Gotta Get Rid of Bad Habits

My phone is old and not workin right so ill add the rest when I get a chance

High Hang snatch with ten lbs on each side

high hang snatch with 95 lbs

high hang snatch with 105 lbs.

hang snatch with 115 lbs. Form breaks down here where I don’t push my hips through or where I try to think to much about pushing my hips through but shy away from it. I think subconsciously worried about hitting my pelvic bone or something

125 lbs

135 lbs. Awful form. I think these were just a combination of starting to get tired (not in my legs but perhaps my overhead stabilizers) and wasn’t focused enough. I stopped after these.

Thanks for the encouragement LBramble.

Hopefully I can get some numbers up there. I have some worries since I have the long limbs/short torso build but we will see what I can get to.

Also I tried to do them more with keeping my butt down instead of starting like in a deadlift but I felt a big loss of power. Perhaps something was off but just because of my longer legs it feels much more comfortable with my hips a little higher. I will try to gradually get them down a little more each time. I have noticed some of the guys at cal strength start with their hips a little higher (not jon north, or donny, or spencer) but some of the other guys.

Instead of going up to 135 you should’ve stopped at 125 and took some weight off and done some singles at a lighter weight. Poor form only teaches you poor form, if you’re looking to be proficient with these lifts you’re gonna have to leave some weight off the bar for a bit. You’re not finishing the pull which is why you’re coming forward on the catch or having to jump forward with the lighter weights. I’m still weary about how comfortable you are in that overhead squat position.

Also, having longer legs has less bearing than you realize. Your first pull is only to set you up for the second pull, you can speed it up a bit and add momentum over time but realize that the second pull is where most of the power is generated so you want to get those hips down in the start position so you can really load up that second pull if you start high you’re not gonna generate enough power in the second pull.

[quote]cscsDPT17 wrote:
Alright, I’m going to attempt to load some videos from my phone since my internet is still down. These are from my snatch workout today. This is every set I did except for I did do an extra set 2 arts with the bar and an extra set with the ten lbs on each side. I think my biggest issue is trusting myself to thrust into the bar when it is moving full speed up. Also for the last video, 135 lbs I think I was just tired and I let my form break down so that I didnt squat under it.[/quote]

Nice videos, makes it easy to see what is going on

Issues
-Lean over the bar a bit more when you start the lift, your too upright
-FINISH more upright
-keep the bar close
–the combo of the above 2 means your currently bumping the bar out and catching it in front = bad.
YOU SHOULD NEVER CATCH THE BAR FORWARDS RELATIVE TO YOUR START POSITION. NEVER
-stand on your TIP TOES HEAD UP HIGH, REACH UP WITH YOUR HEAD, THIS IS THE POSITION YOU WANT TO FINISH IN, GET HERE all the time and you will finish properly = good

Reasonable speed under the bar = good :slight_smile:

When you have weights with the bar focus on speed under the bar and finishing properly. If you can’t finish properly here you will NEVER finish properly with more weight on the bar.

DO NOT POWER SNATCH EVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR

If you do a PS, back off the weight by 10-15lbs. NEVER POWER SNATCH, you will never learn to Snatch proficiently. It’s too heavy for your current technique.

The more bar work and more lifting you do properly the faster your technique will improve then you can hammer on more weight. But for the mean time doubles from the hang and floor. If you Power Snatch, it’s too heavy so back it down a bit.

You need to get to a point where you will not revert back to Power Snatching no matter how heavy the weight is. Once you are here you are getting it.

Keep up with the good work and the videos. It will take a few hundred hours before you get it. The bar work is ultra important and make sure you do it on your off days also.

Koing

Yeah I’m not extremely comfortable in the overhead position yet but I’m still working on it. I took koings advice and after my snatches and front square I put 95 lbs then 105 lbs on the bar and did six reps each of OH squat where I just held the bottom position for 3 sec.

Those power snatches at the end werent intended to be PS when I started. I just lost focus and got lazy I guess. I’m still without internet and have some more questions but typing all of this on a phone is pissing me off so ill get back on ASAP. Thanks again for all the comments. I really appreciate it

cscsDPT17,

I have to thank you.

Last week i set PR’s in both the SN and CJ, however both were Power SN and CJ. At the time i said to myself, well as least the weight went up. But after feeling bad about telling you to

“do as i say and not as i do”

i went back to the gym this week, swallowed my pride (somemore) and took 30 lbs off of the bar for both SN and CJ and really worked on getting under the bar and catching the weight in the hole. This morning i went in and hit the CJ PR again only this time i caught it in the hole, then i backed off the weight and drilled technique somemore.

i appreciate your videos because the advice your getting from Koing and others also applies directly to me. Aside from age, i have a similar build, maybe a little lighter. I’m 5’11" and 165 lbs. I use to fight at welterweight (147) when i was younger. And yes both of us have the long limb syndrome, but screw that as an excuse, lets just get good at this anyways!!!

Take the advice your getting here and work on the technique first. To sooth your pride and lift some heavy weight… squat. I can front squat a good 75 LBS more than i can CJ and can back squat a good 75 lbs more than that, but i’m sticking with Koing’s advice and only front squating for now.

Work on getting down under the bar.
- YouTube

this is a good learning video cause its slow and its one of the world’s best lifters.
Watch at the 20 sec mark.
The bar has only reached mid-chest height, if that high.
At that point Liao is ALREADY STARTING his decent to get UNDER the bar.

Once the bar clears the knees you have to explode up…but more importantly EXPLODE DOWN.
I don’t know if this is true, but i’d say a crappy second pull BUT explosive jump under the bar is better than a great second pull and crappy jump under the bar.

any ways watch the video and learn…what the hell do i know.

keep it up.

LB

So I’ve been MIA for a while while I’ve been getting situated at PT school. Finally have some internet back. SO I walk into the weight room here and soon realize that there are NO bumper plates. I’ve already been in touch with the fitness coordinator here and some of the other folks in the office so hopefully I can get some ordered here but if I don’t, what are my options?

I did hang snatches + front squats last night (they closed earlier than I thought so thats all I got in, however lots of volume). I’ve gotten my hang snatch 3 RM up to 135 lbs while catching it in a full OH squat. I did miss my first attempt on that set which I had high enough but didn’t quite finish enough which caused me to drop the weight from overhead height in the catch position. Needless to say you feel dumb dropping weight down like that when its not bumper plates.

Anyways, what are some things that yall would do until I get bumpers? I’m thinking I may just try to go on lifting as close to normal as possible but once I start getting heavier in cleans I think I may miss more attempts.

I was reading yesterday in pendlay’s forum a gentleman who has been around the chinese and some of their coaches. Now nothing that was said was incredibly ground breaking but one thing that might help you is that many of the newer lifters do mostly squats and pulls to build strength for about an hour of the 3 hour session. The other 2 hours was bar work according to him. So as long as you at least have access to a bar and a squat rack you can still improve, don’t feel bad for just drilling with the bar until you can get access to some bumpers

Take rell’s advice.

Squat. front and maybe back.

You can also do Jerks or push-press’s using near max weights.

and rell is also right in just using lighter weight and workin the hell out of technique with higher reps.

i know how you feel though, i had to change gyms. My old one had bumper plates and a platform but no one oly lifted. When i started dropping the weights i was asked to stop.

I love dropping the weights!

So i left. At least for me there is no way i could SN (which i really suck at) without being able to drop the weight when i got it up.

back on point. Front-Squat heavy, Jerk or overhead press heavy, clean lighter with more reps and “perfect form”

LB

Everett has an article that you might find interesting:

http://www.cathletics.com/articles/article.php?articleID=49

Some of the more relevant points:

Most importantly, we need to understand this: The sole purpose of the starting position (and first pull) is to allow an optimal second pull.

The optimal second pull position is defined in essence by the ideal degree of concurrent knee and hip flexion and balance on the feet to generate maximal force against the ground and therefore upward acceleration of the barbell.

Basically our goal in the starting position is to maintain the most upright back angle possible.

…we can conveniently say as upright as possible, because we know there?s a very definite limit to how upright we can actually place the torso. That upper limit is the angle of the back produced by placing the bar over the base of the toes and bringing the arms to a vertical orientation.

So where are the hips? I don’t know; I haven’t measured you. If you’re on the short end of the scale, the hips will most likely be above the knees; if you’re a bit longer-legged, the hips may be even with or even slightly below the knees. Understand that hip height is a product of our two basic position criteria (bar over the base of the toes and arms vertical from side), not a criterion itself.

We need to also flare the knees out to the sides, likely until they’re in light contact with the insides of the arms. This positioning effectively shortens the length of the legs and allows us to bring the hips closer to the knees and bar, thereby allowing an even more upright posture and reducing the distance the knees protrude over the bar, making its path clearer.

Ideally we will maintain this same initial back angle throughout the first pull, that is, all the way until the bar reaches about mid-thigh and we fire off that second pull hip and knee extension. However, with taller lifters, we will often need to allow that back angle to shift very slightly in the first couple inches of the first pull. In other words, after the bar is separated from the platform, the hips will rise ahead of the shoulders for just a brief moment to set a new back angle that is then maintained for the remainder of the first pull. This will also begin happening with all lifters as loading becomes extremely heavy because of the mechanical disadvantage of the knee joint in this position.

Thankfully this shift will happen quite naturally. That said, this needs to be controlled to prevent it from being exaggerated and putting us right back into that high-hipped position we?re trying to avoid. Again, the shift will be very subtle and occur by the time the bar has moved the first few inches off the floor. All the athlete needs to do is continue attempting to lift with the back angle unchanged.

It is considerably more fatiguing on the leg muscles to pull in this style. But it is much easier on the (too easily overtrained) lower back. It does make pulling harder than deadlifting. But nobody is cleaning or snatching their max deadlift, anyway. It is because the weights are lighter (than the deadlift) that we (should) have more control over how it is that the body lifts it.

The article helped me out immensely with respect to what it is that I’m aiming to do, anyway.

Hope you find it helpful.

Great vid LBramble, just what I needed to see.

And thanks too Lex, I know you’ve told/shown me all that before, I kind of got it in my head but due to some oly absences I’ve forgotten. Gonna do this mantra tonight “The sole purpose of the starting position (and first pull) is to allow an optimal second pull.”

I coach my lifters to take it easy on the first pull, it sets up the 2nd pull. Once the lifter has it down then I tell them to rip it off the floor!

Koing

Try doing the snatch from the hang, but start from a full leg extension with heels off the ground. Do not bend your knees to start the pull. You can only arm pull, and use your speed under the bar.

Well I’ve checked out all of the articles and tried to pay attention a little more on not using too much lower back and by squatting down to the bar. Here are a few santches that I was able to do when I went back to where I did undergrad at to help my brothers move in to school. I should have just done extra reps from the floor but I did 2 sets of 3 hang from below the knee with 135 lbs in my last workout so I figured I should be able to get those easy. I wasn’t able to eat good or much before or do much mobility work beforehand so perhaps it got in my head a little bit. Anyways, here are two videos of two snatches with 135 lbs followed by attempts and below the knee hang snatches. Got both of them high enough just didn’t pull under the bar. I think that I’m still fatiguing myself to some extend too much before I get to good weight so perhaps thats why I don’t pull myself under faster. Hopefully with my technique improving I can start moving up faster instead of just going up a few pounds from the bar.