Strength or Skill?

Nick | 12/04/2013 | 11

Clean Pulls and clean eating. (jk, this is clearly a snatch attempt)

You might have noticed recently that I refer to the middle part of class more and more as the “skill” portion, even if this involves barbells.  I do this very purposely.  The idea is to get you to focus more on utilizing the proper technique to complete a lift than to just move more weight through the prescribed range of motion.  Why do we do this?  Well, there are a number of reasons.

First, and perhaps most obviously, it’s safer.  Beyond that though, it trains our movements patterns such that we will be improving not only the lift or movement we are currently performing, but also a number of other movements with similar patterning as well.  I firmly believe that my double unders improved drastically by working on my body position during pullups.  (Seriously.  I didn’t do any double unders for a couple of months during which time I made my hollow position a high priority and, go figure, the next time I did double unders they were much more efficient.)

Today’s example is much more clear.  While clean pulls might somewhat resemble a deadlift, they are a drill for the clean.  Again, this might seem obvious, but make sure that you treat it this way.  Just because you can pick up a barbell and shrug your shoulders at a given weight doesn’t make it a useful stimulus.  For this to translate to the full clean we’ll want to make sure our back angle stays consistent (and our back stays straight!!!) as the bar travels from the ground to the knees.  We need to keep the bar close and make sure we pass through the hang position.  And we need to be sure the hips fire completely before the shoulders shrug.  If any of these are not happening, back the weight off and get your form crisp.  It will be much better for you in the long run.

STR (and SKILL):

Clean pull
3-3-3-3-3

*Set 1 should be around 90% of your max clean. Build from there.

WOD:

10 to 1
CTB pull-ups
Power cleans (155/105)