Topic: Snatch Elbow Dislocation

[Patrick Bateman]

Hello all,

I have just gotten into olympic lifting, and i have been watching a lot of clips/videos of athletes lifting.

I notice that a common injury is an elbow dislocation during the snatch.

What causes this?

I sometimes notice that when i am doing a shoulder stretch called 'shoulder dislocations' with a dowl, i sometimes feel pressure on my elbow when i grip at the wrong width.

How do you ensure that your elbow doesn't dislocate on the snatch?

[ryankyle]

Learning to lift correctly is the only way to prevent elbow dislocations although nothing is guarenteed.  You feel the strain in your elbows during a shoulder dislocated because the path your arms are taking is a circular one which puts a rotating stress on the elbow joint.  This is wrong lifting technique.  Your elbow is a hinge joint, rotate the hinge and rotate the joint right out of place.  If you learn to lift with your legs and not your arms you will be much better off - see my response to Shaun and his post on elbow pain.  This is why I do not like to hear people teach lifters to shoot their elbows and screw themselves under the bar in the snatch, this creates the rotation on the elbows, encourages lifting with the hands, and is just plain wrong.  For a comparision watch Cheryl vs. Boevski.  Not to bash her because God knows she's accomplished alot but Cheryl lifts with her hands with a lot of screwing under the bar and Boevski is very smoothe and uses his legs. 
Ryan

[Mike Wittmer]

Sometimes, it just comes down to knowing when to let the lift go.  In the heat of competition it is difficult to do.
You have a lift that is close but perhaps just out of position and you stay with the lift and fight for it a little too long.  The lifter needs to learn when the lift is lost and when to bail out.  In other words, how to miss.  Easier said than done.

[Paul LaDuke]

It must also be noted that the occurrence of a dislocated elbow is very rare in the sport.  If you think of the millions of snatch reps performed everyday, 24/7, 365 by athletes all over the globe, the chances of dislocating an elbow are very slim.  Weightlifting is a very, very safe sport.  As was stated earlier, learn to lift correctly, know when to dump the weight!

[joelquintong]

Paul is right on this one.

Dislocations are pretty rare. I don't have concrete stats, but from what I recall, there were one or two at the 1999 Worlds, one in Sydney, then I didn't hear much about it until 2003 where there were a couple. I don't think anyone dislocated an elbow at Athens. And then this past Olympics in Beijing the whole world saw that poor Hungarian 77k. The rapid dissemination of information/video these days brings more people aware of these kinds of viral events, when the reality is that it's such a rare occurrence at ALL levels.

It is a catastrophic injury, yes- but one that can be prevented with good technique and learning when and HOW to dump a bad lift.  And strong biceps certainly strengthen the elbow region- so it makes for a good reason to do curls ;)

-JQ

[Patrick Bateman]

thanks for the replies guys!

Very helpful.

joelquintong - i have seen many guides on how to olympic lift, but not how to dump, is there a special way of going about it?

To be honest, elbow dislocations are not so bad, i have had it happen to me a couple of times in judo. the worse thing is that is puts you out of action

[Tom Sherwood]

Hey Guys, I recently watched this vid and at 1:32 there is an elbow dislocation.

Was there any flaws in the technique or was this just a weight the lifter could not of handled? or maybe not of been able to handle without restoratives?

what do you think?

2000 World University Ch w69-75plus

[Dave Almeida]

Everyone is assuming elite lifters always show up to these meets with no injuries to begin with. Sometimes they already have a tweaked elbow coming in to the meet due to training 2-3x a day 5-6 days a week and the max lift they fight to save just does them in. A big part is what Mike Wittmer said about knowing when to let a lift go and it is far easier said than done on a big stage like the world's or olympics where most of these injuries probably occur.

The only lifter in the past couple of years that I would attribute technique to causing an elbow dislocation off the top of my head would be Vladislav Lukanin because of his catch position and how awkward and unstable it is.

Tom, her technique was fine. Her elbows look like they hyperextend to begin with in the catch and combine that with the fact that the Chinese are known to push their athletes to the breaking point consistently there is no surprise there. My guess is it already had been tweaked on another lift but they sent her out there anyways. In systems like that sometimes you don't have a choice.

I wonder how many elbow dislocations have happened in the past 15-20 years on American soil due to weightlifting? I bet not too many.