powerclean landing question

[hockmasm]

when doing powercleans. do you have to make sure your feet land shoulder width apart? or can you land with your feet in a wide stance?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Get the book.

[Seth Able]

A related question Rip, if you don't mind. I've been power cleaning for about 3 months, and to be honest, I'm only now feeling that I "get" them.

I have the same problem the above guy mentioned - Whenever the weight gets heavy, I automatically spread my feet out wide. The heavier the weight is or the more fatigued I feel, the wider I'll go. This doesn't happen with lighter weights but it does also happens when I power snatch.

Any idea how to get rid of this habit and teach my self to drop a bit lower? I've tried drilling with lower weights, but since it doesn't happen with them, it doesn't seem to be helping.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The problem is dealt with in the book. Here, I'll feed it to you:


The feet will stomp into their same footprints, or just a little wider. Just a little means a
couple of inches per side wider. Some people will shift their feet out to a position wider than a
squat stance. This ?spider-in-heat? position is used in an attempt to drop lower under the bar, in
lieu of pulling it high enough. You don?t get a good stomp going this wide because the angle is
not conducive to stomping and the distance covered is so great that it takes too long. Stomping is
quick, lateral splitting is not. Fix this when you do it by stomping into your correct starting
position footprints several times without the bar. And focus on this foot position during the clean
with a lighter weight that can be racked properly. A lateral split is a bad thing to choose as a habit:
it is dangerous, hard to control, and ineffective. The purpose of the power clean is pulling the bar
high ? we don?t want to make it easier to get under the bar, we want to pull the bar higher. And if
we were going to make it easier to get under the bar we would use the standard squat version of the
clean, not a weird bastardized mutation thereof.


The picture shows a guy doing this.


Here is the caption:
Figure 6-39. A lateral split is very common among
novices and high school athletes that have never
been corrected. It is often associated with other
racking technique problems, such as bad elbow
position and leaning back. It is corrected by giving
the feet a job to do: stomp your feet back into your
footprints or just a little wider.