What Do You Clean?

[quote]eisenaffe wrote:
CrewPierce wrote:
I like doing power cleans because they seem to help my deadlift. You get the speed training from the start of the lift and builds up your upper back on the shrug/catch.

Then you’re misusing them!

A fast pull from the floor like in a speed deadlift throws off your form considerably on the powerclean. A pull for a powerclean throws off your deadlift form.

The two movements have two different paths, startingpositions and dynamic.

[/quote]
Bill Starr trained for the deadlift without actually doing the deadlift. He used power cleans, heavy shrugs, high pulls and good mornings. Westside Barbell rarely does the deadlift. Their primary exercises are box squats and good mornings.

Link to an article by Bill Starr:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060214162433/www.americanpowerliftevolution.net/New+Folder+1969/dlapproach1.html

[quote]CrewPierce wrote:

While I agree that they have different starting positions, namely how far away the bar is from your shins, I would disagree with the rest. First I think you can do both and still keep your form for each independent of one another. Secondly, the path of the bar up until your thighs is very similar in both lifts. My weak point in my deadlift if 1/2 way up my shins, so the difference between the 2 lifts after that point doesn’t concern me.

Being a tall guy I like to get as much leg/hip strength as I can in the deadlift(as I don’t get much at all with my long legs and arms) and I feel that the cleans help in that.[/quote]

It’s not just the bar being further from your shin. The shoulders are above the bar in the deadlift and in front of the bar in the first pull of the clean. In the deadlift you pull slightly towards you scraping the legs whereas in the clean the first pull is more vertical and the bar doesn’t touch the shins.

In the deadlift the knees and hips should extend simultaneously during the lift whereas in the clean the knees extend while the back maintains the same angle in the first pull up to the knees or slightly below where the second pull begins. The second pull is preceeded or simultaneous with the double knee bend which you don’t have in the deadlift.

…but to each his own.

Well I said the most not worthy was the bar being further from the shins which in the correct form forces your shoulders to be in a different position than in the deadlift.

Also, in the deadlift it shouldn’t be scraping all the way up your shins, they recently had an article on this site about how if your shins are scrapped/bloody you aren’t pulling correctly.

This the clean you should be engaging your hips since before you shrug up the bar should “sit” on your thighs.

Now this of course is all in theory and like you said, to each their own.

[quote]CrewPierce wrote:

Also, in the deadlift it shouldn’t be scraping all the way up your shins, they recently had an article on this site about how if your shins are scrapped/bloody you aren’t pulling correctly.
.[/quote]

Having pulled 635 and having trained with a one 881 puller (275 class) and several 700+ pullers(in fact, one did it as a 165), I have to disagree with that. Yes, I have seen some big weights lifted stiff-leg style. But, most successful, hard pulls ride up the legs- just like a Smith machine lubed with talcum and human blood.

With hardly any “dip”, ie to FS, i’ve hang cleaned 225 @ 210.

I have power cleaned % jerked 210 lbs at 210lbs…

but I never train them, I just add them in to make sure I can always clean and jerk my body weight.

[quote]Pinto wrote:
CrewPierce wrote:

Also, in the deadlift it shouldn’t be scraping all the way up your shins, they recently had an article on this site about how if your shins are scrapped/bloody you aren’t pulling correctly.
.

Having pulled 635 and having trained with a one 881 puller (275 class) and several 700+ pullers(in fact, one did it as a 165), I have to disagree with that. Yes, I have seen some big weights lifted stiff-leg style. But, most successful, hard pulls ride up the legs- just like a Smith machine lubed with talcum and human blood.

[/quote]

Exactly. So some article says this means you aren’t pulling correctly if you scrape your shins and you take this as the ultimate truth?

How bout looking at the shins of many top powerlifters?

And to the guy who started the thread, how much do you pull?

To Pinto, do you live in the U.S.? An 881 is fuckin insane. Did you train with Goggins?

[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
I cleaned my apartment yesterday.[/quote]

I cleaned my truck.

225@200ish

I do olypmic lifts about every 3-4 weeks.

Lots of fun.

[quote]vandalay15 wrote:
Pinto wrote:
CrewPierce wrote:

Also, in the deadlift it shouldn’t be scraping all the way up your shins, they recently had an article on this site about how if your shins are scrapped/bloody you aren’t pulling correctly.
.

Having pulled 635 and having trained with a one 881 puller (275 class) and several 700+ pullers(in fact, one did it as a 165), I have to disagree with that. Yes, I have seen some big weights lifted stiff-leg style. But, most successful, hard pulls ride up the legs- just like a Smith machine lubed with talcum and human blood.

Exactly. So some article says this means you aren’t pulling correctly if you scrape your shins and you take this as the ultimate truth?

How bout looking at the shins of many top powerlifters?

And to the guy who started the thread, how much do you pull?

To Pinto, do you live in the U.S.? An 881 is fuckin insane. Did you train with Goggins? [/quote]

Haha hey I said in theory! I scape my shins when I’m going for maxes as well, I was just quoting an article that was on here not too long ago. That is one hell of a pull btw!

205 at 165

I also like power snatches a lot. I hit a monster 125 at 165 the other day for a PR. Got a lot of work to do on those.

297lbs @ 225lb b/w

Now I do power snatch instead…I find then easier on my elbows. 220lbs @ 210lb b/w

[quote]vandalay15 wrote:

To Pinto, do you live in the U.S.? An 881 is fuckin insane. Did you train with Goggins? [/quote]

Yup- the 881 would be Goggin’s pull. Steve has the strongest back of any human being I have witnessed.

225@185 is a pretty good number. Especially if you haven’t had a lot of formal training. In college, I power cleaned 264 for 2 reps @ 185 BW. And I was on a Div I track team, getting excellent coaching and 4 years of Olympic weightraining work. Now-a-days (10 years post-college) my Oly power clean workouts generally finish up at 245 for 2 reps and my BW now is about 175.

As someone else posted, your at a level where you probably have the basic strength available to train and compete in Olympic lifting competitions. Of course, there’s a lot of technical training to learn something like the snatch, but you’ve definitely got the strength for it.

If you’ve never tried this before, I suggest throwing some high pulls into your training. They really give your traps a kick. I started doing just like 3x8 of high pulls at 135, pulling them as high as I could, after my Olympic lift wrokouts. It killed my traps, but after a few weeks of that, my power clean jumped up.

Clean (and jerk) 105kg.
Power clean 100kg.

bpdy weight: ~81kg.

[quote]beans wrote:
225@185 is a pretty good number. Especially if you haven’t had a lot of formal training. In college, I power cleaned 264 for 2 reps @ 185 BW. And I was on a Div I track team, getting excellent coaching and 4 years of Olympic weightraining work. Now-a-days (10 years post-college) my Oly power clean workouts generally finish up at 245 for 2 reps and my BW now is about 175.

As someone else posted, your at a level where you probably have the basic strength available to train and compete in Olympic lifting competitions. Of course, there’s a lot of technical training to learn something like the snatch, but you’ve definitely got the strength for it.

If you’ve never tried this before, I suggest throwing some high pulls into your training. They really give your traps a kick. I started doing just like 3x8 of high pulls at 135, pulling them as high as I could, after my Olympic lift wrokouts. It killed my traps, but after a few weeks of that, my power clean jumped up.[/quote]

Thanks for the comment! I’ll try the high pulls tonight when I lift. I haven’t ever had any training except when I wrestled in HS our coach very briefly showed us how to do cleans as well as clean+jerk. I may see if there is a coach around here that I could go to to learn more.

[quote]
Thanks for the comment! I’ll try the high pulls tonight when I lift. I haven’t ever had any training except when I wrestled in HS our coach very briefly showed us how to do cleans as well as clean+jerk. I may see if there is a coach around here that I could go to to learn more.[/quote]

I actually wouldn’t do high pulls if I were you. If anything, you are probably using your arms too much right now and high pulls tend to reinforce that habit in newer olympic-style lifters. Instead, I’d practice doing pulls while keeping your arms completely straight in order to train yourself to just use hip/legs/traps.

Also, the first pull in the clean or the snatch is definitely different than the deadlift. In fact, there isn’t even a lot of acceleration in the first pull; most good lifters pull the bar in a more slow, controlled fashion to their knees and then start exploding. This helps you get into the right position for the second pull.

Further, as another posted, the idea is to keep your shoulders in front of the bar - the weight is not heavy enough in a clean to necessitate deadlift form: the whole point of that first pull is just to prepare for the second pull.

What are some of the training techniques you guys have used to increase your cleans?

Right now I’m working with triples between 75-85% of my max.

I’d like to get my clean up to 200+ before track season which starts January.

Well yesterday I ended up trying snatches and I got up to 3x135 but I wasn’t feeling so well and almost passed out. (My gym doesn’t use A/C and it was in the 90’s yesterday so I’m sure that didn’t help any)

I know my form more than likely sucked ass, so I have decided to try and find a coach around me that can teach me the correct form. Hopefully then I can try and figure this stuff out better and maybe compete.

As to lifting the bar slowly, I watch the Olympics and I’ve never seen any lifter do anything slow there. Just about everything seems to be pretty explosive to me anyway.

Power clean 230 at 195 lb. BW.
Hang clean 200 lb. with very raw technique

Look more carefully, then:

His first pull is definitely slower and more deliberate and he doesnt start exploding until the beginning of his second pull. Again, the whole point of the first pull is to get the bar and your body in perfect position for the second pull.