You Need to Learn How to Power Clean | Mark Rippetoe

[stef]

Mark Rippetoe addresses the misconception that Starting Strength was developed for high school kids and that the power clean is optional when doing the Starting Strength Novice program during a Live Q&A recorded at Starting Strength Austin.

[Tomgilbert]

Power clean is a simplified version of one half of one half of the sport of weightlifting. And that is a relatively simple sport compared to other things. Hitting a curve ball, reading a cover 2 defense, shooting par, those are hard sports skills to learn.

I never learned how to ride a bike (something no one seems to believe), had a university professor who couldn't write cursive. Not because these things were hard, but because we were never exposed to them. My neighbor and my mailman have never done a power clean for the same reason. Once someone has been exposed to it, there is no reason to not power clean, with the exception of doing squat cleans exclusively to be more competitive in weightlifting.