my elbows failed to lock and the weight began to drop from overhead.

On many occasions, it would have been normal to then lose the weight forward or behind and just step out from under it, but this time it could only come straight down. And it did! It actually hit my head. In a flash, I realized I could get seriously injured if I didn’t do something.

Adrenaline hit and it was a life saver. I immediately pancaked and went spreadeagle. I beat the bar down making sure to release my grip on the bar so that I wouldn’t risk a wrist injury.

On the way down I realized that my head was deeper than it was wide so instead of face-planting I turned my head to the side as I hit the floor. Amazing what goes through your mind in a time of extreme peril.

The bar hit the floor, didn’t injure anything, and just rolled forward barely nicking my side turned head. The entire incident was more embarrassment than an indicator of failure.

I walked away relieved but even more confident in my ability to escape peril.

Re-Encountering

I didn’t think about this at all for much of my coaching career. Much of that time the majority of lifters that I coached were juniors and seniors. The majority of them had begun their athletic careers at an early age and learned many general athletic skills. I witnessed a number of harrowing escapes made possible by the escapability skills of some exceptional athletes.

Lately, I’ve been working with more Master athletes, many of whom have started their athletic careers after the age of 40. They had not been involved in grappling or physical contact sports were escapability skills are developed.

Consequently, they are hesitant about descending in the bottom position of the snatch and less frequently the split of the jerk. In the case of the snatch, the conventional thinking was that there was a mobility issue, but since then I think we’ve all found that many who are hesitant about descending into the snatch can do a proper overhead squat. So it’s not a mobility issue.

My take is that several of my master athletes who are hesitant about descending into the full snatch position are inhibited by a lack of confidence in their escapability skills.

I don’t have a strategy for dealing with this problem. My initial observation is that escapability is acquired during a certain window of time, during the younger ages. I suppose that someone could come up with a pathway to acquiring these skills, but I’m not sure that many of our conventional exercise protocols would be very effective.

I’m just identifying a situation here. I think that any coaches working with novice master athletes should keep this in mind when they are dealing with this population. Some of them may never be able to descend into a bottom position without leaving themselves an escape route.

This will also apply to athletes who have good shoulder mobility but still prefer to keep the head from being placed directly under the bar in the jerk. Ah, well. Another dilemma to ponder!

If you would like to learn more about Takano Weightlifting or would like my help on your weightlifting programs, please contact me through the gym’s Facebook page or site.

The post Discovering Escapability in Olympic Weightlifting appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

There’s propaganda floating around that the hang clean is so crazy-complicated that you probably shouldn’t bother with it at all. Many coaches will avoid teaching it, for this reason, leaving literally hundreds of thousands of athletes in this country underpowered as a result.

Don’t believe the hype. Hang cleans are hard, but they ain’t THAT hard. Anyone can learn to do a decent hang clean – anyone. And what’s better is that you only need to know three steps to do it! 

I used to have a lot of fun messing around with computer animation programs. In those programs, you can quickly create a moving image by only drawing two or three frames. In animation, they call these “key frames.” You tell the computer the most important positions you want your character to be in during your “movie” and the program will do the work of drawing all the intermediate steps for you.

Below, I’m going to give you the three “key-frames” of the hang clean – well, a hang power clean if we’re being technical – because the way to learn anything quickly, no matter how complicated, is to hone in on its key structural elements – its skeletal structure. Your body will fill in the rest without you having to think too hard about it.

If you can do that – learn the three keyframes of a proper hang clean – and then simply practice moving smoothly between them, you’ll be on your way to lifting more weight and building a stronger and more powerful body in the process. Conversely, if you DON’T hit these positions during your lift, you are leaving a lot of weight off the bar.

Step One: The Knee Position

You want to start the bar literally touching your knee-caps. Your weight is on your heels. And, you should have your hips up high enough so that your knee angle is very shallow. This is going to cause a lot of hamstring stretch! In fact, I like to tell people that if this position feels comfortable, you’re probably doing it wrong – or, you’re a yoga master.

Your shoulders will naturally be forward over the bar. That’s a good thing. However, this presents a problem: the bar will want to drift away from you and no longer touch the knee-caps. The way to solve this is to squeeze your lats as tight as you can. The lats act as an arm “depressor” – the pull the arms into your body. Use that to your advantage here. The lats need to be as tight as humanly possible.

Key Points to Remember:

1. Weight on your heels.
2. Hips high like a yoga master.
3. Lats tight – squeeze the bar into you.

Step Two: The Hip Position

The hip position is the most important position in weightlifting. If you can drill this spot and make it the most comfortable place in the world for you to be, then you will end up being very good at any variation of the Olympic lifts – including the hang clean. If not, you won’t. It’s that simple.

The bar should be touching your body as high up your thigh as possible. Again, your weight should be on your heels.

The shoulders will now be backward BEHIND the bar. That fact is important. You want to make sure that before you jump that bar above your head, your shoulders have gotten back behind the bar.

Why?

Because if you don’t, then the bar will have a more horizontal trajectory coming into the hip rather than the vertical trajectory that you want. That horizontal bar path will cause the bar to bounce off of your hip forward, then swing around you. With heavy weights, you’ll miss it.

Instead, get your shoulders back (mimic the photo), THEN jump the bar up.

Key Points to Remember:

1. Weight on the heels.
2. Shoulders back behind the bar.
3. Lats tight.

Step Three: The Catch

Now for the easy part. Catching a power clean is really not very complicated. All you do is catch it in the EXACT same position you’d be in if you were a quarter of the way down in a front squat.

Your heels should be taking most of your weight. Your elbows are high and in. (If you were looking at yourself in a mirror, your elbows would be pointing right at you.) And your legs and hips look just like they would look if you were doing a quarter squat (a quarter of the way down).

Key Points to Remember:

Weight on the heels.

Elbows high and IN,

Legs and hips in a quarter squat.

Putting It All Together

Obviously, there is more to doing a hang clean than just three steps. But, these are the three most important steps – the skeletal structure – that you MUST learn and make the hang clean totally subconscious.

The first mistake people make with the clean is that they try to move too fast too early. Be patient! The bar MUST move from the knee position to the hip position deliberately. If you DON’T end up at the hip position during your pull then you have wasted the lift.

The bar starts out slow and ends up fast. It is accelerating NOT exploding from the knee. Yes, you must end up going at maximum speed when the bar is at the hip. But, you should not start at maximum speed from the knee. I would err on the side of going slower than you are comfortable with to start out. Hitting the right spots is far more important in the beginning than going fast and using lots of weight with hideous form.

• Start at the knee,
• Accelerate to the hip (touch it!) and explode the bar up.
• Then all you have to do is catch it.

How simple is that?! Obviously, you’ll need to practice. But, now you know the only three things that you should focus on. Drill each of these positions, drill your ability to move from one to the other smoothly, and over time you’ll be able to add speed, and eventually weight to the bar.

Give that a try and then come back and leave your comments below telling me about how it went. I want to hear from you!

The post How To Hang Clean: The Only 3 Things You Need To Know appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The other night my masters lifter Dave was setting up for a snatch attempt that would match his personal record. It had been a while since he’d gone for this lift as he’d focused most his energy on squats lately. He grabbed the bar, hook gripped, set himself, and exploded the bar off the platform.

He was particularly explosive that night. The bar was just flying. And that was the problem. Or rather, Dave’s not knowing that he would be that powerful was the problem.

Dave is an odd duck – in a good way. He’s 42 years old, yet he’s by far the most mobile lifter in my gym. He’s got some of the best technique. He is strong. And he has absolutely no fear of getting down under a heavy weight. When that bar goes up, Dave goes down – fast!

So that night, as he exploded the bar up at a faster than normal rate, he dove down under it with his abnormally fast speed into the hole. He was so fast that he beat the bar down to the bottom. This caused the bar to crash on him, or rather crash into his hands, and the force of all that weight broke his lockout (caused his arms to bend).

The bar descended like it had a grudge and was hungry for blood. It crunched through his lockout, bent his arms, and slammed into the back of his neck. It forced Dave forward at breakneck speed, his face shoved forward toward the platform, and there was nothing anyone could to do stop it.

Dave, being the nimble creature he is, wasn’t fazed by this turn of events. He twisted his body, rolled with the punch, and was able to release his head from the ensuing disaster at the last second before his teeth met hardwood.

He was safe.

Laughter Is The Best Medicine

I immediately – after the worst was clearly over – started laughing at the top of my lungs. I did this for three reasons:

1. I knew Dave wasn’t hurt.
2. I know Dave well, and knew he would also find this funny.
3. I needed the new lifters in the gym to know that this wasn’t the end of the world.

When a child skins their knee and you respond by asking, “Oh, no! Are you okay? That really looks like it hurts!” The kid is very likely to start crying. If instead you make light of the situation then (so long as the injury isn’t all that bad) the kid will very often join you in making light of it.

Adults are a lot like kids.

When Dave got up he joined me in the laughing and we all have been making jokes about it ever since. While the situation did scare some of the newer lifters, the fact that Dave laughed it off and then went so far as to take the lift again ten minutes later impressed them enough to have faith that he was okay – and by extension, they’d be okay.

Dave is hardly the only lifter to ever have this happen to him. In fact, dropping a bar on your back, neck, or head is something that CAN happen and has to many of us (me included). But if you learn a few key things, you can largely avoid this kind of disaster.

The Two Skills You Gotta Have To Avoid Dropping A Bar On Your Head

There are really only two things you need to know to prevent this from happening to you – or at the very least, lower your probability of this happening to you.

ONE: Less Freakout, More Lockout

My business partner, podcast cohost, and lifter at PDX Weightlifting, Peter Curcio has a saying, “Less freakout, more lockout.” It takes seriously that Olympic lifting is, among other things, downright scary sometimes.

No matter how good your technique is with light weights, if your fear gets in the way, you will use crappy technique with heavy weights. Proper technique includes a powerful and massively tight lockout in the catch of the snatch. Your arms need to be so darned rigid that a herd of stegosauruses could stampede into you and you’d still be holding that bar above your head.

The rules of a good lockout are:

1. Locked arms (duh!)
2. Head forward a bit (that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to look down)
3. Shrug up hard

Doing those things will make you far stronger in the overhead position. Being prepared for the zombie apocalypse is all the rage, but don’t forget to be ready for that herd of dinosaurs coming to break your lockout!

TWO: Pull Under, Don’t Drop Under

Coaches lie all the time. “One step at a time” is the mantra. And that means we are forced to have you erring on one side or the other of some arbitrary line. One way we lie to you is by saying your goal is to explode the bar off the hip, then dive to the bottom as fast as possible.

That’s a lie. It’s a useful lie for a number of reasons, though.

If you are like most adult beginners, you have a horrible habit of hitting the hips with the bar and then continuing to pull up on the bar with your arms while the rest of your body remains standing up totally straight! We call that “over pulling.”

I use the “dive under the bar” lie myself because if you tell a beginner to do anything at all with their arms – anything – they will almost invariably over pull.

So, I’ve fixed one problem with my lie. But I’ve created another: When you are in the habit of diving to rock bottom on every single rep, no matter what, then you are increasing your chances of the bar landing on your head. 

Let’s use a hypothetical example to understand why. Assume that when you are in the full overhead squat position, the measurement from the floor to the bar is six inches (What? I’m imagining you as a Smurf).

Now let’s imagine that you are ultra-powerful one day – like Dave was – and you explode a PR attempt (heavy!) up to seven inches? Because you listen well, and learned to dive to the bottom when the bar hits your hip, you beat the bar to the bottom and the bar ends up a full inch above your outstretched hands.

This results in a CRASH!

It doesn’t take a full inch of difference to cause a major crash with heavy weights. If you are anything less than dinosaur ready – super locked! – then you are risking the bar landing on your head.

The fix is to catch the bar where it lands. Almost every lift you ever take will put the bar somewhere between a tall power snatch and a full overhead squat. It will be in the large gray area in-between. Your goal is to get very good at learning exactly where the bar is going and meeting the bar there exactly.

You do this by pulling yourself under the bar, rather than simply diving down to rock bottom on every attempt. When the bar hits your hips, you start to pull yourself down as fast as possible. This puts you in control of the bar at all times. There should NEVER be a time when the bar and you are not in sync.

Control the bar; don’t let it control you.

Hit the hip. Pull yourself down. Lockout. Save your head…and watch out for dinosaurs.

The post No Dying! How To Avoid The Most Dangerous Accident In Olympic Weightlifting appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Everything hurts. The shooting pain in my left hip flexor causes me to writhe whenever I do anything as simple as standing out of a chair. The cracking in my knees belies my age – an age that seems to be increasing at a faster rate lately – and signals a throbbing no amount of ice can reduce. My shoulders, elbows, and wrists ache. My throat is thrashed from yelling; my eyes from straining; my heart…

And yet I wouldn’t change a moment of my time with you. However limited that time has become, it still represents the best of who I hope to be. My time with you makes me a better man, makes me WANT to be a better man, and I can’t stop striving.

I can’t even remember what life was like before you. I know that I existed, and I even believed myself to be happy, but I had no idea the depths of satisfaction you would take me to. And no idea the depths of pain.

You drive me out of my mind, baby: crazy and wild, infuriated and infatuated – all at the same. And I love you for that.

—

I’m sorry, honey.

I know things have been hard between us as of late. I have been so busy, so crushed by work, by deadlines, by articles to write, lifters to coach, a gym to manage, and a never-ending stream of new projects. I’ve hardly had time to squat, let alone spend time with you.

When we do get time together it’s harder than it used to be. We feel horribly distant from each other and it’s tearing me apart.

Everything between us used to be so fluid – natural. When I laid my hands on you, gripped you tightly, and pulled as hard as I could, it all snapped into place. Hard, catching you strongly, with confidence and power.

I’m not sure you remember this, but I do: When we were together last spring, every day, twice a day, sometimes three times a day. I was all over you as often as I could manage back then. Stealing time from my course work in my masters program. Lifting alongside my lifters at night – the gym was still rather new, and my time less demanded. Every moment I could find, I would find you.

Personal Records came easy then. The human body is a remarkably adaptive machine. Give it the right motivation, in the right quantity, and the right frequency, and it responds beyond your wildest dreams.

You are one hell of a motivator, honey. My gains with you were extraordinary.

—

Remember when we met?

I know you know my history with squats. And I know sometimes you get a bit jealous. The fact that I started off in powerlifting probably adds to this problem – it was my favorite lift back then before I’d found weightlifting – found you.

But while I fully understand your jealously, and I don’t in any way begrudge it, it’s important to remember if it weren’t for squats we would never have met. Squats have paved the way for our greatest moments together. I know you know this. I’m not questioning that. But it is worth mentioning anyway, as sometimes saying something out loud, despite our both knowing it, can help it sink in.

I loved back squats when I was a powerlifter because I was better at them than the other lifts. Sometimes that’s enough. You love the ones that love you back. You can go a long time on fuel like that – maybe forever.

Until you meet someone who takes you further.

Being loved is a wonderful thing, honey. But to be truly inspired and loved at the same time – amazing. You gave me that – both – and more than I could put into words. Our human language simply doesn’t have a large enough lexicon to describe what I get out of loving you.

I know you worry sometimes when I spend so much time in the squat rack, baby. But I do it for you. It’s always for you. All of it.

—

Our first time.

Do you remember our first time? I fell in love with you immediately. I was such a fumbling idiot. I literally fell over with the bar. Not even a twenty kilo bar! One of those “standard” bars, that is anything but, and only twenty pounds or so.

I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t love you so much. Instead I look back and feel nothing but joy. All of my foolishness led us here, together, wrapped up with one another in a never-ending struggle for closeness and perfection.

—

I want “us” back.

Every time I touch you, I feel off balance. I lose my footing, I throw you forward, or drop you behind – I miss. I miss the weights we used to use. I miss the confidence I had when holding you. I miss the power we generated together.

—

I miss “us.”

We’re adults. We aren’t idealistic kids anymore. We have lived long enough to know relationships are going to have their down periods, struggles, and dark times. Not because our relationship is inherently flawed, but because we stuck it out long enough to get to that point. And that same willingness to continue will allow us to get through this. I have absolutely no doubt in that.

Yet I’m still a romantic at heart. And while I don’t believe in fate and I don’t have any spiritual leanings, I can’t help but feel I was born to love you, to lift you, to fight along side you.

No matter what short-term struggles befall us, baby, know that you have my heart. I’m forever yours. I will continue to dedicate all of my training to you. And I will never stop trying.

Forever yours,

Nick

The post A Love Letter to My Snatch appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

She also has a degree from Georgia Tech in aerospace engineering, a Master’s degree from MIT, a husband, a daughter, and an equipment company called Risto Sports. And yet, for Gwen Sisto, not weightlifting has never been an option. She keeps on juggling everything life has to offer, no matter how heavy the weight.

That doesn’t mean the journey has been easy, however, and giving birth to her daughter halfway through college was one of the toughest times, as Gwen shared:

I was literally sleeping maybe one or two nights a week. It was that bad. I feel like it definitely slowed my weightlifting process, than if I was able to train twice a day. After that I got my full-time job and they took me through this engineering leadership program, so there was all this extra work I had to do. And when I finished that program I did my Master’s at MIT, and again I went back to sleeping like one night a week.

The way I look at it is, I spent most of my twenties focusing on my career and education, and not just focusing on athletics, where other people focus on athletics first.

Gwen doesn’t see the fact she is older than her competitors as a disadvantage, though. In fact, she believes her mental maturity and the challenges she worked through have provided her with unique physical and psychological advantages. Gwen shared her analysis of her training, given her previous years of stress:

The interesting part is I can handle loading now much better than I could when I was a teenager. There are some weeks where I do like 800 repetitions. Which probably most American weightlifters only do about 300, but I can take it because I’ve been through all that central nervous distress, like when I was doing my degrees, because this is a central-nervous-system-heavy sport. It’s really interesting because I think I’m a much better athlete now than I was when I was a kid.

According to Gwen her weightlifting career began in earnest in 2004 when she met her future-husband, weightlifting coach Ivan Rojas. She and Ivan would go on not just to create a family, but also their own gym and their own gear company, Risto Sports. Their daughter even comes to the gym and lifts with them, which as Gwen shared, is a dream come true:

At this point in my life, because we have Risto Sports, we’re able to have our own training space and that makes such a big difference. It’s just such a big difference from training in your garage, especially when you have other athletes around to motivate you.

The seed for the creation of Risto Sports came during a training trip Ivan and Gwen took to Bulgaria in 2008. After being inspired by the shoes of the athletes there, but unable to coordinate with the Bulgarian businesses, they decided to just start their own company to put out a better weightlifting shoe in the States.

Despite the addition of Risto Sports, these days Gwen is able to dedicate more time to weightlifting since there are fewer elements to juggle – school is behind her and she is settled into her career with an aerospace company. She trains eights time per week, following the Soviet system of weightlifting training. Mondays are Gwen’s day off, then she trains one session per day Tuesday through Friday, and two sessions each on Saturday and Sunday. Gwen explained:

We use the Soviet system, which is the basis of the Bulgarian system. In the Bulgarian system they actually do less volume; the Soviet system does more volume at high reps. The Bulgarian system is famous for maxing out, which isn’t necessarily true. If you look at the data, the Soviet system, they actually do more volume at heavier weights. It’s just that you’re doing more volume in general. And because in the Bulgarian system you’re not doing as much volume, you’re not as physically prepared and you get injured more.

For Gwen staying strict to her training schedule is what allows her to still juggle job, family, and training, while keeping herself healthy. The start time to her evening training varies only by a few minutes from evening to evening and she gets up at the same time every morning. And most importantly, after years of stress, Gwen tries not to think too much and just show up and lift.

At her most recent competition, at the Arnold Sports Festival in Ohio, Gwen went six for six on her lifts – successfully finishing all three snatch attempts and all three clean and jerks, landing herself a third place finish at the USA Weightlifting Nationals. She considers this one of her most successful competition experiences so far.

And now Gwen has her eyes on even bigger prizes: breaking American records, medaling in international competition, and qualifying for the Olympics. But in the meantime she wants to provide for other people what she didn’t have growing up:

My parents, they placed no emphasis on sports, especially for girls. My dad likes the Yankees, so certainly if my brothers were able to play baseball for the Yankees, he’d be cool with that, but for me, my parents didn’t push any sports. If anything, because I did really well in school they were like, “Why are you wasting your time with weightlifting?” And then when we started Risto Sports they were like, “Why are you wasting your time with that company?” So my dream is to be an awesome weightlifter and have an awesome weightlifting company that helps other athletes.

From the looks of it, Gwen is well on her way to her awesome dream come true.

The post Gwen Sisto: A True Story of When Olympic Weightlifting Meets Juggling appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Sean grew up in New York City and came from an athletic lineage. His grandfather was not only a high level football player and boxer, but he competed on the same Olympic 4×1 relay team as Jesse Owens. Sean’s father and uncle were also high accomplished in football. Sean himself did well in both baseball and track, but particularly he excelled in football through high school and college.

It was in college that Sean truly fell in love with Olympic weightlifting. He gave up football to focus on weightlifting and learning to be a coach. The seed for this transition had been planted years earlier in a library, of all places.

I wanted to play professional football and that was the path I was on. I’d been training since I was 13 or 14 and I was fascinated with training. When I was 13 or 14 there was no Internet. If you really were interested in something there was a big effort in getting information on it. So I’d spend a lot of time in the library just looking through old books and magazines. This was in 1982 and my library for some strange reason had a collection of Soviet Sports Review, which is a magazine that is translated Russian training articles. I happened to find one and opened to a page on weightlifting and for some reason it captivated me. In college I woke up one day and realized I didn’t want to play football anymore and I was more interested in becoming a strength coach or a doctor.

In Sean’s mind, becoming a coach and becoming a doctor were similar goals. Both involved the same scholastic preparation and seriousness. He started taking the classes necessary for him to choose either of these two paths. He also started taking his weightlifting more seriously.

I realized the lifts and supplemental lifts were the majority of the tools you would need as a coach to prepare athletes, but I wanted to make sure, if I was going to be teaching these things to people, that I would have an understanding of them on a visceral level. To this day whenever I come across a young coach and they ask me some advice on how to become a coach I always tell them you should spend a significant amount of time, and I’m talking two, three, four years, immersed in the world of Olympic weightlifting. You need to do this long enough to be able to feel the changes it can make in your body; you need to understand what it’s like to lift a heavy weight properly. This is the only way you can relay the information to somebody else. If you’re blind your whole life and somebody asks you to describe the color green to them, how the hell are you going to do that? You don’t know what green is. I wanted to make sure that I was going to have an understanding.

When the time came for Sean to decide between medical school and coaching, Sean chose to pursue his masters in biomechanics under the direction of John Garhammer, one of the top in the field of weightlifting biomechanics in the world. Sean moved to Southern California to study with Garhammer at Long Beach State. It was at this time that Sean also came under the tutelage of famed Olympic weightlifting coach, Bob Takano.

I actually looked at a map. I’d only been to California once before that. I looked at a map and saw Long beach and saw Van Nuys where Bob was and they weren’t too far away so I figured, ‘Oh, I can manage that.’ I came out to California in 1994, started my masters and started training full-time. I ended up training full-time for seven years. That’s what I did for a living.

During this phase of full-time training, Sean became a USA Weightlifting National Team member, won a national medal, and was five-time California State Weightlifting champion. At the same time, Sean was also venturing into his coaching profession. “At the same time [I was training] I was coaching. I was a strength coach,” said Sean. “My first job was at a junior college. From 1994 to 2001 I was a strength coach of all different levels – high school, college, professional, and my own business. In 2001, I opened up my own place, my first place.”

With the explosion of CrossFit over the last few years, Sean has seen a welcome shift in his coaching focus. CrossFit has brought Olympic weightlifting to entire new populations.

Now I basically work with people and young kids who want to be weightlifters and I’m working with a lot of CrossFitters. Essentially instead of strength and conditioning like I was doing, I teach people how to snatch and clean and jerk all day – which is amazing. I couldn’t ask for a better job. I have CrossFit to thank for that. Five years ago this wouldn’t have been possible. CrossFit has given me life as far as my coaching, because if I had to coach another high school volleyball player I think I would have killed myself.

Now that Sean has his own gym and a steady stream of interested students, he has fully moved past being a competitor himself and is focused on growing a team of elite athletes. Sean has his mind set on one thing – taking the United States to the international level of Olympic weightlifting.

I want to be the first American weightlifting coach to consistently produce international medalists. We have coaches who will get somebody, but their success relies on the talent that walks in the door. They get somebody talented and they can develop them and they’re successful, but nobody has ever done it on a consistent basis year in and year out. They’ll have one or two lifters. I’d like to try to create a system of development relevant to this country, this system. You can’t implement a system that worked in communist Russia and expect it to work here. A lot of the things that we look towards in this country, the information that we have is the information we translated from other countries and the coaches’ experiences, but I don’t think anyone has ever looked at the sociological difference between us and everybody else. We haven’t been successful developing a system in this country and I think a big part of it is that it’s very difficult to develop weightlifting in a capitalist country.

Weightlifting is, in essence, a fringe sport, like amateur wrestling, where athletes are expected to dedicate themselves full-time to the pursuit of their sport, but receive very little financially in return. The economic structure of the Eastern Bloc countries allowed for this and supported this structure, but a capitalist economy does not.

“It becomes a matter of options,” shared Sean. “Weightlifting is such a difficult sport, especially if you’re not paid. I don’t think I was ever paid more than $750 per month for being on the national team. Which is fine if I’m living at the training center and don’t have any expenses. That’s $750 I can put in my pocket, but even then that’s not making a living.”

This is where Sean’s experience as an athlete and his intense passion for coaching come together. He plans to combine his experience and expertise to create a team where athletes can develop slowly and go on to thrive on the international scene. Said Sean, “If I can leave a legacy of a system of development and a way to keep a program going and consistently have good results, that’s my end game.”

Check out part two of our feature interview with Sean Waxman – he discusses working with CrossFitters, the most common mistakes athletes make in weightlifting, how to become a truly great coach, and the thought process behind the workouts he programs.

If you would like to work out like Sean’s athletes, follow his workouts in our Strength & Conditioning WODs.

The post Featured Coach: Sean Waxman, Part 1 – Building a Legacy appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Something about the number three resonates deeply with our species. Whether it’s in stories like The Three Musketeers, religion like the Christian Holy Trinity, or in speeches like Martin Luther King’s line, “Justice, goodwill and brotherhood”; we are more likely to remember, internalize, and utilize information if it is presented in three chunks.

Your body is not all that different from your mind. Getting stronger isn’t just about putting in hard work, or even putting in the RIGHT work, but in doing so in the right WAY.

So, if the rule of three works so well for your brain why not apply it to your body?

In our gym, my lifters rarely do more than three exercises per workout. They might do more, but the other exercises are just add-ons that could be dropped off without any serious loss. I don’t like routines where you throw in everything and the kitchen sink in an effort to “cover all your bases”. As a rule, that leads to floundering.

Instead, you want a laser-like focus in your workout routines. Hone in on the key things you want to get good at … and practice them! It really isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be.

“Omne Trium Perfectum” – Latin for, “All Things that Come in Threes are Perfect.”

The Rule of Three Workout Routine is pretty straight forward. It has you doing three exercise per workout, three workouts per week, for three weeks. You then take a light week and repeat.

How simple is that?

DAY 1

The first day of the program is focused on your lower body. Don’t worry, we’ll get to work your awesome arms on Day 2.

Hip Thrust

The Hip Thrust isn’t the most well-known exercise, if you haven’t used it before check out my Hip Thrust video tutorial. Like the squat and the deadlift, the hip thrust is a lower body exercise that is not only a “compound” lift (it works multiple muscle groups at the same time), but it allows you to add a ton of weight.

It is a common problem with beginners that they don’t take the fundamental idea of “progressive overload” seriously. This may seem obvious, but if you don’t continually add weight to the bar you will not get stronger. Period.

Kettlebell work is great for conditioning, speed training, and initial strength training – it also works the hips in a very similar way that the hip thrust does – but you can’t do a 400 pound kettlebell swing! You CAN do a 400 pound hip thrust.

Hang Clean

I’m not going to get too into “how to” hang clean because I’ve already written up a (three-step!) tutorial on that. But, the reason you will include the Hang Clean is because it is a fairly easy exercise to learn that allows you to do explosive work. And, just like the hip thrust, it is loadable. You can start very light and work up to some majorly heavy weights.

Front Squat

The front squat is my all time favorite exercise. It gives you most of the benefits of the back squat but with very little of the downsides. You just can’t cheat a front squat the way that you can a back squat. If you start to lean too far forward with your hips too high then you will simply dump the bar.

Day 1 Routine

• Hip Thrust
• Hang Clean
• Front Squat

Sets x Reps
This is the easy part. All you are going to do is work up to a heavy set of 3. On a day you feel strong, you might try and “max” out by continuing to add weight until you miss the 3rd rep.

By the way, you know the Hip Thrust has gotten too heavy when you can no longer extend your hips above parallel anymore.

DAY 2

I can hear you screaming, “I need to work my guns, dude!” Don’t worry, we’re gonna do some of that today. But first we gotta work your hammies.

Romanian Deadlift

I like the Romanian Deadlift, in part, because you are forced not to go as heavy as a conventional deadlift.

“But, Nick, you keep telling me to add weight to the bar … What about progressive resistance?”

I know. But, here’s the thing. People hurt themselves all the time doing deadlifts because the exercise tempts you like a siren to go too heavy too fast. With the Romanian Deadlift you just can’t. It’s a “for reps” exercise not a 1 rep max exercise.

Push Press

OK, now we’re gonna work your pythons! Well … your whole upper body, core, and even your legs to some degree.

The Push Press is like the squat of the upper body. It’s similar to a bench press in that you can load it up with a crazy amount of weight. But, like the squat it forces you to learn to stabilize your core and torso with heavy weights while on your feet.

(Weighted) Chin Ups

You are going to do chin ups in a manor totally unlike you would in a CrossFit club. No kipping, no high reps. Just like for all the exercises in this routine, the point is to get stronger. That means low reps with an eye toward progressive resistance.

Day 2 Routine

• Romanian Deadlift
• Push Press
• Chin Ups

Again, you’re going to work up to just one heavy set of three reps. On a day you are really gung ho (energy wise) try to keep adding weight until you can’t make the last rep.

WARNING: Only do this for the upper body exercises on Day 2. The Romanian Deadlift should NEVER be taken to failure.

DAY 3

Day 3 is EXACTLY the same as Day 1! And Day 4 will be exactly like Day 2, etc. You rotate through the two workout days over three days per week. So over a three week period you will have done each day four or five times each.

Light Week

Every 4th week should be lighter. By that I mean that you should do the same exercises, but don’t work up as heavy. Just go through the motions. I’m giving you permission to be lazy, here … take it!

Life doesn’t have to be complicated and neither does your workout routine. In a previous article of mine here at Breaking Muscle about the Status Quo Bias I encouraged you to try out a new workout program and give it the old college try.

Try the Rule of Three Workout for the full three weeks, take the light week, and then reassess. Often, all it takes to make fast progress is to …

1. Stick to the basics
2. Stick to the basics
3. Stick to the basics!

The post The Rule of 3 Workout Routine: Veni, Vidi, Vici! appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The aim of the researchers was to provide quantitative analysis and empirical evidence for coaches to base their instruction upon. While the starting position of a snatch may be very individual, research like this allows for advice on positioning to be based on science. Researchers believed that in comparing successful and unsuccessful snatch attempts there would be a difference not only in the peak bar velocity but also in angles of the pelvis, hip, and knees at the starting position.

The subject tested was a 25-year-old novice weightlifter with less than six months coaching in Olympic lifting. Over the course of the study, the subject completed 133 snatch attempts over 11 different 90 minute training sessions. Three to six rest days were scheduled between each session. The total span of testing was kept to 28 days, to reduce the subject’s training adaptation.

All attempts were recorded on six 3D cameras at a variety of angles. The loads on the bar ranged from 75-100% of the subjects one rep max. Loads ranged from 60-80kg. At the starting position for each lift attempt the angles of the pelvis, hip, knee , and ankle were measured. Peak bar velocity was also recorded for each lift attempt.

The conclusion the researchers came to in regards to peak bar velocity was that it is stressed by coaches too much. In their measurements, “only at lighter loads (60-65kg), where unsuccessful lifts were sparse, was there any evidence to suggest that slower peak bar velocity led to unsuccessful lifts.”¹ At higher loads there was no difference in velocity between successful and unsuccessful lifts.

Researchers believe, based on their findings and the lack of importance of peak bar velocity that factors more likely to play a part in a the success of a snatch attempt are:

• Weightlifter’s speed getting under the bar.
• The “catch” position of the body
• The weightlifter’s stability and bar trajectory

When measurements of joint angles were studied, no difference was found in the angle of the pelvis between successful and unsuccessful snatch attempts, but researchers noted an increase in ankle dorsiflexion of 1.9 degrees in unsuccessful lifts. An increase in dorsiflexion would mean the top of the foot is closer to the shinbone or in the case of Olympic lifting that the shins and knees are not behind the bar.

In terms of knee and hip joints, differences were observed between the 70kg and 75kg loads. The hip was 2.5 degree more flexed in the 70kg lift than the 75kg lift, and the knee was 3.8 degrees more flexed. “The partition modeling highlighted the pelvis and hip joint angles as key features to the success of the attempt for the subject,” said study authors.

The partition model and “decision tree” generated by the research are explained as follows:

A pelvis angle of >17.6 degrees returned a successful lift (100%). When the pelvis angle is below this threshold (17.6 degrees), a hip angle of <89.6 degrees maintains a high (75%) change of being successful. Alternately, when pelvis angle is <17.6 degrees and hip angle is >89.6 degrees, the changes of making a successful lift was only 27%.²

Based on this study, researchers believe the key points of coaching should be the anterior tilt of the pelvis and flexion of the hip at the starting position.

Researchers also suggested future studies should examine the width of the feet in starting stance and the placement of the bar in relation to the feet, and that 3D models could be made of individual athletes to pinpoint variations and make necessary adjustments in technique.

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