Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [119]
Get back in the hang position, and then unlock your knees and your hips. Do this by sticking your butt back as you bend your knees. Let the bar slide down your thighs to a position somewhere in the middle of your thighs. This position we will call the jumping position because it is the same position you would drop into to perform a vertical jump (Figure 6-13). Your elbows will be straight and internally rotated, just as in the hang position; your arms will be vertical; and your knees and hips will be unlocked. The bar will not be too far down the thighs; it will be at about the middle of the thighs – possibly higher if your arms are short or lower if you have long arms – and in contact with the skin, actually touching the thighs.
Figure 6-13. The jumping position. Note the position of the bar in contact with the thighs. In all cleans, the bar must touch this place on the thighs before the jump occurs.
This last point is very important, so much so that the jumping position can be thought of as both the knees-and-hips-unlocked position and the place where the bar touches the thighs. You find this place by positioning your hips and legs to jump. It is always the last place you should feel the bar until you catch it on your shoulders, and if you don’t feel the bar on your thighs when you clean, it is wrong.
This point cannot be emphasized enough: the bar being in contact with your thighs means that it’s in the proper place in balance over the mid-foot, and that you are in the correct place to jump. Make it your policy to touch your thighs each time you clean.
Now, from the jumping position, with straight elbows, jump straight up in the air with the bar hanging from your arms. Don’t bend your elbows. Concentrate on the fact that you are jumping and leaving the ground. Jump as high as you can, enough that you have to fully extend your knees and hips to do it. Focus on your jump the first few times, and then focus on keeping your elbows extended. It will be normal at this point to shift your feet from the stance used for pulling into a stable position for catching the bar in the rack position. For most people, this racking stance will approximate the squat stance because it will be familiar from squatting, and because the bent knees are used to absorb the weight of the dropping body and barbell best distribute the load to the ground in this position. Don’t worry about the stance at this point unless your feet move laterally wider than your squat stance.
Think hard about not bending your elbows as the bar slides down your thighs to the jumping position. Many people will try to bend their elbows instead of letting the bar slide, but don’t you be that person. If you find that you’re bending your elbows anyway, use your triceps to lock the elbows in hard extension, and think about this for a few more jumps.
Once the act of jumping with the bar in your hands and with your elbows straight is firmly embedded, jump and catch the bar on your shoulders in the rack position. Catch it in the same place you had it before, with your elbows up. The bar should stop on your shoulders, not in your hands. Slam your elbows up into the rack position from the top of the jump – go from elbows-straight directly to slammed-forward. Aim your shoulders at the bar and jam them into it without thinking about raising your elbows, as if there is no step between straight elbows and the rack position.
Jumping is the key. The power clean is not an arms movement, at all, and if you first learn that a jump with straight arms is the core of the movement, you will never learn to arm-pull the bar. The jump generates the upward movement of the bar, and later, when your form is good, you will think of the jump as an explosion at the top of the pull. For now, just jump and slam the bar onto the shoulders. Each