Power cleans: guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher. Oh, no, wait, that’s PF Flyers, right? Jokes and my apparent hatred aside, I love the Olympic lifts. The grace, mobility, and strength displayed during a well performed snatch or clean is inspiring.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them, and I have no qualms with anyone that does them. Qualms, I have, however, with people that: use them as the answer to everything, see them as the only way to train the lower body for power, think of them as a “must” for athletes, try to teach them in large group athletic settings, and can’t do them correctly (which, sadly, is most people as you will see).
FORM FOLLIES
I used to clean a lot. Looking back, my form sucked. If all you care about is hoisting as much weight from the ground to your shoulders, your form probably sucks too.
Buddy Morris once said that everyone in America pulls from the lower back. Professional weightlifters, however, use their hips. Here’s what Bret Contreras said in a recent article on T-Nation:
While most individuals bend with a blend of spinal, pelvic, and hip motion, weightlifters possess unique movement patterns at the hip. Stu (McGill) states that:
“Olympic Weightlifters attempt to do the opposite – they lock the lumbar spine close to the neutral position and rotate almost entirely about the hips.”
Of course, Olympic weightlifters are better at hip hinging than normal individuals, but the importance of this information is that the movement patterns developed in the weight room transfer over to everyday life. Master the hip hinge first and everything else seems to fall into place.
This is hard to conceptualize, so look at the pictures below. The first two are random YouTube guys.The third is Taner Sagir. The fourth, Pyyros Dimas.
Compare the YouTubers to the professionals. The YouTubers have bent knees, bent hips, and the bar is away from their body. The pros, however, have straight legs, fully extended hips, and the bar close to their body.
GUTSY GOALS
If you look like the YouTubers, your clean isn’t delivering the PF Flyer promise. This is normal, as hinging takes time to learn. A lot of time. It also means stripping weight from the bar. A lot of weight. People don’t like sacrificing a lot of time and a lot of weight. So they don’t. But they should.
Serious athlete aside, you’re better off for learning how to power clean. It’s a complex movement, and learning how to do complex things is a good thing. And if you perform it using the technique I describe below, it’s indicative of a solid hip hinge—something everyone should have.
AN ATHLETE’S POWER CLEAN
The problem most people have with the power clean starts with the double knee bend, which is usually accepted as a must. The double knee bend happens after the legs initially straighten. After the bar clears the knees, they re-bend back underneath the bar for one last upward heave.
For most people, the hips never snap forward after this happens, meaning the lower back and shoulder jerk combined with a quad push is really what propels the weight in the air. Its turns the movement into a vertically loaded exercise, much like a jump squat.
But we care about the hips. We need the hips. Hip extension and the glutes are where power is cooked up. And the double knee bend, used ignorantly, turns the oven off. It turns hip extension into knee extension.
Luckily there’s another way to do cleans and snatches in the single knee bend technique. Once the legs straighten initially, they don’t re-bend under the bar. So using our romanian deadlift position for reference, the hips snap forward without a second knee bend—similar to a kettlebell swing.
Since there is no “jump” portion of the lift, the quads and patellar tendon are saved extra stress. There’s no aggressive stomp with the barbell crashing down on the clavicles.
Not as much weight can be handled with this technique, especially when learning it. But that doesn’t matter. It’s like dismissing the front squat as a useful exercise because the back squat can be loaded more. More weight is arbitrary and progress is relative. Getting stronger is different than lifting more weight.
THE HINGE, DECONSTRUCTED
Before venturing into power cleaning this way, you have to learn how to hinge. My go-to exercise for teaching this is the romanian deadlift (RDL). There are other hip exercises out there, but none teach standing hip extension quite like the RDL. If you hinge correctly, I’d guess that 90% of your problems would go away, chronic knee pain included. It’s a fundamental aspect of my book, An Athlete’s Guide to Chronic Knee Pain. Learning it is critical.
So if you want to quest towards an athletic power clean, here is a rundown
- Learn how to hinge with the hips coming to a strong lockout with the glutes squeezed, especially from a RDL
- Incorporate this into the power clean by foregoing the double knee bend and stomp
- The feet stay planted on the ground the entire time, simply shoot the hips forward and whip the weight in the air once you hit the RDL position
- After some practice, you can come up on your toes and do this
- Even then, there’s no need to stomp or reposition the feet.
TL;DR
The power clean has limited application for large group athletic settings. But if you’re going to use it, learn how to hinge with your hips to make it more effective and save your body wear and tear.
Photo Credit: Flickr, Crossfit
Great points Anthony. I simply perform Hang Cleans with some of my athletes because they are going to do them in college. That’s literally the only reason. As Buddy Morris has made the point several times, it takes 10,000 reps to become an expert of something. I just don’t see an non weightlifter becoming an expert. An athlete doesn’t have enough time with the need to obtain sport mastery through the very needed skill acquisition of their specific sport(and even position in their sport). In other words, the athlete has to learn the skills of their sport where as athletes that are weightlifters require skill that consists basically of 2 complex lifts.
With the lack of a “sports system” in the US, the athletes that I deal with require much more time and need more athlete movements like running, jumping, accelerating/decelerating. I find my time much better spent working on these various “athletic skills” which will transfer to their sport more so than working on an OL. I appreciate the lessons learned from sitting back and transferring force(hip hinge and extension) via the OL, but it’s much easier and more transferable using various jumps or med ball throws when working with athletes. I refuse to hear jerk off “weight coaches” telling me that something taught via a “lift” will transfer to something done on field or turf when training an athlete. I appreciate the OL’s as a tool. But not THE tool when teaching an athlete to become a better athlete.
Just my 2 cents in training athletes like athletes…
Totally agree Scott. What can be accomplished through the Oly Lifts can be accomplished via much simpler means. But, as you mentioned, some athlete’s are going to have to face them some day. And those that already do, this is the best way, in my opinion.
This is why the hang clean is so awesome. If you start from a hang with your legs basically straight like a partial RDL, you are forced to use your hips. I always hang clean and rarely power clean from the ground. For some reason, I like snatching from the ground better though.
Great article!
True Drew. But even then it can be done incorrectly. Less so though. Much easier to teach from the hang though.
Hi Anthony, great article – loved your idea about foregoing the double knee bend. Care to elaborate more on “Getting stronger is different than lifting more weight”. Thanks.
Kamal, that would make for a great post in itself. Thanks for the idea, and stay tuned
I understand your ned to make provocative titles and all, but wouldn’t this be so much more appropriately named “why people suck at power cleans” ?
It could be, Dylan. It could be. But I’m power clean bipolar. For some populations, I hate them. Others, they are OK barring this technical issue.
Anthony,
Everyone has started throwing around the term “hip hinge” and how important it is, but many people have begun to do this movement emphasizing the shin stay perpendicular and some even perform the hip hinge with their shin behind their ankle.
In my opinion the proper hip hinge allows for knee bend forward, which demonstrates posterior chain control over the tibia in knee flexion. Teaching hip hinging with a vertical or posterior shin, in my opinion goads the it band into assuming some control over stabilizing the hip and knee.
The forward knee bend being controlled by the posterior chain is what makes compound leg exercises work IMO. I dont like much of the form Ive seen of the hip hinge.
Here is an article by Smitty who I usually think alot of. Whats your take on this?
http://www.dieselsc.com/learning-the-hip-hinge/
Domenic,
The hinge, in it’s simplest form, should be originally taught with little shin angle because that’s the movement. Once you learn that, then incorporating it into more complex patterns is fine. But it’s whole crawling before walking before running bit.
I get the idea, I just think its wrong. It places way too much tension on the hamstrings and way to little on the glutes. Take those diesel pics, you agree with the angle being posterior as shown?
I don’t like the “negative” shin angle because it tells me people are carrying weight on their heels too much. So I don’t like the angle either, but I know their rationale for doing it. They ust don’t want the quads to be involved in any way.