Hang Clean

I normally premform low reps and high sets of hang clean. ex. 4x3 bump weight 4x2. I change it up.

Our football coach wants us to lift a growth phase where we are all doing higher reps. He forced me to lift 3x8 hang clean. I hate it, but is high rep hang clean alright for a 3 week phase?

I personally don’t think there is anything especially wrong with going high reps, but as far as eefectiveness goes, high sets low reps is definitely a staple of training for strength and power. I think that for that 3 week period when he wants you to do 3x8, it would be much more effective to stay high sets low reps…but dont do hang cleans…do an assistance exercise for 3 weeks…maybe hang pulls, high pulls from the floor, or maybe even jump deadlifts. what other pulling do you do in your workout anyways? Also where do you play football?

[quote]Pistons137 wrote:
I normally premform low reps and high sets of hang clean. ex. 4x3 bump weight 4x2. I change it up.

Our football coach wants us to lift a growth phase where we are all doing higher reps. He forced me to lift 3x8 hang clean. I hate it, but is high rep hang clean alright for a 3 week phase?[/quote]

ouch…i feel for you i dont this is a good idea at all…the problem witth the hang clean and why its a great lift is that usually after a few reps form goes to abolute shit…much like the deadlift when pulled for high reps…the first rep and the 8th rep look completely diffirent lol…the best way to get the respoce your coach is looking for from the high reps is to do latic acid training witht he hng clean…set the bar on pins and do 1 rep every 15-30 seconds until you reach 20 reps…rb

Yes…what Big Martin said…just hope that your coach understands that sort of thing.

I completely agree with Coach Martin. 3x8 is a joke for any OL. I know some FB coaches who have prescribed 4x12 for the HC. I think that 5 reps is really pushing it. I think your top end should be 4.

It is not a good idea to do olympic lifts for higher reps because the 8 rep range is too light to develop explosive power. Also as stated earlier this could lead to injury with later reps (especially wrist) when trying to rack lifts not pulled high enough due to fatigue.

also 3-4 sets is not “high sets” I routinely will do more than 10 sets for both olympic mavements snatch and clean & jerk in a workout.

Rob

[quote]knobbers wrote:
It is not a good idea to do olympic lifts for higher reps because the 8 rep range is too light to develop explosive power. Also as stated earlier this could lead to injury with later reps (especially wrist) when trying to rack lifts not pulled high enough due to fatigue.

also 3-4 sets is not “high sets” I routinely will do more than 10 sets for both olympic mavements snatch and clean & jerk in a workout.

Rob[/quote]

I very much agree. Just so everyone knows I wasn’t referring to the fact that high reps for hang clean is o.k. It definitely isn’t…I was referring to high reps overall. And you hit it right on the button…hang cleans are done to develop explosion, so if you want to actually build explosion, you have to keep the reps low.

I disagree that only weight heavy enough for 4 reps or so will develop power. Moving lighter weights faster (ie 8RM load) certainly develops power.

The important thing is to not do a 8RM load for 8 reps…doing it for lower reps and high bar speed is perfectly acceptable.

Hey… thanks a lot for confirming my thoughts. My coach will understand, and I do not think he will be against going high rep in everything else except the olympic lifts. I love the idea of the 20 reps with 10 to 15 second rest in between. Do you know approximately what percentage of a max you would use when preforming this type of lift?

btw… I am an outside linebacker… hopefully I can put on some weight and move down to inside backer :slight_smile:

yes, JSmith, That is one of my favorite techniques with volume with my squat especially.

[quote]Pistons137 wrote:
Hey… thanks a lot for confirming my thoughts. My coach will understand, and I do not think he will be against going high rep in everything else except the olympic lifts. I love the idea of the 20 reps with 10 to 15 second rest in between. Do you know approximately what percentage of a max you would use when preforming this type of lift?

btw… I am an outside linebacker… hopefully I can put on some weight and move down to inside backer :)[/quote]

for the la training with the squat i usually use 55%…for pulls, hang cleans, power cleans, pin pulls, high pulls, i use between 65-70%…rb

what some people fail to realize is that when you lower the percentage on squats and deads etc… the explosive element is improved greatly but to do the same to an already explosive movement such as the olympic lifts the training effect is greatly diminished. The training percentages for cleans, snatches should be at least 80%. On pulls though the numbers can vary so much with the style used that bar speed should be the guide.

Rob

Knobbers, I agree. If you think about it, even though we (as intelligent meatheads looking for power and strength) know that when we do squats and deads we should do them as fast as possible, it is still hard to do so. I would think this is greatly attributed to the fact that our legs still have a lot of type I muscle fibers, from all the walking, running, etc. Just talking about all this makes me want to go do something crazy with a bar on my back, I’m not sure what though!

P.S What are everybody’s favorite explosive variations for squats and deads? I haven’t really dabbled with deads but I do love banded or chained box squats. Joe Defranco has an interesting protocol for the box squat with his athletes where he times them for how long it takes to complete two reps…very cool

I just got home from training where I jumped onto a 26 inch box with a 80kg bar on my back. That is some thing to try if you are itching for some thing new. This was after rack jerks up to 150 and snatch technique work with 100.

Rob

I disagree that OL’s have to keep over 80% to be explosive. A very good friend of mine has had some really good results following a similar Westside program with Snatches and Cleans (dynamic days and max days). Bar speed is the key. The low end % for him is around 60-65%.

Favorite variation…As of right now, we just started doing our dynamic box squats with chains. We are going to keep it this way for 3 workouts. Got the chains from EFS and love them. We started at 55% for 8x2. Hopefully by week 3 we will be at 8x3 @ 60%.

They don’t have to be over 80% to be explosive but they are MORE explosive when you use heavier loads.

Rob