Topic: Hang Snatch Training

[Jim Hooper]

Leighton:

You'll have to teach your nervous system what it feels like to propel the bar with straight arms using hip and leg power.  Right now, your brain is saying "huck it up there" with your upper body, as if you were a farmer throwing a bale of hay onto a wagon.  

As a one time drill, just to get the feeling of pulling with straight arms, try this.  I guarantee it will help or your money back.  Wrap your elbows snugly from bicep to mid-forearm with 1 or 2 powerlifter style knee wraps -- so that they cannot bend.  Lock your legs straight and do a set of shrugs like that.  Keep your shoulder blades back, like trying to hold a tennis ball between them.  Then lower to midthigh, straighten the hips and legs, and then and only then, at the instant you reach full extension, shrug.  Then do the same straighten-then-shrug movement from top of knee, from mid shin, from the floor.  The key is that you never shrug until your hips and legs are straight (or nearly so, fully extended).  Your arms should not be bending at all during this drill due to the wraps.  Memorize the feeling, especially in your upper back and traps.  Loosen the wraps, just snug enough to give you instant feedback, and repeat, striving for the same sensation you had when the wraps were immobilizing the elbows.  I've had five serious arm-benders in two years and every one of them was suddenly cured of their horrible affliction with a few sessions of the Mummy's Elbow.

There is a point in your video where, after you have fully extended, your elbows are in the same horizontal plane as the bar, and yet your legs are still locked straight -- as if you were in an upright row.  You should be halfway into your squat under, with legs and hips flexing like an accordion, by the time your elbows and the bar pass each other.  
Your position is a sure sign that you are mistiming the pullunder, which is a downstream symptom of that hucking and shrugging affair you've got going on in the propulsion phases.   (Losing the transfer of force generated by your hip and leg extension during the propulsion phase is the other.)

You can't get the pullunder right when you've already fired your traps and arms during the second pull.  Instead, save your traps and arms for the pullunder -- let them be long until the instant you move through full extension, then fire them -- and simultaneously flex every major joint from the hips down -- all to slingshot you downward while the barbell continues flying upward.  The dead hang or high hang snatch with light weight is the best drill to dial in the correct intermuscular coordination.  The snatch will be a heckuva lot more fun when you get it, which will be soon if you practice those exercises (then ditch them and do the same thing in the real lift).

Be persistent, insistent, and consistent and it will all work out.

[leighton richards]

That sounds great, I will have a go at your mummy pulls.  I will be very happy if they cure me.
Thanks
Leighton

[leighton richards]

Hi There

I followed your advice and performed some pulls with straight arms.  evrything was fine.
I took some videos of the pulls to make sure the arms were staying straight.
I then tried doing 2 pulls and 1 snatch and looked at the video.
For the first 2 pulls my arms stayed perfectly straight.  Then for the snatch I looked and my arms had bent again.  Frustrating.
Is it possible that my arms are bending because I am doing the knee rebend wrong?
Ie my arms are not bending because I am contracting my traps or biceps but rather they are being bent as my hips come in and get under the bar.
Can you see anything wrong with the pull, ie am I bringing my hips in too much or too soon or in too jerky a fashion?

[leighton richards]

It felt much better today, like I was making some improvements at least, and I was starting to at least get a feel for how it should be.

Does this look better?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MSGvv_7QYk

[Jim Hooper]

Yeah it looks better!  I bet it felt better!  Feeling better is a big, big deal --Good job!  If you'd like some meaningful comments on your technique, send me an .mpeg or .mpg of a full snatch with 85% or so, one that feels "average" for you for that weight, with the clip (1) taken from a 45 degree angle from the front right or front left, (2) from far enough back that the near bar-end is visible throughout, (3) with at least one horizontal line and vertical line in the background (corners, garage door frame, etc is fine), (4) with some kind of line perpendicular across the platform (the edge of a square platform or a chalk line will do just fine), and (5) wearing a not too baggy white T-shirt (I need to see your shoulders move).  I'll put it in a frame by frame powerpoint and we'll see it all unfold in excruciating detail and figure out how to fix that pullunder timing and whether your non-moving feet are a good thing or a bad thing for you.  You're looking pretty good Leighton, obviously have some strength, and its great that you are a student of your craft.  Its not going to take much to get you off to the races. It'll be fun to hear what you are lifting 2 years from now.  Best of luck.

[leighton richards]

Thanks Jim, that would be awesome.
I'll take a video as you instructed in the next week and send it to you.
Thanks again

Leighton

[Jim Hooper]

Leighton, send it to me at hooper@wtklaw.com with a copy to jsjehooper@comcast.net. Jim