About twelve years ago, a burst of information started popping up with regard to negative affects of static stretching on performance of explosive athletic movement and proprioception. In short, research was showing that explosiveness and proprioception were reduced immediately following a bout of static stretching. The reaction by most of us, of course, was to avoid static stretching as part of a warm-up. Honestly this wasn’t a big change for a lot of athletes and coaches I knew of. It wa
Static Stretching in a Warm-up: Will You Die?
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When Athletes Want to Run the Coach-Athlete Relationship
Just look at the title of this article. Man… this kind of stuff is major sign-of-the-times territory.
We all know we live in an age where everybody thinks they’re an expert because of the availability of online resources that make them think they’re highly knowledgeable about something because they’ve read a lot.
Sure, understood. This plays out differently depending on the specific field or sport in question. In Olympic weightlifting, it’s a lift
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Dial in the Phases of the Snatch and Clean
Like any athletic action, the snatch should be executed as a single, fluid motion. But like most complex tasks, it helps to break it into more digestible segments both conceptually and for the purposes of motor learning. The following gives you the most important points to understand and master in each phase of the snatch, along with some links to more in-depth looks at the details if you’re so inclined. Note that each linked article has a number of other related articles linked to it, so
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How and Why To Hook Grip In The Snatch and Clean
The hook grip is a pronated grip in which the thumb is trapped between the bar and the first and second fingers, depending on hand size.
This is an eventual necessity to maintain control of the bar during the violent explosion of the second pull.
It’s important to understand that the thumb is itself wrapped around the bar inside the fingers and not simply pinned parallel against the bar.
The fingers then grab onto the thumb to pull it farther around the bar. This is very imp
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Back Foot Hits First In The Split Jerk
In the split jerk, the rear foot should connect with the platform a split second before the front foot.
This allows you to push off the back leg slightly to keep your hips under the bar as you finish moving into the split.
This staggered connection generally won’t be significant enough to see in real time. In real time, it will typically look and sound like the feet hit together.
Without the back foot connecting first, it’s more likely that your hips will move behind the bar
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Internal Rotation Overhead in the Snatch... Really?
OK, I’m going to wade all the way into this filthy mess. I’ve written about the overhead position, including the proper orientation of the arms, many times for many years, but it seems that because these things were not entirely dedicated to this specific topic, people still don’t know where I stand on the topic, and because I’m not Chinese or Eastern European, I’m often considered an idiot if I don’t completely agree with what they say.
First of all,
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Squat With The Hips and Knees Together
When back or front squatting for weightlifting, the primary goal is maintaining an upright posture all the way through the motion. In other words, we’re trying to avoid any more forward leaning of the trunk than is necessary.
In order to do this, the hips need to move as directly downward as balance and proportions allow, rather than being pushed backward as is typical of squats outside the sport of weightlifting.
This requires bending the hips and knees together rather than leading
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Fluke: Mentally Strong Weightlifters Never Use This Word
Most of you are probably too young to remember George Carlin. He was an old-school comedian who did a monologue called “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” It was basically centered on the seven dirtiest words in the English language, which I won’t list here because I don’t want to blemish the Catalyst Athletics lifetime commitment to wholesome family values.
I was thinking about it the other day when I heard somebody use a dirty word I hate hearing in
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How To Avoid Getting Dizzy In Clean and Squats - And Why It Happens
Read the complete explanation and fixes here.
Dizziness during a clean or squat can have a few causes, but what is NOT causing it is having the bar compressing your trachea—all of you can hold you breath for a few seconds without getting dizzy, so stop telling people that nonsense.
The first cause of dizziness is the bar in a clean rack position compressing the carotid arteries, which run down the front of your neck right under where the bar sits. This reduces the flow of oxygenate
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Technique Primers: Get More out of Your Weightlifting Technique Work
Technique has to be the favorite topic in weightlifting. I’d personally rather talk about and deal with it over programming any day. I assume the appeal for most of us is its mechanical nature—mechanical things can be diagnosed and fixed. It seems more accessible and manageable than program design, which is something you rarely get black and white answers to, and which can give you a lot of dubious feedback.
Of course, technique work isn’t always straightforward either
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How To Dip Correctly In The Jerk
The jerk dip is a tricky motion for a lot of athletes because most of us are so accustomed to relying on the hips for athletic movement, and the jerk is essentially all knees. The dip arguably influences the jerk more than any other element.
When standing in the drive position, imagine a vertical line running approximately through the bar, hip and ankle.
The goal is to keep these three points in that line throughout the dip and drive. This maintains the balance of the system ov
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How To Compete in Weightlifting Meets With 1,000 Lifters
Weightlifting meets look like Woodstock now. The Masters World Championship is getting 900+ entries. The American Open Series 3 meet in Las Vegas has 1,600+ entries. Small local meets are capping entries at 60 lifters and their online registrations are filling up in minutes. And most of these lifters show up to the meet with their coach, boyfriend/girlfriend, personal photographer, and five CrossFit buddies who all want to be in the warmup room.
Competing in these shindigs has gotten tr
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Pressure Vs. Balance In The Snatch, Clean and Jerk
Don’t make the mistake of believing having pressure on the balls of the foot during a lift means your balance has shifted forward over the foot.
If we’re standing still, our line of gravity and the center of pressure have to be aligned—otherwise we’d fall over.
However, with adequately fast movement, we can separate the center of pressure from the line of gravity while maintaining the original balance. This is how a weightlifter is able to rise to the ba
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Split Jerk, Power Jerk and Squat Jerk: Why and Who
There are three styles of the jerk that rely on different receiving positions: the power jerk (or push jerk), squat jerk and split jerk. The split jerk is by far the most common competitive jerk style for good reason I’ll explain below. The power jerk has a great deal of utility as a training exercise even for lifters whom the split jerk is their primary style, and the squat jerk may be somewhat useful in certain cases as well. and n
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Hip Contact In The Snatch - How To Keep The Bar Close
[See how to stop hitting your pubic bone here]
During the pull of the snatch, the bar will contact the body in any properly executed lift. The most important point to keep in mind is that any horizontal force we impart to the bar is not only limiting its upward speed, but is reducing the effectiveness of our mechanics pulling under it and disturbing our balance.
There will always be a small degree of horizontal force with this contact, but it has to be minimized. This requires three basic
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Decreasing Receiving Depths In The Olympic Lifts - Consistent Motion and Meeting The Bar
The goal is to execute our lifts as similarly as possible regardless of weight. In order to do this, we do have to reduce the amount of upward force we put into lighter weights because maximal force would make it impossible to execute the same motion. However, even with a reduction in force, lighter weights will be elevated more than heavier weights.
We don’t want to intentionally limit the elevation of the bar in order to perfectly mimic maximal weights. We need to train in a way
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Ask Greg: Slow Snatch Turnover
Mira asks: In the snatch, I feel like I have a slow turn over, like I always seem to sneak underneath the bar when receiving the bar overhead. Are there drills I can use to train this aspect outside of tall snatches from the hip? Are there any cues you can recommend? What are your thoughts on hang snatches to help this issue?
Greg says: This is actually a trickier issue than it may appear to be because I don’t know how accurate your perception of what’s happening is—it
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Do You Release The Hook Grip In The Snatch?
Whether or not you should keep the hook grip overhead in the snatch depends on one thing: can you achieve the proper hand and wrist position overhead, without pain, with the hook or not?
If you can, there’s no need to release the hook grip in the turnover. The benefits to maintaining it are obvious: it’s less complicated, and it’s easier to maintain a tight connection to the bar throughout the turnover.
If your build and mobility won’t allow you to hold the bar prop
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The Benefit of Bad Training
I once read an interview with legendary writer Ernest Hemingway where he was asked, “What is the best early training for writers in their younger years?” His answer was, “An unhappy childhood.”
Strange answer, but I get it. The idea that difficult experiences as a youth will give somebody the kind of inner conflicts and introspection that eventually transform into written ideas that move people. Understandable, and I agree.
So… about weightl
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The Scoop Or Double Knee Bend - What, Why and How
The double knee bend might be more accurately called the naturally occurring temporary cessation of knee extension to facilitate the preservation of balance and repositioning of the body to optimize vertical propulsion… but that’s a bit of a mouthful.
The double knee bend occurs naturally if you position yourself correctly when entering the second pull, and you drive forcefully against the ground with your legs along with the hip extension. You do not need to intentionally
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More Pages to Explore .....