Casey Burgener pulling under a clean

At the Catalyst Athletics seminar this last weekend, Greg Everett spoke about basic corrections in the Olympic lifts. He started by breaking down the incredibly complex movement into two incredibly simple parts: The Up and The Down.

The first half of the lift, the body and the bar are moving up, while you are driving up from the ground. The second half, your arms are pulling down against the bar as your body pulls under the load.  See Casey pulling himself under a heavy clean in the photo above.

Most of us only fixate on the UP, and understandably so. We hammer into you guys the importance of FULL EXTENSION and so that is what you deliver. What we don’t stress enough is the DOWN. To get under the bar, your feet have to transition from jumping to receiving positions (hip width to shoulder width). During this transition, your feet have to be unweighted so that you can use the inertia of the bar to pull yourself under.

The problem is that the transition takes place within a split second. So, today, we’ll be doing power snatches followed by an overhead squat. Power snatch the bar with the intention of getting the bar as high as you can, receive it, and ride it down into a solid squat. As we add weight, keep the same intent of getting the bar up high, but know that you will have to pull yourself lower and lower under the bar as it gets heavier.

While in a perfect lift, there are elements of a ‘bounce’ out of the hole, I want you guys to first feel solid in the bottom position. Ride it down, stabilize if needed, and drive up through your heels. Any loosey goosey bouncing will just throw all your hard work out the window and send that barbell way out of balance. This is skill work today. Go up in weight, but not to the point your form goes out the window!

WOD 03.19.10

Power Snatch + OHS 3-3-3-3-3

4 rds:

• 100m Waiter’s Walk
• 200m Sprint
• 15 KBS

Then: 3 x : Ring Support to L-Sit (3 sec) to Ring Support
(sub tucks for L-Sits)