Topic: Slippery shoulders during cleans. Does it really make a HUGE difference?

[Albert B. Gonzalez]

By the way guys, I have switched to segmented snatches instead of regular snatches. I want to reinforce the positions because my snatch performance is VERY inconsistent.

Is this a good move? (Don't recommend coaches please.)

GET A COACH

[Andy Dick]

I don't want to run Vik off the forum, I think he now knows we prefer to getting a coach, so let's not keep beating the guy down about it.  To his question, by segment snatches do you mean snatches as USAW model (hip, above the knee, below the knee, floor - ie hang variations)?  I personally, when coaching, use hang for the beginner while teaching proper pulling from the floor.  Once they seem to have a sufficient hang snatch and pull form the floor I move to putting them together into a power snatch.  Usually once I teach the power snatch I do not go back to hang variation unless they are have trouble learning the power snatch or are too inflexible to sit in a proper start position.  I will mainly use it to reinforce proper techinque after some work on the power snatch has been conducted.  I will defer to lighter weights and a focus on proper techinque first.

For me personally since I am predominantly self coached - I will rarely do a hang snatch unless it is for warm-up with the bar.  I find more use of getting video of my full snatch then reviewing the video between sets and trying to fix a problem on the next set.  This is easier said than done since you are getting after the fact feedback, and you need to have a eye for some technique flaws, but its the best I can do.  Also, specificity speaking I feel I get more out of the full version then a part of the exercise.

[Sean Hutchinson]

I don't want to run Vik off the forum, I think he now knows we prefer to getting a coach, so let's not keep beating the guy down about it.  To his question, by segment snatches do you mean snatches as USAW model (hip, above the knee, below the knee, floor - ie hang variations)?  I personally, when coaching, use hang for the beginner while teaching proper pulling from the floor.  Once they seem to have a sufficient hang snatch and pull form the floor I move to putting them together into a power snatch.  Usually once I teach the power snatch I do not go back to hang variation unless they are have trouble learning the power snatch or are too inflexible to sit in a proper start position.  I will mainly use it to reinforce proper techinque after some work on the power snatch has been conducted.  I will defer to lighter weights and a focus on proper techinque first.

For me personally since I am predominantly self coached - I will rarely do a hang snatch unless it is for warm-up with the bar.  I find more use of getting video of my full snatch then reviewing the video between sets and trying to fix a problem on the next set.  This is easier said than done since you are getting after the fact feedback, and you need to have a eye for some technique flaws, but its the best I can do.  Also, specificity speaking I feel I get more out of the full version then a part of the exercise.

The only critique I have of your methods is teaching the power snatch. Don't even bother until you teach the full lifts. Often times coaches skip straight to power snatches before the lifters even get a chance to learn how to pull under the bar and down the road they end up being scared to get under big weights because they never learned how to do it at the beginner stages. We usually do the same thing you do except we teach to full snatch and clean from the beginning. The first thing we do when a kid or adult comes into the gym is have them do sets of 10 with a stick for overhead squats. After that we teach them full snatches and cleans from the hip, then the knee, then the floor. We also work on proper pulling from the floor and making sure the bar comes in and doesn't swing around the knees. It was a tough lesson to learn after we had a soccer player come in to learn the lifts for strength work. Our graduate assistant taught all of them power lifts from the hip first and never had them do full lifts until they mastered powers from the floor. She eventually quit soccer and started lifting. To this day she still has mental problems pulling under big weights. Her best power lifs are within 5-10 kg of her best fulls because she still hasn't mastered pulling under the bar and sometimes she is just scared to get under big cleans. So as a good piece of advice to any coaches out there training new kids/adults, teach them the full lifts! It's not going to hurt them to learn how to catch a snatch in the bottom. I'm not saying you can't teach them powers but definitely make sure you get the full lifts in their from the beginning!

[Andy Dick]

For the most part on this post steps of the teaching progression is skipped over.  In another topic (I cant remember which one off the top of my head) I explain more fully the steps I follow.  With our guys at the high school level our biggest problem we encounter is flexibility, big time.  We spend a great deal of time on overhead squats with the bar just with the focus on hip mobility.  We push off the full versions because most guys have enough trouble squatting to break parallel.  It is not the most ideal situation but getting kids to stretch (you probably encounter much the same at times) is so difficult.  Especially when we have a great deal of kids filtering through the weight room in our after shool hours (3-6pm) it is easy for them to just leave when done working out.  We are also on a tight schedule since sport season schedules decrease the amount of months in a year we can focus on the lifts, we have a lot of multiple sport athletes.  My best time is the few months in the spring if they do our weightlifting club team and even then its like starting all over with flexibility for most kids.

With the kids who have higher flexibility and seem to pick up on the lifts faster I usually progress them through and past the hangs and powers very quickly and down the road quickly.  For some reason even some kids that pick up the lifts quickly they still seem to be unable to squat clean/snatch.  What I mean is they stop themselves in the power even with light weights (could be the teaching progression, but what I think is the problem, from my observation is this is usually the kids that don't have great ability to sit in a full squat, so we are back to flexibility).  For example, we had a kid that did the weightlifting team for the first time this year.  He was capable of doing the full lifts and I progressed him through the progressions pretty quickly because he picked them up pretty well.  But for the life of I could not get him to a full version of the lifts.  LOL I felt like a tape recorder telling him to catch the lifts in a full squat after every set.  This is also working with snatch balances while they progress. 

Much like you I prefer to get them to the full lifts as fast as possible.  When teaching kids olympic lifts I basically try to treat them all as weightlifters that just don't know it yet.  We have dont have the perfect system, but for example our weightlifting team, we had 45 kids all lifting on 3 platforms it is easiest to progress them in this way and adjust how fast they move through certain exercises in the process.  As you said getting to the full versions fast is important because they will be able to move more weights and thus better power production.