All About The Power Clean

IN TODAY’S ISSUE
All About The Power Clean

The power clean can be performed in different movement variations, the most common being hang power cleans and clean high pulls, (basically not finishing the catch).

These movements have long been associated with athletic performance by increasing athletes potential power output.

Why focus on power cleans? As opposed to other olympic lifts? Well your full clean, snatch and split jerks take much longer to learn and perform correctly and safely, whereas with the power clean you get get the benefits of performing an explosive barbell movement with less time and injury risk.

Today we want to look at how / if they fit into your training program. Say you just want to get strong and jacked, does the power clean or variations have a place in your program? And if so, what would be its purpose?

What You'll Find Out

• 🤓 Breaking Down The Power Clean

• 👉 Why Incorporate Power Cleans

• ✍️ TL:DR - Key Takeaways & Practical Applications

BASICS
Breaking Down The Power Clean

As mentioned above, the power clean, hang power clean and clean high pulls offer you the ability to reap the benefits of olympic weightlifting without years spent perfecting technique and reduced injury risk.

It’s why the power clean is a favorite among strength and conditioning coaches in other sports outside olympic weightlifting. They don’t have the time to teach a sprinter or thrower how perform a snatch, but they can improve power output with the power clean.

It will also help the everyday gym goer perform better at life, having more athleticism, potential power output and overall just making you a more capable human being, can make every day tasks easier.

HOW TO PERFORM THE POWER CLEAN

I’m going to break this down into its simplest form for the purpose of this email, but please do your own research before performing.

1. Starting Position: Place feet between hip- and shoulder-width apart with the toes pointed slightly outward so the knees track directly over the feet. Position the arms outside the knees with the elbows fully extended and bar 1 inch in front of the shins.

2. First Pull: forcefully extend the hips and knees, keeping the torso angle constant in relation to the floor, do not let the hips rise before or faster than the shoulders (we are not deadlifting). Maintain full elbow extension while not actively pulling on the bar with our arms.

3. Transition: Once the bar rises to just above the knees, thrust the hips forward and slightly flex the knees to move the thighs against, and the knees under, the bar.

4. Second Pull: After the transition, start the second pull by quickly extending the hips, knees, and ankles (triple extension). As the lower body joints fully extend, rapidly shrug the shoulders. Once fully shrugged, flex the elbows and pull your body under the bar.

5. The Catch: Finish the movement with catching the bar in a front squat position. With the bar landing on the anterior delts and clavicle.

BENEFITS
Why Incorporate Power Cleans?

A study by (James et al., 2019), had 20 active males, take part in a 10 week training intervention that added in the power clean as a part of their program. They found the results showed significant improvements in power development, including rate of force development and relative impulse.

A study by (Hori et al., 2008) looked at whether a high performance in a hang power clean transfers to high performances in sprinting, jumping and change of direction.

They found that athletes in the top half of 1RM hang power clean (relative to body weight) had higher performance of jumping and sprinting, demonstrated higher maximum strength, and higher peak power output.

A review article published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning (Huyghe et al., 2021) found that looking at the available data, power cleans and hang power cleans should be incorporated into most athletes training programs.

A study from researchers at the Department of Health and Exercise Science at the College of New Jersey (Hoffman et al., 2009) conducted a 15-week study on weight-lifting exercises involving 20 Division III college players.

Group 1 focused on powerlifting exercises such as the squat, while Group 2 focused on Olympic lifting exercises such as the power clean. Both groups showed improvements in the vertical jump, a standard test for athletic power, the authors said, “Results suggest that OL can provide a significant advantage over PL in vertical jump performance changes.”

TL:DR
Key Takeaways & Practical Applications

Power cleans can help improve your power output through rate of force production. They also train your full posterior chain in one movement and look pretty cool to do.

Incorporating them into your program may assist with your other lifts through increasing rate of for production you are capable of.

If subject A can deadlift 200kg, but subject B can deadlift 200kg faster, subject A has a higher chance of completing the lift as it won’t take as long to complete the lift generating more fatigue, with less likelihood of sticking points.

If your goal is to increase athletic performance or any particular lift, having more explosive power will only help, and this is something power cleans train very well.

That’s it for today ✌️

If you have any questions you’d like answered, topics you would like discussed, or perhaps some feedback, email them over to me at: [email protected]

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