Week 7, Day 1

Snatch + hang snatch (knee) + OHS: (1+1+2)RM, 95% x (1+1+2) x 2, 90% x (1+1+2) x 2
Front squat: 3RM, 95% x 3 x 2, 90% x 3 x 2
Power jerk: 3RM, 95% x 3 x 2, 90% x 3 x 2

Hawk shrugging UNDER the bar to pull himself DOWN.

I want to take a moment here to reiterate an important and maybe misunderstood point about weightlifting technique: pulling under the bar. Here's the deal. Your potential to snatch and clean and jerk is MUCH higher the lower you can receive the bar. Here's a fun (and educational) exercise you can do: go to YouTube and watch the full event replays for the 2012 London Olympics, and count how many power snatches and power cleans you see (lifts received and STOPPED above parallel). My guess is ZERO. This is not because there is some rule that states that the lifts must be performed with a squat...that's just the way that weightlifters over the years have found to lift the most weight possible (the split snatch and split clean used to be popular before lifters figured out that squatting allowed more weight to be lifted). If you pay close attention to these high-level lifters, you'll notice that the bar never gets much higher than the level of the hips. At maximal weights, that's just as high as they are able to lift the bar. Squatting is then necessary to get low enough to receive maximal lifts that cannot be driven higher than the hips (notice that language, "driven" higher than the hips...I did not say "pulled" higher for a reason!).

Okay, so high-level lifters can lift more by receiving in a squat than above parallel. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking "but Coach, I can power snatch/clean way more than I can snatch/clean with a squat! Does this just mean I am different, and my potential is higher with a power snatch/clean?" Heck no! It either means you're not a proficient enough lifter yet to fully realize your current potential in a full snatch/clean, or you need to improve your squatting strength, or both! Whatever the case, the prescription is simple: get more proficient and comfortable receiving the lifts low, and do more squatting. Does this mean that pulling power is over-rated and the power versions of the lifts are useless? Absolutely not. The power versions of the lifts are great for developing top-end speed and pulling power, and as less taxing versions of the lifts in certain points in the training, but they should be thought of as assistance exercises and not substitutes for real snatches and clean and jerks!

Assuming I've convinced you that you want to receive big lifts low in a squat, we can get on to the main point of this discussion: pulling under the bar. I mentioned above that high-level lifters really only drive the bar to about the level of their hips. Now, here's an interesting dilemma...you want to get yourself under that bar, and you need to do it before the bar drops too low. "Dropping" or "falling" under the bar is NOT sufficient to accomplish that. Why? Because it is a fact that all objects in free-fall (at the same location on the Earth, with no other forces acting) accelerate at the same rate. That means if I drop a heavy barbell at the level of your hips at the same time that I drop you, your hips are not getting any lower than the bar, and both your hips and the bar are coming crashing down to the ground at the same time! So, dropping with the bar is out. What to do then? PULL under the bar, and do so BEFORE the bar starts falling. With an aggressive enough vertical drive with the legs and hips, the bar will keep some upward momentum beyond the point at which you hit full extension of the legs and hips, and will continue to travel upwards for a moment. By immediately reversing direction after hitting full extension, you can then get a head start on that heavy bar and be on your way down before it starts to fall. Here is where that pull under comes in: in order to reverse direction and pull under the bar quickly (more quickly than the bar is going to fall), you've got to leverage yourself around that barbell by actively pulling yourself DOWN. This can occur because we unweight our feet once we've reached full extension (and move them out to our squat/receiving stance while they are unweighted) and then pull ourselves down and around that heavy barbell. The barbell remains more or less fixed in space for a short moment and we get to use it as if it were a fixed bar to pull on. Pretty sweet deal. This is really what we are practicing in the Burgener warm-up (or my variation of it) everyday. The snatch pull and snatch high pull and muscle snatch are really just teaching what the arms do when you are on your way down, and should not be thought of as how to pull the bar up. If your arms are bent, you should already be on your day down under the bar! Check out the photo of Hawk above doing just that: he is clearly shrugging his shoulders and pulling with his arms, but his feet are off the ground. He is on his way down under the bar, and actively pulling himself down around the bar to get there before the bar does!