10x3 Cleans

Anyone have experience with doing cleans, hang or full, in the 10x3 format? I think I undershot the loading. My other 10x3 workouts (squat, dead, curl) require thorough catching of breath and hyping up of myself during the rest periods; in fact I must reach a nearly psychotic state starting with set 7. Today when I did cleans for the first time, it felt too easy. I didn’t feel the usual hyped-up feeling until set 8.

So it sounds like I’m a moron and answering my own quetion, but as I understand it, the clean is much more of a yes/no lift than others because of its explosive nature. Failure comes much more suddenly and unexpectedly than in other lifts. I wouldn’t want to load too heavy and hit a wall on set 6 or something.

So what I’m asking is: for those of us who have done cleans in the 10x3 format, what does the “right” load feel like to you during the course of the 10 sets?

[quote]DON D1ESEL wrote:
as I understand it, the clean is much more of a yes/no lift than others because of its explosive nature.
[/quote]
actaully not so much. for competitive olys lifting in poor form during training (whether the lift is made or not isn’t an issue) isn’t practiced because it alters neurological learning.

for BB purposes cleans are very similar to all other lifts.

then again, this doesn’t apply if you’re unwilling to change depth of catch. ive done sets of cleans that begin power style and end full squat style.

I think I once did a workout of trying to get 30 reps in the clean as fast as possible, which worked out to roughly a 10x3 system. I felt like I was going to cough up a lung. However, that workout was more geared toward conditioning. If you want to improve power, you’ll probably want to rest about 90 seconds or so between sets.

Whenever I do a clean workout I tend to err on the side of going too heavy. The way I see it, if the weight is too heavy, I can always do the last few sets by catching the bar lower or doing high pulls on the last few sets. This will still provide plenty of benefit.

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
ive done sets of cleans that begin power style and end full squat style.[/quote]

affirmative. you literally gotta dig deep! early sets feel too easy. last sets are a bitch. this goes for 10x3 or 5x10 as I am doing now.

BFG

[quote]DON D1ESEL wrote:
So it sounds like I’m a moron and answering my own quetion, but as I understand it, the clean is much more of a yes/no lift than others because of its explosive nature. Failure comes much more suddenly and unexpectedly than in other lifts. I wouldn’t want to load too heavy and hit a wall on set 6 or something.
[/quote]

I have to agree here. As I see it, the clean is already a explosive lift compared to the powerlifts because you have to give it height. Its more like a jump squat or almost a bench throw in this sense. What I’m saying is, if you’ve got back muscles to deadlift 500, and your cleaning 250 x 3, is only really 50% of the load you can move-although the form should be slightly different.

If you use LOTS of bands on the bench and squat they turn into the same thing-you can do a triple, and then all of the sudden, you can’t get it because it just doesn’t have enough speed.

As has been mentioned before, I have noticed such a huge decrease in correct form when doing O-lifts for higher repetitions that I don’t often get out of the 3-4 set range with the lifts themselves. (Their supplemental lifts are another issue) I have actually hurt myself due to quick form degredation from set to set, but this is with full cleans and snatches.