The upside of being a Coach is that my job is awesome and I get plenty of experience in analysing human movement.
The downside is that as a one-man band, its rare that I get objective feedback on my own lifts.
My Olympic lifts should be better – they haven’t increased as quickly as they should relative to my strength gains.
The reason for this is lousy technique.
So, this week I decided to take a look at my Clean & Jerk and video it so I could watch it back and be critical of what I’m doing wrong.
In short, pretty much everything is screwy with my pulls, the front squat/recovery is solid, but the Split Jerk also needs some work.
Here is the photographic proof along with some analysis:
The Set Up
My hips felt low during set up, but as you can see, my hips are actually quite high in a traditional deadlift position.
My shoulders are also too far forward. If you look, they are in front of the bar.
Here’s what the start position should look like… Hips down, shoulders over the bar.
Here’s a great article on starting positions by the always quality Gregg Everett.
The position I started in sets up for a back dominant pull which you will see in the next picture. The correst start will set up for a leg driven pull and more efficient lifting.
First Pull
As you can see, my poor start position has led me down the path of a horribly inefficient first pull.
My legs have extended, but my back in now in a position where it will have to do a lot of work to accelerate the bar and/or bring me back into a good position. The bar is also too far in front of my center or gravity.
Had I started with a more upright torso and driven correctly, the bar should now be above knee height, with my shins relatively straight and my torso more vertical. This would be a better balanced position before transitioning to my power/jump position.
This is what I should look like…
www.cathletics.com
Extension!!
Somehow from the poor position of my first pull, I managed to recover to an OK postion from which to accelerate the bar upwards. This involved dragging the bar up the thighs to a good upright position to try and get the bar going vertical.
However, as you can see above, when extending forcefully upwards, my knees remain flexed. This is a serious flaw and is losing me power. Lots of power. Possibly this is a subconscious thing where the knees are preparing to drop me under the bar again. Hips could also be extended slightly further.
You can aslo see that the bar is starting to swing outwards. This is an elbow positioning issue and they need to be cued to pull high and outside to keep the bar close to the body.
Good extension…
www.cathletics.com
The Catch
Bearing in mind this should be a full clean, the video clearly showed that I am catching in a Power Clean and riding down into a Front Squat.
It didn’t feel that way during the lift, so I’ve got some work to do with sensing how high I’m catching the bar.
Front Squat position was solid though and felt good.
The Split Jerk
The dip and drive were cool, but I am short stepping on the Split position.
Here’s how it should look…
Fixing The Clean & Jerk
As you can see, I’ve got some work to do.
The first and easiest thing is to correct the start position and see what issues this fixes downstream with my pull.
Also, I need to do work on full extension, speed under the bar and catching deep in the Front Squat. Some complex work would be good for this i.e Hang Clean Pull + Hang Power Clean + Tall Clean
As for the Split Jerk, this is mainly positioning and confidence. Regular exposure and technique work during warm ups with lighter weights should fix this.
So, considering my PR is 80kg at a bodyweight of 65kg, and this is evidently with massive inefficency, then if I can fix the technique flaws I should be good for a nice kick in performance.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress…
