Power clean vs muscle clean

[slowjoe]

When I power clean, it's all power. I pull/jump/shrug, and catch with essentially straight legs.

I've been re-reading SS, and the power clean in there appears to catch the bar in a quarter squat. Clearly, I don't have that quarter squat. Checking elsewhere, the move is called the muscle clean (see http://www.cathletics.com/exercises/...exerciseID=161 for an example).

Should I be focusing on this as a problem, or not?

[Dastardly]

You dont have to squat at all for it to be a power clean. Whats important is that you use the power of you hips to get the weight up, that is all. Ideally the bar should be weightless as it reaches the height of your shoulders. You shouldnt have to pull it up with your arms at the end.

A muscle clean is quite different, where no (or not much) leg/hip strength is used at all. It is merely shrugged and reverse curled into a rack position. The only type of clean I see being performed and taight by intructors in gyms is the muscle clean, which everyone refers to as a power clean. Which is a little annoying.

[gzt]

Yeah, you need to learn the third pull and to not pull with your arms. If you increase the weight a bit, do you end up pulling yourself under the bar? Or do you end up "power reverse curling"? The first is good, the second is bad.

EDIT: If you're doing it the bad way, reread and figure out what you're doing wrong.

[slowjoe]

PC of 70kg, I jump and shrug, then the bar flies from hip to shoulder height, where I rack it.

PC of 90kg, I wind up wrestling with the bar to get it into the rack at the top.

I thought it was confidence and lack of speed with the elbow at increased weight. But I decided to ask.

[BrotherIron]

Well according to John Coffee, a Power Clean has the third pull and you pull yourself under to parallel or higher and a muscle clean has no bend at the knees.

Are you staying over the bar and really getting the brush at the hips? A lot of people start to pull back and wind up with the bar ending up in front of the lifter b/c they didn't stay over the bar long enough or they don't get the brush. Remember it should be slow and controlled until the knees and than explode.

[misspelledgeoff]

If you pull, jump, & shrug then you are doing it right. Catching in the quarter squat may help you PC a bit more weight as the distance the bar traveled is less. But it sounds like your fundamentals are right.

[misspelledgeoff]

D, this is technically not correct. I know this becuase it's been an error in my clean form since February and has severly limited the weight I can clean. The clean (and snatch) should be thought of as a vertical jump with the bar in your hands. A vertical jump involves primarily driving off the ground with your quads. The hips will naturally extend in a vertical jump, but you shouldn't consciously be thinking of extending your hips in the clean. Else you may get the form error I have which is trying to snap the weight up with hip extension in the absence of much quad drive. Symptons include (but aren't limited too) ugly bruising on the mid thigh and embarrassingly small Power Cleans.

just my $0.02

You dont have to squat at all for it to be a power clean. Whats important is that you use the power of you hips to get the weight up, that is all. Ideally the bar should be weightless as it reaches the height of your shoulders. You shouldnt have to pull it up with your arms at the end.

A muscle clean is quite different, where no (or not much) leg/hip strength is used at all. It is merely shrugged and reverse curled into a rack position. The only type of clean I see being performed and taight by intructors in gyms is the muscle clean, which everyone refers to as a power clean. Which is a little annoying.

[Thrasher]

D, this is technically not correct.... The clean (and snatch) should be thought of as a vertical jump with the bar in your hands.

I like the jumping cue, but different cues for different people. The hips are a core part of jumping. Besides, Dastardly's point was more that it's the legs and hips, not the arm muscles, that lift the weight on a clean, i.e. think of your arms as ropes, and "arms bend, power ends."

Video of Ripp coaching the power clean in terms of the jumping position:
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/C...rCleanJump.wmv

I'm too new to this forum to know whether this is common knowledge, but there are videos on training several lifts at the Crossfit site. Search the page for "Rippetoe" or "Burgener" or the name of the lift.
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html

[bowdirk]

In both the muscle clean and the power clean, you are rotating your elbows 270 degrees from being over the bar at the start to in front of the bar when it is resting on your shoulders.

When people are doing a muscle clean, they are using the last pull (shrug) to try and get the bar higher so they can reverse grip curl the bar up and rotate their elbows forward.

When doing a power clean the shrug is not to move the bar up, but to move you body down, knees bent torso straight, to get under the bar and rotate you elbows forward.

Guess which one lets you move more weight.

-Bowdirk

[misspelledgeoff]

I am not talking about coaching cues, I am talking about the technical execution of the lift. The technical execution of the lift is not "power in your hips to get the weight up". Of course, under different circumstances a trainee may need different cues to address form errors. I am not talking about cues, but again, technical execution of the lift.

I like the jumping cue, but different cues for different people. The hips are a core part of jumping. Besides, Dastardly's point was more that it's the legs and hips, not the arm muscles, that lift the weight on a clean, i.e. think of your arms as ropes, and "arms bend, power ends."

Video of Ripp coaching the power clean in terms of the jumping position:
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/C...rCleanJump.wmv

I'm too new to this forum to know whether this is common knowledge, but there are videos on training several lifts at the Crossfit site. Search the page for "Rippetoe" or "Burgener" or the name of the lift.
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html