I think it makes more sense to use power cleans as warmups for the deadlift, for reasons I'll leave to you as a homework problem.
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Deadlift as power clean warm-up
I'm curious what you think of doing a few relatively heavy deadlifts to warm up for power cleans. I stumbled on this trick a few months ago and feel like it's been responsible for significant improvement on PCs. Since it might matter, I weigh 177, DL 400, and PC 252 (PR set today). Does your opinion differ for novices and guys who don't have such quick progress in front of them?
TMPHBITEU
I think it makes more sense to use power cleans as warmups for the deadlift, for reasons I'll leave to you as a homework problem.
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How is it that you can power clean 252 and yet only have a 400lb deadlift? This leads me to believe that there may be something funny going in your mechanics on either of those lifts that is prompting peculiar perceptions about warm-ups.
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Since the work load of the power cleans are so much lighter relative to the deadlift, it would make much more sense to warm up with the cleans for the deadlift as Rip said.
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I think I get what your saying Patrick. I've found that doing a few sets up heavy clean pulls before power cleans helps a lot, because the weight on the power clean feels so much lighter. Maybe you're experiencing the same thing.
TMPHBITEU
There are lots (I use the term with qualification in the USA) of Olympic lifters that have this kind of ratio, or worse. They don't train the deadlift, and it is - amazingly - not strong. Patrick may have form issues, or he may be failing to deadlift enough.Originally Posted by XTrainer
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I don't know if that seems like a terrible imbalance to me. My deadlift is probably somewhere around 390 right now and I can power clean 230 or maybe 235. Yes, I am aware that I am weak, but I am working to fix that. I train both deads and cleans. A 400 lb deadlift is plenty strong to make a 250 clean feel comparatively light. Maybe that dude is just good at cleans and has a lot of fast twitch fibers.
TMPHBITEU
The real question, Tom, is what a 500 deadlift would do to your clean. I doubt that it would make it weaker.
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Speak for yourself!
I don't know...I understand that people are different, but I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. My best power clean is 237 with a deadlift of 470. I just don't see where the strength to clean about the same amount is coming from if you're deadlifting 80lbs less.
Everyone thinks he is special, but by definition, most of us are not. I'm inclined to believe you are capable of a much heavier deadlift but haven't tried in awhile, or your "power clean" is something like this (no offense intended).
[link removed by Rip to keep from embarrassing a kid with a shitty coach]
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To the homework question, one of the reasons I was interested in your take was because I recalled the discussion on swinging a weighted bat and its (poor/detrimental) carryover to actual batting. That might not be what you have in mind here but it was the debate I was having with myself, anyhow. But if I'm deadlifting something that's heavy relative to a power clean but light relative to a 1RM deadlift I don't think I'm in that zone that might cause motor pathway confusion... just a proprioceptive nudge, sort of like doing a single heavier than a working weight to get the pump primed. In any event, the practice of DLs before cleans has helped so I'm hard-pressed to abandon it.
As for an imbalance between power clean and DL strength, I've always been a very good jumper and I think it's probably more genes than anything else.
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