Who Else Wants To Improve His Power Clean Technique?

May 16th, 2007 by Mehdi Tags: Exercise, Power Clean, Strength Training, Weight Lifting

The Power Clean is the best exercise to develop power. What is power? The ability to explode, to accelerate. Whatever sport you practice: you need power.

If you’re into strength training, developing power will help you build strength. By moving the weight faster, you can go past your sticky point.

The power clean is a very technical lift. These 5 tips will help you improve your Power Clean technique.

1. Keep Your Arms Straight. The Power Clean is a jump & shrug movement, not an Upright Row. Trying to pull the weight by bending your arms is:

Inefficient. Arms must be straight for maximal power transfer.
Dangerous. You could tear your biceps

Pull from the floor with your arms straight. You can achieve this best by using a hook grip. This allows for a secure grip while keeping the forearms, biceps & triceps relaxed.

2. Pull Slow From The Floor, Fast At The Top. Jerking the weight from the floor leads to incorrect technique higher in the pull.

Pull slow from the floor, don’t jerk it.
Accelerate the movement as the bar goes higher.
Explode once the bar reaches above mid-thigh level.

3. Keep The Bar Close To You. Keep the bar in contact with your thighs at all time before initiating the jump. Once the bar comes above mid-thigh level: jump. Put your chest forward & try to touch your shirt on the way up.

4. Stomp The floor. Stomp the floor after jumping. Stomp it hard. Through practice the racking of the bar will coincide with the stomp. The faster you stomp, the faster you’ll pull the weight up. Which means more power.

5. Rack With The Elbows High. Correct rack position permits you to support heavy weight. Correct rack position has:

elbows straight forward
upperarm nearly parallel with the floor

Do some triceps stretches & wrist stretches if you have trouble reaching this position.

Tired of the way you look? You want to build muscle & lose fat while getting stronger? Click here to download my 52 pages 100% FREE eBook.

Articles You Might Also Like:

8 Responses to “Who Else Wants To Improve His Power Clean Technique?”

on 21 Aug 2007 at 7:41 pm1Eric

I always have problems racking the weight correctly. My elbows are always too low. How about a video?
on 23 Aug 2007 at 12:46 pm2Mehdi

Here’s a video of me doing a 95kg powerclean. If you wonder why I “fall forward”: this was a close to max attempt back then, in which I didn’t kept the weight on my heels.

On the elbows up. My only tip: focus on it. You must focus on keeping your elbows up. Do several reps, where you’re only goal is technique. Throw your elbows up as fast as you can. Also:
-Work on triceps/wrist flexibility
-Do Front Squats

Elbow position during front squats is the same as during power cleans. I’ll make an article about this when I come back Eric.
on 10 Oct 2007 at 3:13 am3mo

is it bad to get wide on your powercleans, i do it alot.
on 10 Oct 2007 at 11:13 am4Mehdi

Going wide is dipping under the bar Mo. By going wide you don’t have the pull the bar as high. The main goal of power cleans is to develop power. If heavy weight is the goal you can go wide or do a squat clean (squatting under). But for max power: jump on the spot.
on 18 Dec 2007 at 8:53 am5Lalit

will the knees go beyond the feet or do the knees need to stay with the feet ?
on 18 Dec 2007 at 11:10 am6Mehdi

@Lalit
What part of the movement?
on 22 Dec 2007 at 2:10 pm7lalit

People say that when it gets to the middle and when I jerk the weight up , my hips do stay back and my knees go beyond my feet . This happens when I am jerking the weight up to complete the movement .
on 22 Dec 2007 at 2:40 pm8Mehdi

This is an article on the Power Clean, not on the Jerk. I don’t do Jerks, so can’t help you with the technique.

Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That's how we're gonna be -- cool. If you're not, I'll delete your stuff.
Ask your question in the Forum if the post is older than 7 days.