Topic: Technique Questions

[Dave Almeida]

I guess I don't have a clue. Good luck in your endeavors as a weightlifter.

[Mike Kim]

omg it looks like everyone here http://www.sportexpert.biz/wl/slovakia.htm is doing a stiff legged deadlift. yeah their convetional s pull is incorrect because they extend too much.

yes clearly in my vids i posted here the bar is too far forward which is why i jump back in almost every lift.
you see i have to jump back to catch the bar which clearly is too far forward for me to normally catch. makes perfect sense.

[Dave Almeida]

Your idol:

http://www.sportexpert.biz/wl/video_56.htm

Frame 4. Do you do that?

[Carl Darby]

Mike you mis-understand my critique. I'm not talking about the bar being too far forward. In fact its too far back by the top of your pull. Despite your jump backwards to accomodate, the bar's backwards location and backwards momentum is what is preventing you from making a solid catch. Look at any of the videos on the site you linked to. You will see a very definite forward movement of the hips after the bar passes the knees.

[Jim Hooper]

1.  Pull.  Compare the movement of your knees and hips from the instant you pass the knees to the explosion with the sequences attached. 

You say

The hips aren't supposed to move forward alot in any lift. They should be going more up than forward. Forward movement can displace the bar and is inefficient.

That is incorrect.  You should study the few frames in the sequences closely.  Look at the movement of the hips and what that movement accomplishes for the legs.  The hips must move forward in the 3rd phase of the pull (aka amortization, aka rebend) in order to flex your knee joints so that you can "re-use" your leg extensors in the explosion phase.  That phase of the pull occurs precisely for that reason:  to put get you from the position you are in at the end of the first pull (bar clears the knees) to the most powerful posture from which you can explode upward.   You may need to experiment a bit with your stance, turnout, or even grip width to get the explosion point right, and to be able to move to it efficiently after you pass the knees.  But make no mistake, you must do this in order to clean or snatch anything near your potential.

In the sequences, you will see several very different lifters with very different styles, but they all have that distinct movement in their pulling motion.   Compare it with yours -- your amortization is almost imperceptible, and your "explosion", such as it is, amounts to a fast straight-leg deadlift and a (too early) shrug.

That's the same thing Dave and Carl are telling you, just put in a different way, and with some pictures that should convey the concept.  You can get away with this up to about bodyweight, but you'll never clean heavy weights that way -- you'll only be using half of your machine.

2.  The bar is crashing the tar out of you -- its not "minimal."  Its not a matter of when it contacts your t-shirt; its a matter of when you begin eccentrically applying braking force and decelerating the bar's fall to the Earth.  From the instant the bar contacts your rack shelf until it hits you in the bottom of the receiving position, I can see little or no deceleration -- your torso and the barbell are hurtling down in freefall until you hit the bottom.  Let me unpuzzle you on why you can front squat 130 and yet get folded like a rag doll with these 40 kilo lighter cleans with your current technique:  The momentum with which the barbell impacts your body in the bottom position is proportional to the square of its downward velocity -- the faster you are "dropping" with it, the bigger the slam when you run out of airspace.  And because you are dropping so fast long after you need to, that impact is much greater than what you experience with heavier masses when you descend at lower, controlled velocities into a front squat.   (Its the speed that matters, always the speed.)   How to improve the racking, decelerating, and arrest phase:  Cleans from the blocks or hang, with gradually increasing weights, commensurately deeper racking levels as the mass increases, but equally tight and smooth catches and descents, is the best way I know of to get the hang of it relatively quickly.