Poor bench press and power clean progress.

[cfc]

I've been doing SS for 3 months. Now I am able to squat 1.5x bw (5 reps), deadlift bit more than 1.5x bw (5 reps), press 0.7x bw (5 reps).

However, i can only bench 0.86x bw (5 reps), and I've been stuck here for a very long time. I've deloaded twice.

And in power cleans, I do them less than I bench! I can't do them properly. I get sore elbows. I don't want to do barbell rows either. But I did high pull once and actually felt that in my lower back.

Last week, I added front squats in the middle day to bring a change and see some improvements in strength.

Any advice for bench? And will it be a good idea to do high pulls instead of power cleans?

[gzt]

What are the absolute weights you are dealing with. Please do not report things in terms of bodyweight without saying how much you weigh.

For the power clean, if something's hurting your elbow, you're doing them wrong.

[Eric Larousse]

Are high pulls a legit exercise if you can't power clean?

[MattJ.D.]

If you can't power clean I bet you can't do a high pull correctly

[gzt]

Are high pulls a legit exercise if you can't power clean?

Depends on why you can't. If you can't because you have a legitimate wrist injury and therefore can't rack, maybe. If you can't because you suck at it, no, they aren't. The sore elbows on this guy are probably a symptom of sucking at power cleans and needing to learn how to do them properly

[Eric Larousse]

Depends on why you can't. If you can't because you have a legitimate wrist injury and therefore can't rack, maybe. If you can't because you suck at it, no, they aren't. The sore elbows on this guy are probably a symptom of sucking at power cleans and needing to learn how to do them properly

But isn't most of the power generated during the high pull rather than the actually racking of the weight? And if Olympic lifting is not your priority wouldn't just doing snatch or clean pulls be effective sense they aren't as prone to technical errors?

[OCG]

The power clean is superior to the high pull because you have to catch it. Therefore you must pull the bar a certain height. The same is not true of a high pull.

[Eric Larousse]

The power clean is superior to the high pull because you have to catch it. Therefore you must pull the bar a certain height. The same is not true of a high pull.

But if you pull the bar to the same height(to the sternum) without racking it then what makes racking it superior for power generation?

[PFerrari]

But if you pull the bar to the same height(to the sternum) without racking it then what makes racking it superior for power generation?

I'm not sure of exact power generation, etc. But the power clean is much more athletic because of the fact that you have to fully extend and then quickly change direction to pull yourself down slightly in order to rack the bar. With a high pull you lose that athletic change of direction movement.

The other problem is you'll say you pull it to the same height but my guess is you'll pull it higher on lighter sets and pull lower on heavier sets. It's only natural. The power clean provides a much more objective standard.

For some people a high pull would probably be an ok substitute, but I would focus on learning the power clean correctly in the absence of some sort of injury.

[gzt]

The power clean works better for dishonest novices because there's a direct metric for whether you've pulled the bar high enough: did you rack it? With linear-loaded high pulls, it's really quite easy to cheat yourself and end up doing less work and get less of a training stimulus when you add 5 or 10 or whatever pounds by not trying as hard to pull it. I mean, you add 10#, you pull it 2 inches less, is it comparable or did you fail? On the third rep of the third set, it's going 2" lower than on the first set - is that still quality work or did you fail? An honest intermediate will know what's going on, but a clueless novice won't.