Week 1, Day 2: Presses, jerks, and handstands

Snatch: 6 singles*
Front squat: 5RM; 2 sets of 5 reps @ 90%
Press (behind the neck, jerk grip): 3 sets of 5 reps

*Do the snatches with minimal rest between singles.

Uche with a solid jerk in her first meet!

I want to clarify a little what we are trying to accomplish with the presses, and emphasize that this is really more an overhead positioning drill than an upper body strengthening exercise. First and foremost, this is not intended to help you press more weight overhead in the jerk. Contrary to popular misconceptions, the jerk is NOT an expression of overhead strength. There should be very minimal (if any) pressing action in a properly executed jerk. The only really pressing comes in pressing (or "wedging") oneself UNDER the bar. There should be absolutely no driving of the bar UP with the arms! The main purpose of the shoulders and arms in the jerk (and in the snatch, for that matter) is just to support the bar once it is overhead. This is more dependent on good positioning than on upper body strength. Mike Burgener (of the famed "Burgener Warm-up") uses the phrase "stacking the bones" to indicate that the predominate mechanism of support in the overhead positions should be the skeletal structure through good positioning. And this is where the pressing comes in.

The goal with the pressing is to reinforce or maybe even develop for the first time a good overhead position, and to strengthen or encourage activation of the particular muscles that put us into that good shoulder position, and also to help develop the flexibility necessary to get us there. I'm a big believer in stretching through proper movement, and I think that this exercise is a great way to stretch whatever the heck it is that gets tight that prevents YOU in particular from achieving the optimal shoulder position. We do these from behind the neck because it allows us to press the bar up and BACK like we want to put the back where we need it, "behind the ears" as some people say, without the complication of getting our face out of the way (no, this does not mean you should thrust your head forward to achieve this behind the ears position). It's too easy to get into that over-extended, leaned back, support the bar with the front of our shoulders position with pressing from in front I think, and that's why we do these from behind. Ah, and this reminds me of another point I've been meaning to talk about...

There are a lot of parallels between the overhead position in the jerk or snatch and a good, solid handstand. I've noticed personally that developing my jerk has lead to a surprising amount of improvement in things like handstand push-ups, handstand walks, etc., despite doing absolutely nothing to develop these things specifically. After a long hiatus from any kind of handstand work, I casually hit like a 5-rep PR on my strict handstand push-ups, doing nothing but snatches, clean and jerks, and squats (and some push-presses). This is a double-edged sword though, and bad positioning in one can lead to bad positioning in the other. In particular, if you have a tendency to do your handstand work in the ever-popular over-extended, leaned way back, looking at your hands with your knees bent and feet hanging over the front of your body style, you are teaching yourself TERRIBLE positioning for your jerks! The parallel between these two things really hit me while watching athletes do handstand walks in a CrossFit class, and then watching my lifters do them in a warm-up for one of our training sessions. Lots of folks have a tendency to adopt this positioning, and maybe not so coincidentally, this is one of the big things we've been trying to eliminate in our overhead work. I think the presses from behind the neck will do a lot to help this, but if we are practicing this bad positioning in other areas of our training, this will be a losing battle. It is absolutely essential then to practice good positioning when doing any movement, especially those that carry over specifically to the lifts. What this means for handstands is adopting a more rigid body positioning, getting those legs extended, those toes pointed, squeezing the butt, hollow midsection, and, maybe most importantly and potentially most difficult to adapt to, getting that chin tucked and stopping looking down at those hands! Yup, your hands will still be there, even if you can't see them. I promise. The cue that I've heard in my little niece's gymnastics class is to get your "arms by your ears". Practice this every time you kick up into a handstand, and it should do wonders to improve your jerk.

Okay, back to the presses today. We've established the importance of good shoulder positioning, and I've stated that the purpose of the presses today is to help develop this good shoulder positioning. What this means is that the weight on the bar is secondary to practicing this good positioning (noticing a theme here?). Nobody cares how much you can strict press from behind the neck with a jerk grip. You should select a weight no heavier than allows you to really practice that movement and drive that bar up and back. If your elbows start coming forward and you let the bar drift forward over or in front of your head immediately, it's too heavy. Again, it doesn't matter how much weight you do in this exercise, it matters how perfectly you can do this exercise! Hold each rep at the top, and if you have trouble achieving good positioning overhead, really stretch the bar back at the top as you pause up there. Squeeze the shoulders up and back throughout the whole movement. Finally, come down to a DEAD STOP on your traps between each rep. No "touch and go" here! Start conservatively this week, and we will aim to add just a little bit of weight each week. Be diligent with these, and I bet it will pay dividends on those heavy jerks!