Deadlift vs. clean starting positions

[Brandon Oto]

This is not an attempt to start inter-coach feuds... although that's always fun.

Greg Everett made some remarks about the respective powerlifting and Oly starting positions over at the CF boards. Suggests that hips lower, with shoulders back, is advantageous for the clean. Thoughts?

http://board.crossfit.com/showpost.p...01&postcount=3

[Mark Rippetoe]

Sure it is Brandon, you ass-hole. So, here we go. I see no advantage to starting in a position that is out of line with the mechanics of force transfer through the skeleton. I know what Greg says -- look for yourself: go to youtube and look at a lot of snatches, as many as you can see from the side, and see for yourself what happens to the bar as it leaves the floor. Then look at really heavy cleans, and then heavy deadlifts. My prediction is that the heavier the bar gets (i.e. snatch to clean to deadlift) the more closely the pulling mechanics will conform to our model. Since the bar obviously hangs beneath the scapulas, as you will see, why not just start there and save the energy expended getting it there later, and the energy wasted moving it through an inefficient bar path? And if his more vertical back position reduces fatigue on the lower back in the clean and the snatch, why not the deadlift too, where the heavy weight makes pulling efficiency even more critical? The reason is that this is not how a heavy pull moves, and it is therefore not the best way to pull a lighter one either.

I know what everybody does. I've watched many thousands of lifts done this way because that's the way they were taught, or they weren't taught at all, as one poster mentioned. I've seen it for 30 years. I'm more concerned with what everybody should be doing instead. And I'm not asking you to BELIEVE me. Try it yourself and see.

[Polynomial]

Would it be fair to say that a lot of lifters do a funky set up where they squat down with their hips below their knees, then start to raise themselves right before the pull, making it difficult for most people to see exactly when the bar gets off the ground?

For what it's worth, in this Tommy Kono lecture (starting at about the 3 minute mark) he wants the hips to be higher than the knees, because once the bar gets past your knees, you want your legs to be nearly straight, keeping your hamstrings tight and ready for the second pull.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It would be more fair to say that the dynamic start produces a looped bar path off the floor, and that the straight line produced by my method is more exactly reproduceable every time. This eliminates an important source of variability in bar path and makes it much easier to be maximally efficient every time, in addition to all the mechanical advantages already described elsewhere. And my method produces exactly the position Mr. Kono advocates at the top, and gets it there with a vertical bar path. And I have never heard a good mechanical argument for a non-vertical bar path.

[Brandon Oto]

So I hashed this out with some Olifters and the response I got is basically that: the bar starts touching the shins, the scapulae start over the bar, the back is locked in posture, BUT the difference is that the bar actually starts FORWARD of the midfoot. This lets the shins come forward, the knees come forward, the hips come down, and at last, the torso to become more vertical.

Argument: unlike in the deadlift, the goal is not to move the greatest possible weight, but to provide the best starting position for the second pull. The more vertical torso allows this, and this does not demand the bar starting exactly over the midfoot. This latter, at least, seems reasonable given how many times my bar has swung forward during deadlifts due to weak traps...

[Brandon Oto]

By the way, here's a potential example of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVH0H...eature=related

Notice that the bar is a little bit forward of his midfoot, which lets his shins come further forward (and hips up and torso more vertical) -- and notice how when he actually pulls, he leans BACK a bit, seemingly pulling backwards. The bar stays about an inch off his shins as it comes up, due to the forward start.

This guy moves at about lightspeed, but you can tell the bar's over his forefoot as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DupNL0iIlkw

I'm starting to buy it...

[Mark Rippetoe]

When you look at Naim, watch the bar path closely. Where is the bar just after he clears the floor? By the time it gets to his knees it is directly over his mid-foot. So he has finally gotten it into the position it would have been in anyway had he started it as I suggest. Much more importantly, notice his back angle at this point, and then look at it between there and the start of his second pull. Tell me why you think that his back angle off the floor being "more vertical" has anything to do with his back angle at the second pull when he has clearly assumed the position that I predict he will by the time he gets the bar to his knees -- a position with the bar hanging directly under his scapulas with the bar over the middle of his foot -- and then changes it as he rotates behind the bar for the second pull. At the knees he is at the same position HE WOULD HAVE BEEN IN had he pulled it off the floor over the mid-foot, and since that angle was assumed at that point, his starting angle had nothing to do with his second pull position. Except that he wasted a bunch of energy getting there inefficiently. He is strong enough that this obviously doesn't matter to HIM, but saying that he does it this way so it must be right is not an argument -- it's Monkey See Monkey Do. Would you suggest that a curved line off the floor is a more efficient and reproducible way to get the bar to your knees than a straight line? Would you seriously suggest that a more physically efficient pull off the floor would be detrimental to his total? Naim is essentially a dwarf, and a physical genius, and can do many things you and I can't do. He's a poor choice for most people to mimic.

And Taner Sagir I have watched many times. He may have the sloppiest pull from the floor I have ever seen, and you'll notice that he chases every snatch forward after he racks it. Why do you think that might be? Look at his bar path and you can see why this is. He pulls the bar off the floor with his shoulders behind the bar and doesn't come into balance until he gets it just past his knees, and the bar path has gone forward until then to get out around his knees. He has an "S" shaped bar path as a result, and the top of the S is forward, thus the forward catch. Now, I understand that he does it this way, and that the boy is real fucking strong, and I don't care. Why would it not be better to have a straighter bar path? How would a coach not appreciate the physics of the straighter pull? Why is no attention paid to this by his coach? The reason is the same as the one you have cited here: this is the way it is done, THE WAY IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN DONE, at least until somebody does it differently. And I'm just saying that this is not reasoning.

[Brandon Oto]

I haven't played with it enough for a personal opinion, but my instinct is that the "reason" for a more vertical start position, EVEN IF you end up having to move back momentarily into the deadlift posture at some point in the pull, is that the psychological difference between

1. Starting horizontal (deadlift) and going vertical (second pull)
and
2. Starting vertical (first pull), popping through a horizontal position for a moment, and immediately moving back to your vertical position for the second pull

is significant, and lets you "feel" like you're staying more vertical the entire time. Combine that with being as vertical as possible within the biomechanical limitations of the movement (there is some room for variation here and this way you're always on one extreme) and the difference may be significant.

I think it's at least fair to suggest that plenty of weightlifters have TRIED it both ways and even if it just feels better one way, that's not really a terrible reason to do it as long as they're getting the weight up. A lot of Olympic lifting is in figuring out what weird language you need to speak to communicate the correct technique to your brain that lets you be both mechanically correct and still expressing the maximum force. "It feels better" may not be a terrific reason to do something, but the "greater efficiency of moving around less" may not be an especially important one either, as long as you're not missing lifts because of it.

Perhaps the heavier the weight gets, the closer to a deadlift the first pull gets, because they become closer in function. But if it's just a mental game that hardly seems to matter, since it'll adjust itself. And in truth I'm sure there's nobody cleaning very close to their max deadlift anyway, since you couldn't generate enough speed.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I haven't played with it enough for a personal opinion, but my instinct is that the "reason" for a more vertical start position, EVEN IF you end up having to move back momentarily into the deadlift posture at some point in the pull, is that the psychological difference between

1. Starting horizontal (deadlift) and going vertical (second pull)
and
2. Starting vertical (first pull), popping through a horizontal position for a moment, and immediately moving back to your vertical position for the second pull

is significant, and lets you "feel" like you're staying more vertical the entire time. Combine that with being as vertical as possible within the biomechanical limitations of the movement (there is some room for variation here and this way you're always on one extreme) and the difference may be significant.

So you're saying that "feeling" is more important than mechanics. I'm saying that the reason they do it this way is simply and only because that's the way they learned it. It might not matter so much if they were strong enough off the floor to tolerate a bad mechanical position, but they aren't. More later on this.

I think it's at least fair to suggest that plenty of weightlifters have TRIED it both ways and even if it just feels better one way, that's not really a terrible reason to do it as long as they're getting the weight up.

No, most weightlifters have not tried it both ways, because most weightlifting coaches do not even address the start position at all. And if a weightlifter misses an attempt, then he hasn't gotten the weight up, and you can't say that that lost efficiency during the bottom part of the pull wasn't the reason.

One of the hard parts about both the clean and the deadlift is holding the back angle constant until the bar gets up to the position where the back angle would mechanically need to change. It is almost as though the dynamic start is a way to rationalize around having to perform this important skill.

A lot of Olympic lifting is in figuring out what weird language you need to speak to communicate the correct technique to your brain that lets you be both mechanically correct and still expressing the maximum force. "It feels better" may not be a terrific reason to do something, but the "greater efficiency of moving around less" may not be an especially important one either, as long as you're not missing lifts because of it.

All weightlifters miss lifts, and they always will. I just want them to make and miss heavier lifts by pulling from the floor more efficiently.

I find it ironic that the idealized situation is pulling with the shoulders over the bar and the bar as close to the body as possible -- no one would argue that you are stronger with the bar farther away from the mid-foot, would they? -- yet this idealized situation is prevented from occurring by allowing a poor start position. I'm just saying that this idealized situation also applies to the pull from the floor and pulling from the floor in this manner sets up this idealized situation for the remainder of the pull. Probably the most common cues given to weightlifters would stop being "over the bar", "close", "keep it close" and "finish the pull" if a disadvantageous start position was abandoned in favor of a simple recognition of the correct physical model. After all, it is not 1919 and a "clean" is now allowed to touch the body on the way up.

Perhaps the heavier the weight gets, the closer to a deadlift the first pull gets, because they become closer in function. But if it's just a mental game that hardly seems to matter, since it'll adjust itself. And in truth I'm sure there's nobody cleaning very close to their max deadlift anyway, since you couldn't generate enough speed.

And you're wrong about this too, unfortunately. One of the biggest problems in the American version of Olympic weightlifting is that you have a bunch of senior international coaches running around the country telling their lifters that a strong deadlift/back squat is unnecessary and represents wasted training time. The fact is that lots -- maybe the vast majority -- of American Olympic weightlifters can't deadlift more than 20% more than they clean. Really. Kendrick Farris comes to mind as a notable exception, and he's one of the 2 (3?) on our team at Beijing this year. If our lifters were stronger, like all of the Europeans and Asians poised to hand us our asses, the start position wouldn't matter so much. And in fact that is what you see when you watch the European training videos of the Polish guys pulling the bar off the floor from in front of their shoes -- guys that are strong enough that they can tolerate a bad mechanical position. And I promise you, they are very strong, for various good reasons.

Weightlifting coaches seem quite content to focus on the technical aspects of the top part of the pulls, and content to ignore the start position details. At the same time, they claim that technique is more important than strength. But if a lifter is not going to focus on strength in his training, he'd damn sure better have the correct technique off the floor since he doesn't have the strength "surplus" that allows stronger lifters to more successfully do it wrong, the harder, non-vertical way. A more critical examination of this pulling model would be of benefit to these hard-working kids that deserve more from their coaches than just copying more successful coaches.

[Polynomial]

One of the guys in our gym brought up an interesting point: when the olympic guys train, they're moving much, much heavier weights than the rest of us. As a consequence, the dynamics of the bar become significantly more important.

Specifically, he pointed out that one might notice that when a heavily loaded bar lands on the shoulders after a clean, they lifters can use oscillation of the bar to help with getting out of the hole. When performing a jerk, after the initial dip, the barbell will begin to oscillate, and proper timing can take advantage of that oscillation.

What surprised me is that apparently some lifters use a similar trick around the second pull. That is, they somehow cause the bar to oscillate a little bit and then use that momentum to help during the explosive portion. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but any sort of bar acrobatics like that would probably demand solid strength.

Anyway, the point seems to be that technique might also change depending on what weight you're moving.