Learning the Power Clean
My method starts at the top and works down to the floor, like a hang clean, but we get to the floor the first workout and stay there from then on. I use 3 steps instead of 12, like the first article you linked illustrates, because I like small numbers when learning things (I'm stupid that way). I don't see the point in hang cleans as a primary exercise, because the point of doing cleans for an athlete interested in general strength training is to move the bar through the whole range of motion faster than a deadlift does, working on force production from the power side, and letting the deadlift take care of the heavy weight part.
Clean pulls are another matter. I never use them, because I've never seen anybody do them in a way that sufficiently resembled the same part of that movement in a clean. If you know you are not going to rack the bar when you pull it off the ground, will pull it differently than you do when you know your going to rack it, and it doesn't matter how badly you want to do it the same. So certainly they cannot be a good tool for learning the clean, and in fact weightlifters never use them that way; they are used as an assistance exercise, not a sub.
Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
