Experience with Athletic improvement from Power Cleans

[Eric Larousse]

There is a big stink downstairs about the actual benefits of Power Cleans and if they actually do increase power(RFD). Just thought I would get your experience with training people and have you actually seen improvements in overall power? For somebody who is not a power lifter do you see a benefit to training them hard to the exclusion of heavier pulling even if your cleans just arent very heavy(percentage of deadlift wise)?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Basing it off my own anecdotal experience with 100s of clients over the years (no actual "testing" in the scientific sense)....

1. I don't see any evidence that explosive training (oly lifts, DE, plyometrics) makes anyone "more athletic" or increases explosiveness to any great degree. There may be some enhancement of explosiveness, but it's almost like bringing out what is already there, rather than actually increasing one's natural ability to generate power.

2. I think cleans and snatches have definite value for increasing total pulling volume for lifters who cannot pull heavy from the floor often without diminishing returns. I think you have to be reasonably strong at these lifts for the volume which you accrue on them to actually factor into your pulling volume vs just fucking around with olympic lifts.

3. As an add on to number 2, I think cleans/snatches and the dynamic effort method are only effective stimuli for strength improvement for lifters who are somewhat naturally explosive and can actually perform the lifts in a way that produces a stress that is an actual homeostatic disruption. I have done dynamic effort training as a substitute for a more classical volume approach for a number of athletes over the years and have had good success with the method as a means to driving improvement on 1-5RM numbers. But more classic volume approaches work better with "regular people" than does the dynamic effort method.

I haven't come up with any hard and fast rules or categories for any of this shit so please don't ask.

[poser]

Andy,

In terms of being "reasonably strong" at these lifts in order for them to be contributors to overall pulling volume, I feel like I probably fall into this spectrum.

Power Clean worksets (5x3) runs about 54% of deadlift work sets (5s).

power snatch work sets (6x2) is about 42% of deadlift worksets (5s).

However, I have found that I still have to add in more pulling volume with a "Medium" set of SLDLs following PCs and 2 "light" sets of Snatch Grip DLs following power snatches in order to drive deadlift progress. In both cases, I am having to do heavier supplemental volume than the Oly variants alone provide. Would you say my power movement percentages are still generally suboptimal for Deadlift contribution?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Maybe. You'd have to see if you could progress on the DL without doing any SLDLs or SGDLs I guess. You might also have better luck if you switched your oly lifts to singles across only and ditched the triples on the clean especially. That will raise your % quite a bit. So like 15 x 1 instead of 5x3, with a rep done every 30-60 seconds.

Here is my philosophy though for a general strength trainee / recreational lifter - do power cleans and power snatches because you want to do them and you want to be good at those lifts. I think we have enough anecdotal data collected through this site and other strength training communities to conclude that cleans and snatches are not a necessary component to having a big deadlift.

I certainly think that for some very naturally explosive athletes (like my client Bradley - throws shot at OU) cleans and snatches are tremendously important and are extremely useful for improving the deadlift. But the cleans and snatches didn't make him explosive. His DNA made him explosive and that made cleans and snatches valuable for him as a legit training tool. I think it's the inverse of how we used to think about this. Same reason he can use DE Squatting and Pressing effectively as opposed to more traditional volume protocols. DE didn't make him explosive, but being naturally explosive makes DE more useful as a training tool.

I could be totally wrong about this...just my thoughts.

[poser]

I found that my DL wasn't making much progress until I added in the supplemental pulling and the additional volume made a difference right away.

In terms of sets & reps, I read your suggestion about 15x1 in another post and immediately changed my programming. I did my power Cleans that way for awhile back in the Fall of 2016, but I can't remember my reasoning for switching back to triples. It's probably good to break up my rep schemes a couple times of year anyway, especially as progress plateaus.

I do find both movements gratifyingly and wish to be good at them and keep progressing them both even if it's just for the gratification of sending a barbell airborne, though I primarily train for athletic performance and to keep myself injury free in pursuit of various athletic endeavors, so further developing/enhancing power seems relevant to my goals.