Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [125]
Off the floor
Figure 6-20. Long forearms may make the clean very hard to rack without a wide grip. People with very long forearms might not be able to use the exercise.
We have discussed the mechanics of the pull off the floor in great detail in the Deadlift section of this book. All of that material necessarily applies to the power clean because the relationship of the human musculoskeletal system with the barbell as it comes off the floor does not vary with the subsequent height of the pull. The vast majority of the Olympic weightlifting literature that deals with the clean and the snatch advises that the bar be pulled from the floor from a position forward of the mid-foot, and advises that the resulting backward or horizontal bar path off the floor is not only efficient but also desirable. This reasoning is an example of phenomenology, “a theory which expresses mathematically the results of observed phenomena without paying detailed attention to their fundamental significance” (Concise Dictionary of Physics, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1978, p. 248). We are not really interested in pulling from the floor in a manner that is demonstrably inefficient just because some very strong elite weightlifters have been observed doing it this way – an argument that is based on description rather than analysis. The limitations of mechanical efficiency apply less stringently to stronger lifters than to less-gifted lifters who have a smaller margin of error in which to display their abilities.
This is especially true when it is not necessary to pull the bar in a curved path – the human body can quite easily conform itself to the realities of gravity and mechanics and pull the barbell up in a straight vertical path. In fact, when this happens, the top part of the pull increases in efficiency along with the bottom part, as we shall see. It is important to be as efficient off the floor as possible. Most problems that develop at the top part of the pull can be traced to an incorrect starting position and the resulting bad initial pull off the floor.
The path the bar makes through space from the start position to the rack position is a major factor in diagnosing the efficiency of the lift, because it describes the interaction of the lifter with the bar. Observe the bar path by looking at the end of the bar from a position at right angles to the lifter, with your eyes looking straight down the bar. Imagine that the end of the bar traces a line in the air during the lift; this line is the bar path, and it is very important to develop your ability to form an image of this line. Watch other lifters do the movement, and learn to translate the image formed of the bar path to your perception of the bar as it moves up from the floor to the rack position.
There are several advanced movement-analysis instruments that record and interpret bar path information, but none is as immediately useful in real time as the experienced eye of a coach. The power clean is a complicated movement, and of all the lifts presented in this program, it benefits the most from the input of an experienced coach.
An ideal bar path is illustrated in Figure 6-21. If the correct position over the middle of the foot and the correct back angle are established, the bar comes off the floor in a vertical path as the knees straighten out, and the back angle will be constant for at least the first few inches of the pull. The bar follows an essentially vertical path until it reaches the jumping position, after which it curves slightly away as the lifter’s elbows begin to rotate under the bar. At the top, the bar path will make a little hook as the bar comes back and down onto the shoulders in the rack position. Individual body segment lengths and girths may vary among lifters, but this general bar path will be observed in every correct power clean.
Figure 6-21. The bar path of the power clean. If the bar starts from a position