Is it time to clean up your cleans? 3 Tips to get you up to speed to your ultimate bout of cleaning!

I see many people getting this amazing powerful movement wrong, especially so in group fitness classes.

Such a shame, especially when you consider the true beauty of this movement. I mean why else do you do so many squats, deadlifts, upright rows, high pulls over and over again? When you cannot combine them properly for the clean.

For me, this is the true magic behind the lift and resistance training Itself.

If you’re struggling to clean with vigour, check out my tips to get you powering through your barbell each time.

1. Learn how to ‘Snap’ underneath the bar. Often in group fitness programs such as body pump you are challenged to clean the bar from the hip. Note, that this type of clean is carried out in traditional weight training for speed development. Therefore, if you are partaking in programs such as body pump, speed or ‘snap’ should be your absolute focus. Rather than performing a muscle up (where you use your upper body to bring your barbell up to our collar bone height), best first to consider where power is best developed. The greatest power source in our body of course is initiated in the hips. To create a more efficient clean (lifting higher weights with more power) your focus is to get under your bar fast.
   

2. Land as deep as possible underneath your bar. The prime focus for all lifters is to power through as heavy weights as possible. In order to do this, you not only need to get underneath your bar fast, (as per my first tip above) its also essential to learn to get depth underneath your bar. This is because mechanically, it’s far easier to jump underneath the bar than muscle up your hefty weight on the barbell to your upper body. This is where nailing your front squat depth and flexibility in the background. Hang on a minute....did I say squat jump? Yes indeed I did! Your feet will need to leave the floor (or at the very least your heels), to get full height on the bar before dropping underneath your BB as fast as you can. If you are struggling to do this best to practice with some fast squat drop drill

3. Work with a heavy enough weight to keep vertical tracking of the bar. This tip is totally unique for this lift. The clients that struggle to keep their bar vertically, often don’t have enough weight on the bar to start with. With this lift in particular, working with a heavy enough weight encourages you to maintain vertical tracking of the bar. With a heavy weight it is very difficult to do the kangaroo- Ex. move the bar away from your body. When the bar is too light, i find clients tend to dither around with incorrect form more because it’s easy to lift a light weight away from your body centre. So when I coach this lift, I look at clients from the side of their body. During the successful, full clean, the bar tracks in a straight line from the ankle, knee hip, shoulder. As soon as the bar tracks away from this line- not only will it become a much less efficient lift, but also your body will compensate and you tend to put excessive loads on your spine, hips, shoulders. Something we want to avoid at all costs, because we want to lift forever . Right?

Remember the goal for all lifters, is to maximise the weight they lift in the minimal amount of time. This is why weightlifting should be re-named powerlifting. Since the names are deeply embedded in the sports and fitness world, probably can’t change the name now. Nevertheless, important to understand the concept of this sport in its purest form.

The reason why we do rep after rep of deadlifts, high pulls, upright rows,

squats is to be smashing at the clean (And jerk)

Full appreciation for all your hard work with the iron is great. Focus on form and remember the pro’s practice over and over and over and over again. The technique is not going to be perfect if by attempting it just once or twice or even worse giving up all together!. Be relentless in your pursuit of awesome form, challenge yourself with the right weight on the bar, don’t be afraid of asking for assistance with expert coaches and most of all have FUN!