Leg Drive vs Leg Extension in the Snatch & Clean
If we forcefully extend the knees and hips together, we get this. Look familiar? Yes, it’s a kettlebell swing.
Add a barbell to that, and we get a bad way to snatch or clean. The bar gets pushed forward and we get relatively little upward acceleration or elevation.
If instead, we push or drive with the legs against the floor, we also get knee and hip extension, but a totally different result. Look familiar? Yes, it’s a jump.
Add a barbell and control some details, and we get a snatch or clean pull.
There’s more to the pull than simply extending the legs and hips. The motion of the body in the pull is completely different from simultaneous knee and hip extension—the extension needs to be organized in a very specific way to produce the action we want.
By driving with the legs while extending the hips, the body can naturally orchestrate the motion to generate maximal upward barbell acceleration through the proper path.
This is one of those odd things about the body that usually doesn’t immediately make sense, but has serious practical implications for the Olympic lifts.
Let your body execute based on a simple goal for the action rather than trying to manage every detail with play-by-play direction—your conscious mind is incapable of that kind of operation. It’s way too fast and way too complex.
Use your conscious mind to control positions and balance in bordering phases, i.e. the starting position and initiation of the pull, and gross timing, i.e. when to initiate the final upward explosion we’re talking about here.
And no… I did not say the pull of the snatch and clean is exactly the same as a vertical jump.
Add a barbell to that, and we get a bad way to snatch or clean. The bar gets pushed forward and we get relatively little upward acceleration or elevation.
If instead, we push or drive with the legs against the floor, we also get knee and hip extension, but a totally different result. Look familiar? Yes, it’s a jump.
Add a barbell and control some details, and we get a snatch or clean pull.
There’s more to the pull than simply extending the legs and hips. The motion of the body in the pull is completely different from simultaneous knee and hip extension—the extension needs to be organized in a very specific way to produce the action we want.
By driving with the legs while extending the hips, the body can naturally orchestrate the motion to generate maximal upward barbell acceleration through the proper path.
This is one of those odd things about the body that usually doesn’t immediately make sense, but has serious practical implications for the Olympic lifts.
Let your body execute based on a simple goal for the action rather than trying to manage every detail with play-by-play direction—your conscious mind is incapable of that kind of operation. It’s way too fast and way too complex.
Use your conscious mind to control positions and balance in bordering phases, i.e. the starting position and initiation of the pull, and gross timing, i.e. when to initiate the final upward explosion we’re talking about here.
And no… I did not say the pull of the snatch and clean is exactly the same as a vertical jump.
