Proper Timing Of The Leg Drive In The Snatch & Clean Pull Exercise
In the snatch or clean pull or high-pull, timing of the leg drive is important to train timing and force production in the pulls of the snatch and clean.
A common mistake is quitting the leg drive immediately upon reaching the final extension of the knees and hips and dropping back to flat feet.
Instead, continue driving with the legs against the ground as long as the bar is still moving upward. In other words, don’t relax before the bar finishes ascending—bring your body down with the bar.
In an actual snatch or clean, the legs will not continue driving until the bar reaches its maximal height like in a pull; however, cutting the leg drive off early when training pulls limits their effectiveness and will tend to cause weak and incomplete leg drive in snatches and cleans.
Note that in a speed pull, also known as a panda pull, the lifter will be actively pulling the body down to the bar after reaching full extension rather than continuing to pull the bar up past this point as they would in a conventional high-pull.
While this appears very different, the fundamental goal of constantly applying force to the bar is identical, and it takes a lot of discipline to finish the pull completely in this variation, which is why it’s generally a poor choice for new lifters who don’t yet have a solid technical foundation.
A common mistake is quitting the leg drive immediately upon reaching the final extension of the knees and hips and dropping back to flat feet.
Instead, continue driving with the legs against the ground as long as the bar is still moving upward. In other words, don’t relax before the bar finishes ascending—bring your body down with the bar.
In an actual snatch or clean, the legs will not continue driving until the bar reaches its maximal height like in a pull; however, cutting the leg drive off early when training pulls limits their effectiveness and will tend to cause weak and incomplete leg drive in snatches and cleans.
Note that in a speed pull, also known as a panda pull, the lifter will be actively pulling the body down to the bar after reaching full extension rather than continuing to pull the bar up past this point as they would in a conventional high-pull.
While this appears very different, the fundamental goal of constantly applying force to the bar is identical, and it takes a lot of discipline to finish the pull completely in this variation, which is why it’s generally a poor choice for new lifters who don’t yet have a solid technical foundation.
