Hands Sliding On Clean Turnover
If your hands slide in when you turn your cleans over, here’s how to quit it.
Your hands slide because there’s resistance to their being in the original grip width—they’re just moving into a position that has the least resistance. Improving your mobility in the rack position will help reduce this tendency, but that’s a long process and it won’t necessarily eliminate it completely.
Your hands CAN slide because you’re releasing your grip on the bar—they cannot slide in if you’re still gripping tightly enough, no matter how immobile you are.
In other words, the problem can only be solved by fixing the timing of your grip release and tension against the bar, not just improving mobility.
You need to maintain a secure enough grip on the bar past the point at which any tension tries to pull your hands in. Generally this will be at least until the elbows begin moving up from under the bar and may need to be even later.
You can also try holding your hook grip throughout the turnover to get a feel for a full grip, but this should be temporary and not the only approach you use since it will usually reduce elbow height and speed, and we don’t want to build new bad habits while trying to fix old ones.
If your immobility and/or arm proportions don’t allow you to maintain your grip on the bar long enough, you can still reduce the problem. All we need to do is maintain tension or friction between the hands and bar to prevent sliding. We can still do this with an open grip by driving the body up into the bar to maintain pressure.
As you turn the bar over and allow your grip to open, push the elbows up and reach the chest and shoulders up to meet the bar, which will help keep pressure against the bar to stop the hands from sliding, and as a bonus will minimize bar crashing.
Practice the movement and timing with tall muscle cleans and tall cleans—throw in a few sets of 5 of each before every clean workout, and as part of your warm-up on other days if you have the time.
See the linked videos for improving your rack mobility, ensuring your rack position is correct, and drills to improve your turnover mechanics.
Your hands slide because there’s resistance to their being in the original grip width—they’re just moving into a position that has the least resistance. Improving your mobility in the rack position will help reduce this tendency, but that’s a long process and it won’t necessarily eliminate it completely.
Your hands CAN slide because you’re releasing your grip on the bar—they cannot slide in if you’re still gripping tightly enough, no matter how immobile you are.
In other words, the problem can only be solved by fixing the timing of your grip release and tension against the bar, not just improving mobility.
You need to maintain a secure enough grip on the bar past the point at which any tension tries to pull your hands in. Generally this will be at least until the elbows begin moving up from under the bar and may need to be even later.
You can also try holding your hook grip throughout the turnover to get a feel for a full grip, but this should be temporary and not the only approach you use since it will usually reduce elbow height and speed, and we don’t want to build new bad habits while trying to fix old ones.
If your immobility and/or arm proportions don’t allow you to maintain your grip on the bar long enough, you can still reduce the problem. All we need to do is maintain tension or friction between the hands and bar to prevent sliding. We can still do this with an open grip by driving the body up into the bar to maintain pressure.
As you turn the bar over and allow your grip to open, push the elbows up and reach the chest and shoulders up to meet the bar, which will help keep pressure against the bar to stop the hands from sliding, and as a bonus will minimize bar crashing.
Practice the movement and timing with tall muscle cleans and tall cleans—throw in a few sets of 5 of each before every clean workout, and as part of your warm-up on other days if you have the time.
See the linked videos for improving your rack mobility, ensuring your rack position is correct, and drills to improve your turnover mechanics.
