Coach, can you please settle this about power cleans

[All Pro]

Which one of these is a power clean?



And I have these from Bill Starr's book:


Thank you.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Obviously, the squat clean is not a power clean. So the one at the bottom is. Why would this be confusing?

[corz422]

If you don't mind I've been wondering about this as well. I think what he means is that sometimes it's explained that a power clean is where the pull is caught at the quarter squat however sometimes as the weight gets heavy the catch occurs at the half squat position. Tommy Kono also wrote in his book "weightlifting Olympic style" that in the squat clean occurs by shrugging at the top of the pull to plunge deep into the bottom of a front squat and getting a firm rebound off the bottom. So the video at the top he doesn't seem to be at the bottom of the front squat nor does he get a rebound off the bottom so technically it could be argued that both are power cleans?

I'm a little shaky about this myself please feel to correct me about anything.

[All Pro]

Obviously, the squat clean is not a power clean. So the one at the bottom is. Why would this be confusing?

Thank you for your answer. It isn't confusing for me. I'm 52 and I've been using Various programs by Bill Starr for decades. Your answer hopefully will settle a dispute I'm having on another board. I was beginning to think that I was taught the wrong way to do them 26 years ago.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Okay, the technical Olympic weightlifting coach definition of Power Clean is any clean caught above parallel. Which means that a clean caught 1/2" above parallel is a power clean, and a clean caught 1" deeper is a clean or "squat clean". But what I and everybody else with a common understanding of the terminology mean by Power Clean is a clean that is pulled high enough to get under with MINIMAL knee bend, which to me looks like enough knee to cushion the catch but not enough to actually make an otherwise uncatchable clean possible.

[corz422]

Coach. I've been frequently consulting the barbell strength standards provided in PP. I'm pretty sure just viewing my clean from the clean what I've been doing for the past few week would be considered as a squat clean by the definition you just provided, in fact I'm pretty sure it looks very similar to the first video in this thread. You wrote that substituting the squat version is fine for the program and that squat cleans typically allow an additional 10-15%. With this logic in mind if I want a reference point for my progress the intermediate power clean max for 181 lb is 194 lb so would it be appropriate to scale it by 10-15% to 213-223 for the average intermediate level trainee?

On the other hand could it be argued also that a better criteria for what constitutes a squat vs power clean would be how high the bar is at the end of the second pull? Since most non olympic lifting trainees would have varying degrees of technique in terms of speed getting under the bar. If so how high would the bar need to be pulled in order to be consider a power clean? Perhaps the level of the sternum?

[Mark Rippetoe]

You have to pull it high enough to get under without bending your knees more than just enough to cushion the catch. Probably mid-sternum would do it, but I don't think about it like that.

[corz422]

I will definitely keep that in mind. Thank you.