One of the toughest concepts in weightlifting to grasp—and to explain—is the timing of the transition between the second and third pulls of the snatch and clean. The basics are simple: you elevate and accelerate the bar upward by extending the body and driving against the ground; when you’re finished with that, you pull your body under the bar into the receiving position. Easy. Let’s all go break some world records.
Where it gets tricky is when y
Push Through the Pull Under: Snatch and Clean Timing
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Ask Greg: Speed Under The Bar and Receiving Depth
Nathan Asks: I'm a beginner coach, teaching beginners how to perform the lifts, so kinda like the vision impaired leading the blind… Kinda… We have a basic understanding and can execute the lifts with decent form and no injury. Sorry, just a bit of background
My question is.. Is there a method of teaching speed under the bar in the snatch so a beginner lifter doesn't perform a power snatch and overhead squat. Ursula mention it could be a midline issue or a force ap
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Weightlifting Coaches Stealing Athletes From Other Coaches
I suppose we all have our own opinions about what we consider the lowest forms of human behavior. Think about what your answer would be if somebody were to ask you, “What’s the most despicable thing a person could possibly do?”
There are probably a few common ones we could all agree on… like committing crimes against children, or pursuing a career in politics. But what if you had to confine your answer specifically to weightlifting life? What would your answer b
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Ask Greg: Strengthening the Lower Back
Wayne Asks: What are some of the best exercises you prescribe your athletes to strengthen lower backs? My weak lower back is more obvious from snatching than cleaning.
Greg Says: I choose different exercises in different circumstances. First, figure out where the lower back seems to fail. In your case, you say it’s more obvious in the snatch, but also look at what exactly is happening. For example, is it fatiguing after a long snatch session and hurting or getting softer? Are you unable
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Dont Lock The Elbows In The Snatch and Clean Pull - Catalyst Athletics
Locking the elbows in the snatch and clean pull may seem like a great solution to bending your arms early, but it just creates another problem down the line.
Learn more about arm bend in the pull - when and why it's a problem, and how to fix it - in this article and video.
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Your Unreasonable Expectation of Comfort in Weightlifting
A sport is like anything else—how committed you are determines how it affects the rest of your life. The extent of your investment in it changes the way it influences your decisions, how it makes you feel, what else you do, and the way you look at just about everything you encounter.
A physical activity like a sport—let’s say weightlifting—carries with it certain risks and requires certain compromises and sacrifices. This really isn’t any different than any
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Don't Jump with Your Arms
I like box jumps for weightlifting. It's a very simple, accessible way to train explosiveness. What I don't like is when box jumps are done in ways that reduce their effectiveness or create problems.
The point of box jumps in the context of weightlifting training is to train knee and hip extension explosiveness—it has nothing to do with conditioning or lifting the feet really high (although quick hip flexion is useful with regard to moving under the bar).
To make sure it'
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Ask Greg: Stabilizing in the Bottom of the Snatch
Kamil Asks: Hey! I'd like to ask you how to work on stabilization in a hole of a snatch. I'm lifting for less than 2 years now, and my biggest issues are my shoulders and keeping a torso upright when receiving a snatch. I can pull the bar high enough and jump underneath without any major problems, however, I have a tendency to drop the bar in front of me very often, as I'm not stable enough, my shoulders and chest collapse and the bar waves like a flag. I'd appreciate any feedbac
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Elite Athletes Becoming Weightlifting Coaches… Does It Work?
Let’s talk about the idea of elite athletes becoming coaches after they’re done with their careers.
It happens frequently, and it makes sense. The transition from athlete to coach is a natural one for many people. When somebody has built a career in a sport as a competitor, it often flows straight into becoming a coach.
But this is where we run into an age-old question: do elite athletes make good coaches?
The basic answer is, “Sometimes yes, sometime
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Max Every Day… Can It Be Done?
There are a few broad categories of programming approaches for weightlifting. For our purposes here, we can create two types: prescribed intensity that follows a predetermined plan of progression, and working to maximum each day. Typically you’ll hear the latter described as Bulgarian training, but that’s only one very specific way to train to daily maxes. You can do any exercise, any type of reps, etc. and use maximal intensity every day, which would be very unlike a Bulgarian appro
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Should You Curl The Wrists In The Snatch and Clean?
Some of you have been taught to curl the wrists in the pull of the snatch and clean - here's why you shouldn't.
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Your Personal Responsibility to Other Weightlifters
I’ve trained boxing off and on for a long time. A couple of years ago, I was training at a gym in Phoenix that housed a lot of pro fighters.
There was one guy who stood out to me in that place, because he would always make sure he walked around to most of the people in the gym to shake hands and say something positive before he left for the night. I didn’t know him and we weren’t working together, but he would usually come over to me when he was on his way out the door
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How Much Should/Can You Compete in Weightlifting?
You can break competitive weightlifters into two big categories: Those who love to compete, and those who don’t. I realize it sounds odd to talk about competitive weightlifters who don’t really like competing, but it’s not that uncommon. These people tend to enjoy the training process and the results of having competed, but not necessarily the competition experience itself. They’ll do the meets they need to do to achieve their goals, but they won’t be going out of t
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How to Quit Hitting Your Pubic Bone When You Snatch
Not many things kill your interest in snatching as quickly as smashing your pubic bone with the bar. That’s why I recommend against it.
I’ve heard a surprising range of advice regarding this problem, and fascinatingly enough, a great deal of it isn’t the only suggestion that makes any sense at all: avoid hitting your pubic bone in the first place.
Being tougher and just dealing with it is a stupid plan. And wearing snatch diapers is even worse. That’s ak
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How To Quit Hitting Your Pubic Bone When You Snatch
Snatching shouldn't be painful. Here's how to avoid hitting your pubic bone.
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Lose the Belt. Some of the Time.
Weightlifting belts are a handy piece of gear, and one of the few I think are worthwhile. Since the dawn of internet time, belts have been at the center of questions regarding value, purpose and use, and you have about as wide a range of opinions on this as anything else people love to argue about. There also appears to be a lot of confusion and disagreement regarding how to properly use a belt.
My general rules on using weightlifting belts are pretty simple:
Don’t even think
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Should Masters Weightlifters Be Drug Tested?
I’m writing this article on June 24th, 2018. In two months, the World Masters Weightlifting Championship will take place in Barcelona, Spain. Want to hear something crazy? The organizers of this meet had to cut off the entry deadline a week early because the number of lifters grew too high. They reached 750 entries, so they had to cap it because they couldn’t handle any more than that.
750 lifters at the Masters Worlds. That… is… incredible. Make no mistake abo
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Plate Storage Bench Building Tutorial
I built four of these suckers a few years back when Catalyst Athletics moved from its first to second location, and I stupidly didn’t take photos along the way and put together a building tutorial like I have for a number of other things. I’ve gotten so many requests since first building them that it just seems ridiculous at this point to not put something together about them. So here we go.
The concept is simple: you need a place to store plates and butts. This bench handle
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I’m So Sick of Your Sloppy Reps
I was asked the other day what my pet peeve with novice lifters is, and conveniently enough, it’s the same for all levels of lifters and athletes across all sports, in fact: sloppy reps and the mindset that allows them.
Let me make myself clear: I’m not giving you grief over less than perfect lifts, because literally every single lift you ever do will be less than perfect (yes, even those elite weightlifters you fantasize about all day aren’t actually perfect), and all
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Finish The Snatch Turnover With Maximal Stability
One of the most important elements of the snatch turnover to understand is that the motion is finalized with a vertical push up into the bar.
If the arms are straight before the bar reaches the correct position overhead, it becomes a swing or a pull back into position, which creates horizontal momentum that’s difficult to control.
The goal is to maintain maximal proximity of the bar and body and finalize the lift with the opposing vertical forces of the bar pushing you straight down
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