Faster Elbows in the Clean

A lot of people stuff up the timing when trying to both get under the bar and pull the bar up. They need faster elbows in the clean.

Once the clean is broken from the floor, our goal is to put in as much energy ‘as needed’ to propel the bar upward. once the bar start going weightless are focus should quickly shift to pulling under the barbell. The speed of this snap or shift in focus is generally what makes a lifter look really fast. Often times people don’t know how much to use their legs to propel upwards, and how much or when to use their arms to pull under. This is why newbies sometimes feel more comfortable with practice at higher weights, than we need them to practice with. One thing we can do if traditional verbal and physical cues don’t work is to strip the movement back.

If we take the legs completely out all we need to focus on is the pull under. That’s basically what the tall clean is. It’s practice the pull under without all the craziness of the leg drive.

Try some tall cleans in your warm-ups and tell me how you go in the comments below!