Topic: Me lifting..comments,critiques,insight is welcome

[Alex Carter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp03P4SFoFQ

I will have a video tomorrow too, I am right now being told from the guy I know who trains oly lifting in real life at the gym that my stance is too wide for squats, so working on making it about hips width. Jerk was kinda slow and my right arm was bending on my snatches, a problem probably because of a bit of a shoulder impingement.

[Jim Hooper]

"Kinda" slow?   Pah!  I can read the letters on your t-shirt the entire time you are "snatching."  You are pseudo-snatching -- going through the motions, one step removed from someone "snatching" a broomstick or PVC pipe.  Ditto for the jerks.

Quit farting around.  Get serious, get tight, explode into the bar, and go FAST. 

Less talk, more action.

[Alex Carter]

Thanks Jim you are right, I am working on being faster, I kind of have to find a safe haven between slow and too fast, if that makes any sense :]... I will have a video tomorrow so I would like your input there too :]

[Andy Dick]

Can you really do any of the olympic lifts too fast(Minus initial acceleration at the beginning)?  Work on exploding, if you train slow you will learn to lift slow and we do not want that.

[Jim Hooper]

Andy, Bingo.  Alex, If you do not feel safe, lighten the load to where you feel safe, and move fast.  If you feel you are moving "guardedly", don't kid yourself -- your body is not doing what a body does when it does a snatch or a clean.  You will never feel the correct contraction sequences or develop good timing if you are, for fear or any reason, not moving explosively.  Lighten the load and move fast.  Get where you can do a great, fast, solid, automatic snatch with 40 and CJ with 50, then move up from there. 

Alex, three more things I should have included:

1.  Please get out of that squat rack when you do rack jerks.  You must be out on the floor where you can miss a jerk safely.  If you lose one in that rack, it will not be pretty.  If you lose one, the bar should go to the floor, and not bounce off anything else and careen into you or anyone nearby.  Even if its a 50-60% weight, you can bust  shoelace or slip on any lift -- just back out 2-3 steps from that apparatus and nobody gets hurt.

2.  Foot position on front squats is fine.  Stay there.  But lighten the load 10 kgs, push your elbows up and chest out, and train your way out of that rounded upper back affair that's going on now.  Looking pretty good there, keep it up.

3.  Snatch feet -- width seems fine, but you've got a gross (large) problem with the alignment of your feet -- your right foot is way back -- totally out of balance.  You cannot progress with that going on, and the uneven loading presents a significant risk of injury.  It was not just a one-lift thing -- you do it every time.  You need to be doing a lot of overhead squats with 50-60% of your best snatch, pausing in the bottom for 5 seconds -- probably as many OHS and full snatches.  Put your toes on the same line when you do the OHS.  Over 4-6 weeks, that should even out whatever strength or mobility or motor pattern glitch may be causing your imbalanced bottom position now.   The OHS will also improve the depth and stability of your SN receiving position. You have got to make that a priority and you should start tomorrow.  If you were my lifter, you'd do only snatch pulls and OHS for a few weeks until we got some explosiveness going and that bottom position fixed.  Then we'd start doing snatches with the empty bar and 30-40 kgs.  (Fast.)

[Jim Storch]

"Safe haven" or real lifting.  Pick one.  Can't have both (at the same time).

Here is a quote for ya- "a ship is safe in the habour, but that is NOT what it was built for."

Move! and I mean fast!

You must take the risk of moving FAST to get the reward of real good lifting.  Then after that you might start to realize that snatching, cleaning, jerking slow is actually a bigger risk.

[Matt Erdman]

I agree that the squat stance is fine. You want to pick a stance that is comfortable and will let you use your best form. Your joints will be less likely to develop problems if you keep them in a good position.

[Alex Carter]

Thanks for all the tips guys, I needed to say that I had a back problem that day from moving like 3 days before, I had to move a lot of stuff the entire day and my back got really sore and i couldn't bend after, so my right side of my lower back was toasted. Partly a reason for that crappy OHS position.. I will have a video tomorrow so please stay tuned, thanks guys.