I’ve asked a similar question on the injury board but wanted to ask here…
I might need to squat rather than split jerk (injury reasons).
I can’t widen my grip very much in the rack position because I get a case of disappearing delts and can no longer support the bar.
I’ve been doing a LOT of shoulder dislocates. Totally comfortable with losing the weight behind in a snatch grip (don’t even feel a stretch with my arms that wide for dislocates).
A little concerned about my ability to safely lose the weight behind with a missed squat-jerk because of the clean grip, though.
So I’ve been working hard on bringing my grip in on the dislocates. I get to that point where people feel the stretch… And I can basically eliminate that stretch feeling by rotating my arm outwards in the socket to finish the movement. It isn’t popping out of the socket or anything like that. But rotating it totally eliminates any muscle stretch feeling.
My question is basically whether that sounds like an okay thing to do (so I should work on speeding up the disloates so I get my arm rotating naturally like that so I will naturally do that in order to follow the bar back if needed so it can clear my wrists to be dumped). Or if it sounds like that is asking for shoulder instability problems and so I should work on getting the range of motion without rotating my arm.
I really hope that made sense.
Also…
With jerks generally, I guess… Is it like cleaning and snatching in the sense that there is a natural bottom position for the movement and you want to aim to hit that bottom position every single rep. Or… Is it less like that… And more like ‘only go as low as you need to go’ kind of a thing.
I’m thinking about squat jerks in particular. But have been noticing people can surely lunge deeper than the bottom position of their split jerks. So maybe that isn’t the aim after all.
So I guess… Whether I need to work on a tight overhead squat bottom position with a clean grip, or whether I don’t need to get that low.
With jerks generally, I guess… Is it like cleaning and snatching in the sense that there is a natural bottom position for the movement and you want to aim to hit that bottom position every single rep. Or… Is it less like that… And more like ‘only go as low as you need to go’ kind of a thing.
I’m thinking about squat jerks in particular. But have been noticing people can surely lunge deeper than the bottom position of their split jerks. So maybe that isn’t the aim after all.
So I guess… Whether I need to work on a tight overhead squat bottom position with a clean grip, or whether I don’t need to get that low.[/quote]
Just an opinion from a newbie:
Go as low as you need to be. There’s little reason to aim for rock bottom because it’s far more unstable down there and the recovery will be more difficult.
Drive the bar up with the legs then pull yourself quickly under the bar. Catch the bar with your arms. Maybe you need to drive the bar up somewhat but when I got it right, it felt like a snatch.
I’m not sure what that means but try to bring the hips more in and keep the elbows high. It’s not as easy for me either to keep the bar racked with hands further away on the bar than next to my shoulders but its doable. If it doesn’t fall down you should be fine I think?
lordstorm - it is a bit tricky to explain, but whatever shelf of muscle the bar happily rests on in the rack seems to vanish as i widen my grip. actually… maybe the issue is more that i have some work to do on keeping my elbows up with my hands out wider. my elbows seem to want to go out to the sides, too, rather than out in front and it is much harder work for me to keep them up. i will practice this. if it doesn’t fall down then i should be fine - except it feels much more fatiguing to hold the bar in the rack with a wider grip. maybe it is just working my muscles a bit different so i need to practice.
paperclip - thanks. it does indeed feel less stable when i go lower. just wasn’t sure whether i needed to work on my balance so it felt better or whether i was simply going too low with them. your shoulder issues still okay now?
koing - what do you mean by ‘moderately deep’? parallel? higher? i will still work on rehabbing my toes / feet as best i can so i can switch to a split jerk ASAP. but it looks like that is going to take a while… and i need to figure something out in the meantime. simply can’t train split jerks right now (can’t do the movement pain-free so compensate in bad ways that are likely to result in injury).
i’m most comfortable with a snatch grip. but i can’t hold the bar in the rack position with a snatch-width grip. i’d have to hold the bar in my hands and it gets too heavy.
Go as deep as you need but on the heavier weights you will need to go deeper as it will push you lower. This is where most Squat Jerks are lost or when Power Jerks are too deep they are lost.
I don’t have much experience with Squat Jerking so I can’t really comment. I know it was f0cking tough as nails and I only managed 95kg to rock bottom. I could PJ more at the time so it was pretty useless
if i think of it as driving it up as hard as i can and then pushing my arms up hard against it (which will push me down under) then braking as soon as my arms are locked out…
is that a good way to think of it? so i only go as low as i need to? instead of thinking i need to drop under it to a bottom position, i mean.
if i think of it as driving it up as hard as i can and then pushing my arms up hard against it (which will push me down under) then braking as soon as my arms are locked out…
is that a good way to think of it? so i only go as low as i need to? instead of thinking i need to drop under it to a bottom position, i mean.
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There are 2 ways to think about this
Your way and the rock bottom approach.
I tried the rock bottom approach. It was really f0cking hard as you’d have the balance issue and to get up over and over again.
If you develop lots of power you can go with your method. I did not so I had to go rock bottom. BUT do keep in mind that when it’s heavy YOU WILL GO TO ROCK BOTTOM so you better get use to it imo. See how it works out for you but imo a PJ rode down to a squat jerk doesn’t really work for most people. You just don’t see it working. They go down and the ball drops forwards, game over.
so then i should drive then drop down to a bottom position?
i’m used to sucking and falling over, so won’t make too much of a change for me lolz.
i can’t actually dip-drive anything terribly well with the elevated heel, so my push-press is pathetic and i can’t even push-jerk 30kg. so i guess i’m going to need to learn to get well under. i’m losing it forwards a lot, or muscling it around, as you say. feel like i’m not flexible enough to catch back over my traps with a clean grip.
paperclip - thanks. it does indeed feel less stable when i go lower. just wasn’t sure whether i needed to work on my balance so it felt better or whether i was simply going too low with them. your shoulder issues still okay now?
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I think the weight of the barbell determines how low you go, it’s like power clean/snatch.
BTW thanks for asking about my shoulders, they are OK now. But now I have groin strain which sucks because it makes all lifts difficult. At least when I injured my shoulders I just couldn’t do jerks.
