So I’m really struggling with the pull from the floor (I’m just doing a pull in the vid, not a full clean). You’ll see it looks ‘ok’ until the bar gets to my knees, and then I straighten my legs - putting the bar a million miles away from my body, instead of keeping it close and pulling it around my knees (or whatever I’m supposed to be doing…)
So I can see it’s horribly wrong… but seem to have ingrained this motor pattern and am struggling to fix it. Suggestions? Does my start position look sort of ok? any tips, cues etc would be greatly appreciated.
P.S it’s super slow mode video. I’m not moving that slow in real life…
Even though the plates obstruct the view, it is quite clear that your knees are extending too much (literally locked out) toward the latter portion of the first pull.
Also you are hypertextending too much at the end of the second pull.
However, I would prioritize eliminating that momentary locked out position in your knees. I would imagine you are going to have to relearn the first pull and drill that in conjunction with the phase where you transition into the second pull.
As for how you would go about doing this, I’ll let some of the coaches/competitive guys on here chime in as they will set you in the right direction.
Thanks Aragon & Egg head. I’ve been trying to consciously get my lats in there, and think I’m doing so - until I see video like this and see it’s all still f*cked up. The last part, the hyper extension, I can fix easy (I don’t think I actually extend like this on an actual lift). The legs however…make me want to kill myself.
Unfortunately in south Australia there is little in the way of actual Olympic weightlifting, so finding a coach would be pretty hard… and even then I’d be pretty skeptical of their credentials. My eyeballs would fall out if I ever saw a lifting platform around here.
I suspect some very slow painful drilling with an empty bar ahead of me. Hopefully some more guys can chime in thrash me about how I ought to approach it.
Make sure the weight is on your heels, not the ball of the foot.
And yep you’re straightening your legs way too much. Only straighten them till the bar is just below the knees, then start to straighten your back.
Also as others have said you need contract your lats to sweep the bar in.
This video helped me with the same problem.
Also I highly recommend going on californiastength dot com, and checking out the tutorial videos.
Thanks Alex (your vid doesn’t seem to work? maybe my computer being a spaz).
Seems I need to get my sweep going. I’ve watched Glen’s videos regarding the clean, and also McCauley’s. There seems to be some disagreement between the two videos which has me confused. In McCauley’s vid, he shows the bar sweeping back to a point where the legs are basically straight by using the lats, and then the knee re-bend deal in anticipation of the last pull. In Glen’s tutorial, it seems the legs are straightened only until the bar gets just below the knees, then the hip pivots (keeping the knees bent) to get to the last pull. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood them and they are doing the same thing… or are these simply different philosophies?
I think the difference with those two is that Mccauley is much more about the most efficient technique and Pendlay is demonstrating the easiest way to get started with doing the lifts…If you watch vids of elite lifters you’ll notice some will straigthen the knees a bit more than others, for instance this vid of Lu Xiaojun
he barely seems to straighten his legs at all…here’s another good one in slow motion;
this one of klokov he seems to straigten out a bit more than Lu (in the first vid) but not much klokov snatches 190 - YouTube
I wouldn’t worry about it too much, the gist is you don’t want your legs totally straight, just enough to keep an efficient bar path…
The link below is to Nick Horton’s fab five snatch drill which as a beginner myself has helped me get handle on pulling from the floor the most out of anyting I’ve seen or tried:
After I got this down I moved onto another drill he has which I highly recommend where you pull from the floor, pause at the knee for 2-3 seconds to make sure you got that transition locked in, then finish the pull.
