For general athleticism, muscle growth, and/or power and whatever else you might think of, when would one be a better option than the other?
Are they interchangeable or do they truly serve different purposes?
Without having regularly done any power cleans for over 7 years, my power cleans are way stronger then they were back then from PL type training. However, my power snatch which I don’t have any worse form on than my power clean is exactly same. I have no idea why.
I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other. The snatch demands more force production obviously to move the bar from the floor to all the way over your head in one movement, whereas the clean allows for more weight to be used. So, power snatching for example, can be used if you have a lot heavy intense lifting going on elsewhere and you still need something that isn’t so demanding (like the heavy cleans for example).
I’m not an Olympic guru or anything, but I personally like having at least one of the olympic lifts (or variation of) in my training at all times. For me, I think it is important in having an explosive lift that demands power, rather than training the “slower” lifts 100% of the time.