Power clean form check

[elVarouza]

Coach,

If you could take a look at my power clean form I'd really appreciate it.

[youtube]RgReeAxEvus[/youtube]

My assessment is as follows:

1) My hip angle opens too soon during the pull from the floor to the knees. This makes me wary of my deadlift form as well. This probably facilitates an improper back angle for the jump.
2) I jump backwards from the jumping position, which you can see as I have to take a few steps forward to get the bar back down on the plates.
3) My lowering of the bar from the hang position to the ground blows; my knees go forward way too much and the bar doesn't end up at the midfoot position. This also makes me wary of my deadlift form. It looks fine until once I get past the kneecaps. Once I'm just past the kneecaps I feel like I have to keep closing the hip angle as well as the knee angle to get the bar down to the ground otherwise it gets all f-ed up like here.
4) My lumbar spine isn't locked into extension. This is mainly because this was only my first warmup set from the floor, and it takes a few warmup sets pulling from the floor to get my hamstrings stretchy enough to not pull on my pelvis.
5) My left elbow is lower than the right in the rack position. That's easy to correct though.

Aside from those I'm not sure what else to look at. Are my points correct? What can I correct here, and are there any cues that might help?

Am I too far in front of the bar the last two reps?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer questions here.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It looks to me that your back angle is too vertical, which is causing you to pull the bar out around your knees. Jumping backwards is not a problem like jumping forwards is. You are setting the 25s on one plate on the floor, and this doesn't get the bat up to the right height to pull. Use another plate, or buy yourself some 10kg bumpers. But other that being a little slow, it doesn't look bad.

[elVarouza]

It looks to me that your back angle is too vertical, which is causing you to pull the bar out around your knees. Jumping backwards is not a problem like jumping forwards is. You are setting the 25s on one plate on the floor, and this doesn't get the bat up to the right height to pull. Use another plate, or buy yourself some 10kg bumpers. But other that being a little slow, it doesn't look bad.

Thanks a lot for the advice.

Two quick questions:

1) Is the starting position for the clean the same as the starting position for the deadlift in terms of hip, back, and knee angles? I recall in BBT you saying for the deadlift the back should be in "good" lumbar extension, and for the clean it should be in 'absolute lumbar and thoracic extension' (or something like this; I don't have the book in front of me). It seems the pictures also look slightly different. Is there anything to this, or am I imagining things?

2) When you say it looks slow, do you mean the pulling of the weight to the jumping position or the actual jumping of the weight to the shoulders (or both)?

Thanks again for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

[Mark Rippetoe]

1. The deadlift and the clean are both pulls from the floor with approximately the same grip, so they have the same start position. The back extension is the same, the back angle is the same, and the bar path is the same.

2. The pull is slow.

[elVarouza]

Thanks a lot.

[IGF-WON]

looks like paralysis by analysis,

you know the rack position, you know how to execute the first pull.

get the 2nd pull in with some hang cleans maybe. B

But overall just remember, accelerate off the floor and EXPLODE into a shrug once you hit the jumping position.