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Thread: Olympic Squat Down Nearly 200 lbs...Power Snatch Unchanged..?

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    Default Olympic Squat Down Nearly 200 lbs...Power Snatch Unchanged..?

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    [From my competitive training log. Thought I'd post it here, too.]

    I can still power snatch 145+ even though I'm squatting nearly 200 lbs under my best.

    I'm finally getting back into squatting after three months off all lower body training (to let serious inflammation and effusion die down). I've spent a month working bodyweight-only squats every four or five days, then adding the bar and then 95 and 135 (as Andrew recommended). Now today I've finally gone above 135. Squatted 175 for five. I was exhausted afterward. Trembling. Took 20 minutes to recover.

    Yet about half an hour before the squatting, I tried my power snatch out of sheer curiosity. I got 135 up, but lost my balance before I could lock it. It had been five months since I tried it, after all. Then I got 135 clean and 145 almost as clean (a little slower at the very top).

    My best ever power snatch was just ten pounds or so more. I think I got 158. I know I did at least 155. I was making regular progress in new personal bests when my knee problems forced me to stop all squatting, pulling, running and jumping for a while.

    So I'm amazed that I can still power snatch within 10% of my all time best after months of not doing any leg work of any kind. Meanwhile I can barely squat more than I can snatch! I don't think I could squat 225 right now.

    The power snatch of an efficient lifter ought to be around a little more than 50% of his high bar/Olympic squat [power snatch = 80% of full snatch, full snatch = 80-85% of full clean, full clean = 85-90% of front squat, front squat = 85-90% of back squat].

    That I can snatch about the same while my absolute leg strength is so far down tells me that I wasn't converting that former leg strength into the snatch (or other quick lifts) at all. And it's not like I can blame lack of technique since tihs is only the power snatch we're talking about. Yeah, the power version takes technique, too, but not as much. Non-specialists on the classic lifts can usually use more weight in the power version. This was a test of power, not of technique. And my power was about the same with a ~200-lb squat as it was with a mid-300's squat.

    If anyone has any explanations, I'm all ears.

  2. #2
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    Gary:

    1) I think your technique is still there on the PSn (and pulling technique still matters some - keeping the bar close etc), all of that muscle memory doesn't just disappear - kinda like how I can still drive a golfball well after a layoff (but can't putt or chip for shit), so that's probably part of it. Like it or not, while you think you were testing power (mentally), there is still some technique involved here that matters quite a bit.
    2) You were pulling the weight, not squatting it. I think this makes a difference here too. Now if you had told me you were doing Snatch and got stuck in the hole with the weight overhead and had to bail - whole other story. Is your deadlift still pretty good? That slow pull equates more to the PSn imo than your squat.
    3) I suspect you are stronger than your 175# squat session leads you to believe, but that you aren't used to the weight (I have a similar issue with layoffs, but I'm a bit older, so it's even more evident). I suspect that the ability to carry the heavy weight and recover will come back pretty quick relative to what it took to gain the strength the first time around. You're not mid-300's strong still, but stronger than a 200# squat too would be my guess.

    Nice to see you around btw.

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    I agree with your strength still being there even if your squat is down. I had some crappy hip injury that destroyed my squat for months; one day I couldn't even squat the bar without excruciating pain. I hadn't squatted any appreciable weight for months. However, my power clean was still doing fine and I was near PR levels. On the other hand, I was also doing heavy deadlifts, so that likely helped my legs not detrain.

    Whenever I've taken a break from squatting, even for months due to shitty injuries, I've never felt like my legs have gotten much weaker. Whenever I've gone back to squatting, even after months, I've always been able to get back to previous strength levels extremely fast, say by doing a 3x/week linear progression adding 20lbs each time.

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    I only skimmed through the other responses so if this is a repeat i'm sorry,

    The olympic lifts are more dependent on technique than strength. I believe the way Rip puts it is that, "strength is less likely to be the limiting factor"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Zahn View Post
    I only skimmed through the other responses so if this is a repeat i'm sorry,

    The olympic lifts are more dependent on technique than strength. I believe the way Rip puts it is that, "strength is less likely to be the limiting factor"
    Brian: There are lots of good reasons why you shouldn't do this. Gary's experience is the biggest.

  6. #6

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    Maybe my leg strength is still mostly there while my ability to squat heavy loads is not. The two are related, but not exactly the same thing. 175 just felt so HEAVY. Same thing happened last time I took a few weeks off. Shaking under 225 and just barely eked it out that time.

    I don't know how my deadlift is holding up, but I don't think deadlifts have that much to with ability in the second pull anyway. I went into a lot of detail about why not in my "My Muscular Buttock" training log. In short the quads have much better leverage to impart the force than do the hams+glutes when it comes time to fling the barbell off the top of the thighs. I believe this to be true because training for weightlifting still revolves around quad-centric squatting (high bar and front) and not deadlifts. Plus my own experience tells me quad-centric squatting improves vertical acceleration (snatch, clean, jerk, vertical leap) far, far better than hams-centric squatting and pulling (which is inherently ham-centric).

    It's a matter of leverages. Hip extensors have great leverage to fling loads from the top of the spine (good mornings, deadlifts, low bar squats) and the distal end of the femur (walking, running, horizontal jumping). Knee extensors have the better leverage for flinging loads at the proximal (top) end of the femur (vertical jumping, second pull of snatch and clean and the jerk (through the torso, but the force goes up from top of femur through torso to bar)) and the distal end of the shin (leg extension machine and kicking from knee).

    In any case, yeah, leg strength may still largely be there, but my ability to stand up under a heavery barbell needs to be reclaimed.

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    I think it's a matter of the *specific* leg/hip power (not just strength) you need for power snatches still being there. In a power snatch the quads are never in the mechanical position that the bottom of a squat puts them in, so I wouldn't expect a certain multiplicative loss in squat strength to carry over to the power snatch directly. Also, the relatively light bar of the power snatch moves at much higher velocities than a heavy squat, and thus the physiological factors that limit a max squat are potentially different from those that limit a power snatch.

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by RRod View Post
    I think it's a matter of the *specific* leg/hip power (not just strength) you need for power snatches still being there. In a power snatch the quads are never in the mechanical position that the bottom of a squat puts them in, so I wouldn't expect a certain multiplicative loss in squat strength to carry over to the power snatch directly. Also, the relatively light bar of the power snatch moves at much higher velocities than a heavy squat, and thus the physiological factors that limit a max squat are potentially different from those that limit a power snatch.
    Ah ha! Specificity! Of course.

    Great point. But it still surprises me that so much of the ability to snatch is there. The snatch doesn't need the full range itself, but the strength (and its derivative power) needed by the snatch required full range squatting in order to be built in the first place.

    Although maybe I shouldn't be all that surprised. My best ever full snatch years ago was 148 back when my high bar squat was around 225. I guess the lesson here is that the classic lifts and their high catch derivatives really need to be practiced in order for the squat strength to be put to use. I expected the snatch and clean and jerk to sort of rise automatically with higher squat numbers. They did, but not by very much. Specificity rules.

    Note that I don't think my technique needs much improvement per se. I just need to "groove" the lift so that I channel more strength into it. Grooving isn't quite the same as technique improvement. It's subtler. More on the neurological level than on the gross movement level.

    Hmm...It's all fitting together now. The deadlift, for example, moved up almost one-for-one with the low bar squat, even with minimal deadlift practice (I'd literally just pull at the end of a successful squat cylce and find my deadlift had moved up as much as the squat).

    The snatch and clean and jerk, however, are different beasts, requring "learning" to use the full-range strength very quickly in a much shorter range. The full range Olympic and front squat provide the raw material, but the quick lifts themselves really require a lot of practice and grooving in order to shove that full-range strength into short range power. I just can't expect the same transfer from squat to quick lifts that I can from squat to deadlift.
    Last edited by Gary Gibson; 04-17-2012 at 01:52 PM. Reason: Best ever snatch of 148 was a full snatch, not a power snatch with a ~225 high bar squat. Best ever power snatch was 155.

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