Can't Power Clean for the next 5-6 weeks. What's the best replacement?

[Kayodoubleu]

Hi everyone. My first post here i thing.

I am now a little bit over 2 month in the NLP and broke my thumb 10 days ago. I am lucky that i only had to rest for one week and could go on with the NLP without any problems. I am just not able to hook grip during DL and Powerclean. Everything else works fine.

My stats:
Male (37)
High: 180cm (5,10 i think)
BW: 105kg (231lb) gained round about 9kg during NLP so far.

latest Workout from Wednsday.
Squat: 126kg (277lb)
Press: 60,5kg (133lb)
Bench: 86kg (190lb)
DL: 144kg (317lb)
Powercleans: 66kg (145lb)

The Deadlifts i still can do without the hook grip but i don't know for how long. I realise that holding on to the bar gets harder with each session. I started Powercleans with 60kg and only added 1kg every workout. But now in hindsight i should have started lighter with 40kg or so. I realized that my form was crap and i couldn't jump proper. But still wanted to add more weight. The last few seasions felt really hard and i couldn't jump even a little bit up. Stupidly enough during i couldn't lower the bar proper and it jumped back up and hit my thumb and broke it. So i have to wait till the bone fixes itself. The doctor said it would need 6 weeks. I want to restart the Powecleans after i am able and work on my form. I deserved the broken thumb because of my ego. So i have to humble myself and go back down.

What should i do in the meantime? I still haven't implemented Chinups. But going up in weight for the DL every training could be to hard. Should i add a 90% DL training session every other training while i wait for the recovery or maybe start adding chinups in the meantine. Or are there some other things you would consider? I am leaning towards 90% DL because my form isn't optimal. I am not able to maintain a proper straight back. But i am working on it and i am tyring not to let technique creep happen. I am willing to fix that problem.

And mabye another thing. What is the best way to catch the bar while lowering after a power clean. In many videos i often see they just catch it mit air. But i wasn't able to do that with over 60kg on the bar. It really felt off.

[Jason Donaldson]

Are you literally letting go of the bar and trying to grab onto it as it falls?

[Matt James]

Are you doing a mixed grip for deadlift now, or double overhand? Straps seems like a good temporary plan, if you can make that work with a broken thumb.

It's not exactly clear to me if you are still deadlifting every workout-- you should have been alternating the power clean with the deadlift, and two months in, you should already be doing chins. Probably can continue deadlifting every other session for now and chin on the other days, again, assuming you can do them with a broken thumb. Hopefully you're benching in the rack or with proper safeties...bench pressing with a broken thumb would be concerning to me.

Catch the clean at the thighs, same place you touch on the way up, and then lower it to the floor from there.

[Maybach]

You can strap power cleans, if you have to. Given that your THUMB is broken, I'd say use straps for everything that requires you to use your thumb. Which is pretty much everything.

[Kayodoubleu]

It's not exactly clear to me if you are still deadlifting every workout-- you should have been alternating the power clean with the deadlift, and two months in, you should already be doing chins. Probably can continue deadlifting every other session for now and chin on the other days, again, assuming you can do them with a broken thumb. Hopefully you're benching in the rack or with proper safeties...bench pressing with a broken thumb would be concerning to me.

Yeah I was already alternativ Deadlift with Powercleans for round about 4 weeks. I didn't want to bring in Chins that early because I still felt like I could progress pretty good on the deadlift. Chins would slow down my deadlift I thought because chins would be done every other workout (at the press days) while deadlift and Powercleans would be alternating every bench day. So I would deadlift only once a week at most and I thought that I should delay that as long as I could progress my deadlift.

I still can deadlift and press with my broken thumb because just the tip break. As long as I don't put pressure on the tip everything is fine. So I can't do the hook grip and I just normally grip the bar.

Thank you for the answer. It seems that I should already implement the chins so as long as my thumb hurts I will alternate deadlifts with chins than and after it healed up I will add Powercleans back in again and lower the weight there.