Barbell Shrugged - A Step By Step Guide to Olympic Weightlifting, Coaching Cues for Beginner Weightlifters, and Better Overhead Position w/ Anders Varner & Doug Larson  — Barbell Shrugged #358

Episode Date: November 24, 2018

This is a special episode, where Anders Varner and Doug Larson talk about the best way to address the barbell, drills to master the high hang position, methods to increase patience in the second pull, better mobility to increase your overhead position, positioning and weight distribution to increase jerk, and more.   Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_olyguide ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! @bioptimizers: www.BiOptimizers.com/realchalk  “shrugged” to save 20% ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Shark Family, we're back! Saturday edition, Doug and I, we're talking about weightlifting. We wanted to put a show together. We always hear the same cues over and over again when it comes to the snatch and clean and jerk. They're super complicated and there's so much feel going into them that we almost forget what the movement feels like because we're so worried about cueing people. So we wanted to sit down and do a show and just walk through positions and things you should be feeling along the way. I think it's a pretty cool show. I enjoy talking about weightlifting. We interview so many people that it's really easy to forget that we love coaching people to get strong.

So that's what we're here doing. All things snatch, clean and jerk than you could ever imagine coming at you. One hour. Also want to remind you, we have a killer Black Friday sale going on right now. Get into the program vault. We have 12 programs in there now. Barbell Shredded. If you would like to lose fat, gain muscle,

that's for you. Flight Weightlifting. Get a whole lot better at Olympic weightlifting. We have seen tons of PRs. This is probably the most downloaded program that has come through Barbell Shrugged and the Shrugged Coll collective since we created it also mass gain challenge you're going to put on 26 pounds in 26 weeks you're going to eat a lot you're going to

lift a lot you're going to get really strong and the shrug strength challenge which is our best selling crossfit program those are the four main programs we also have eight accessory plans on there so strongman o, Olympic weightlifting, preparing you for a meet. CrossFit Open Prep, that's coming up. We also have getting your first pull-up, mobility, food, nutrition, grocery lists, you name it, it's all in there. You could probably do 10 years worth of workouts just inside the program vault. My favorite, squat the house. I love a squat program that you can get in and actually not get injured in.

Anaerobic assault, aerobic monster for people that are trying to increase their conditioning. It's all in there. 12 programs, 4 long-term eight accessory plans and because it's black friday using the coupon code thanks 50 you're going to save 50 off your first month so go to shrug collective.com forward slash vault use the coupon code thanks 50 t-h-a-n-k-S-5-0. Thanks, 50, to receive 50% off your first month of the Shrug Collective program wall. Make sure you get over to Doug Larson Fitness. He's got everything in there for business consulting to nutrition for weightlifters and movement-specific mobility.

Awesome website. Doug's a really smart guy. You should go over there and hang out. And on a programming note, 2019 is coming up. Strong Coach Season 2 is going to be kicking off the new year every Friday. We've got some really cool stuff planned. The seasonal shows were a ton of fun. We rolled a bunch of them out this year just to test

just where things were at, how people would do. We had Christmas Abbott, the strong coach, and turns out you guys love the deep dive on one specific subject. So we're bringing the strong coach back season two. If you're interested in increasing your ability to make money and really develop the skills that make you a better coach, make sure you get over to thestrongcoach.com. Follow The Strong Coach on Instagram. And make sure you tune in to The Strong Coach podcast, season two, coming up in January. If you want to get in touch with me, make sure you hit me up on Instagram at Anders Varner. Send me a DM.

Ask me any questions. I'm really good at responding. That's kind of like the main hub where I'm collecting people and ideas and love to talk to everyone that is reaching out. So get over to AndersVarner on Instagram. If you want to shoot me an email, Anders at BarbellStrug.com. Love connecting with people. And I hope you guys really dig this show. We're taking the deep

dive on olympic weightlifting all the feels where your body should be where your brain should be to lift bigger heavier weights we're in we're hanging out with doug larson we're in my garage we're talking about olympic weightlifting um it was my favorite part of this whole crossfit world that's that's like the reason that i'm here yeah well crossfit olympic weightlifting probably would be the most dead sport in the world without crossfit yeah definitely in the united states um like it used to be when i started well and 20 years ago we knew it was now that all the countries that are good at weight lifting getting busted for all the drugs without crossfit there may there may not be any olympic

weightlifting just little tiny federations of people on drugs that's it um but man i'm really stoked to do this because we are going to walk you step by step from the conversation how it advances from a beginner lifter the things you should be thinking about in getting a little stronger a little faster better technique getting into an intermediate lif, and then even some of the things that we start to see with advanced lifters that have been doing this multiple years that are lifting really big weights. And just the way that you can approach the bar, all the positional work, there's literally thousands of things that you can get wrong in this. But if you can start to buy into some very simple concepts, we are going to make this process a lot easier

and just some things that you can think about along the way but doug larson you had a really large leg up on the weightlifting world because you started this process much much sooner than most people especially in the united states yeah i mean it was pure luck on my part i just happened to meet a strength coach my actually my I just happened to meet a strength coach. Actually, my buddy Lee happened to meet a strength coach at a world gym, and he happened to bring him over to my high school. Wait, world gym? Like the world gym right down my street?

That's the one. That's right. Wow. That's right. Wow. Didn't know that. It comes full circle. We like the world gym here in San Diego.

If you want to go see just a bunch of fucking just enormous real bodybuilders, go to the world gym in San Diego and PV.v the real people not like the skinny people that are just trying to flex these guys are monsters no it's a legit bodybuilder gym there's there's people doing photo shoots in there constantly both men and women it's a dope place to train uh but yeah i was really fortunate to meet a strength coach who was a very good power lifter growing up and then learned weightlifting from bergner after competing in powerlifting and i had really studied a lot of strength conditioning and loved teaching it and was just like the perfect person for me to meet like he he vibed with my personality um the way that he taught really resonated with me i was a

15 year old kid when i met him and he and he was hilarious and so like he kept the attention of all the kids because he was like the one coach that just like you're laughing the whole time so you like you couldn't not pay attention uh you know seeing how entertaining he was at the same time that he was teaching is actually one of the a very influential thing for me running the show for all these years is just knowing there's got to be an entertainment component and the content component and that you know those things have fluctuated over the years where we focused our efforts on those two things but having content you know good information and having it be really fun interesting and funny to listen to i learned that at a young age from from

mark because i don't think that i would have stuck with it as long if it had been a different person yeah so when you started this so we have this awesome ebook the the flight weightlifting guide and in there we walk people through this transition from being a beginner weightlifter and all these basic concepts of you know the three separate poles kind of like what are the positions that you're supposed to be getting into but what when you were starting out what was a little bit of the process of you learning the lifts because i never had a coach teach me this stuff i had to go out and see you talk to me bring up bergner i was the guy on the internet watching natalie wolf

lift in his garage trying to figure out how the hell that girl was so fast. I got no clue someone could move like that. And watching all his videos when he was coaching high school, PVC pipe, Bergener warm-up, like that was how I learned the lifts. I never had anybody. So, you know, what are some of the processes or practices that you guys used to go through when you were learning at such a young age? I mean, my coach learned from Bergener. So a lot of those progressions bergen warm-up that style that he has uh you know that was what i was taught growing up i don't remember all the progressions like a lot of what was all the ways that i was taught i probably didn't even see how

they fit into the bigger picture i didn't see the progression from from one move into the next you know if i had a certain um you know fault in my technique and then i was given a certain drill i didn't see exactly how that that fit into the bigger picture so um i don't remember all those details but i but i do remember and this is good for me being you know relatively experienced now having done it for over 20 years and coached a million people like if i get someone who's brand new at least i can remember what it was like for me when i was brand new and there's one one time in particular that you know like i have a very vivid memory of me you know looking at myself in the mirror because like we used to do cleans in

high school in front of the mirrors like squat racks had mirrors and all that and so i remember i can still see myself and what i looked like when I was 15 pulling on the bar where there was no first pull, second pull, transition, any of it. Like there was nothing there. There was just grab the bar, pull it really fast and it lands on your shoulders. It doesn't touch your body at all. It's just one long deadlift pull that happened to go fast enough to where you got it on your shoulders and my elbows were probably down. It was probably resting on my wrists and the whole thing like yeah like whatever you think an inexperienced lifter looks like that was what i looked like i actually was in the ymca watching that exact movement my inexperienced or not mine

but the the inexperienced kid and all i wanted to do was walk up to him and just be like hey which i ended up actually doing which I felt really good about myself. Like, hey, your deadlift, just keep pulling off the ground because your body will kind of figure out a lot of those positions. But this is what it feels like when the bar gets to your hips, and this is the sweet spot. But watching a beginner, I don't think a lot of CrossFitters understand how advanced they are by just being in a CrossFit gym and seeing quality movement. Because you can go to like a YMCA and see somebody that doesn't have a coach, doesn't have anybody to like watch do the thing properly.

And it's a wild thing. And where do you start somebody kind of like just the bar's on the ground. We've got 95 pounds on the bar and a very introductory somebody that has a very novice lifter and and you kind of get them started along this process just addressing the bar and and how do we start that conversation with somebody so that they can really build on the the foundation of the first pull getting the bar off the ground well i used to do i used to do if someone was brand new i used to do top down approach you know i'd say look here's the power position okay now bend over just a little bit push knees back that's the top that's

top of your first pull to kind of go down from there like i would do top down and that worked pretty well and i don't do that as much anymore now i'm much more inclined to just say okay here it looks like this you try it yeah and then just look and see what they do yeah and like based on what they do i can go okay here let's back up for a second the biggest thing is this and i just i just look for like whatever i think the biggest thing is at the time and i give them one quick you know cue or um you know tip to fix that thing and or here's a drill to go work on to fix that thing here's why that's important like i'm i'm never i'm not much for like one word cues that works really well in a large class environment if you're just like heels hips whatever yeah um that's fine

but that's not my style at all like i tend to like let someone finish their set and then i go over there and and and i try not to talk too much to them but i want to explain why i'm saying everything that i'm saying which you gotta you gotta calibrate in that instance as well if you're over if you're over delivering on content and they're just like fuck like okay you just told me like like you just way too much way too much information yeah if you tell them like eight things to fix that's like the super beginner coach yeah you're telling them one thing to fix and you're explaining why it's important that that can work really well but you just need to make sure that that you're you're calibrated and you know if that person's like okay shut the fuck up

just tell me what to do so i can do more reps like if you're ruining their workout because you're sitting there talking to them that's a problem if they if they are if they're a person who really wants to be really good and they want to know why you're saying what you're saying and they want the explanation because they want to know then you should say it to them but that's you can straight up ask them do you want me to tell you what to do or do you want do you want to know why you're doing what you're doing like where are you at yeah the so the the place that i actually always start i used to start with the top down and i've taken a little bit more of an approach you have like okay let's just see what this movement looks like. If I just tell you some basic things.

But foot placement and not even so much like the width or whatever. But one big thing that I really notice in novice weightlifters, people that are just getting started, is like balance on their foot. Because every time you talk to a coach that may or may not really understand what their midfoot is you're going to hear weight in your heels that really isn't exactly where we should be doing starting this process but what are you thinking about when you address the bar um and and a little bit of just the mentality that you have with your experience and then what you see people doing in the gym where, you know, before they even pull the bar off the ground, they're, they've, they've screwed themselves themselves. I mean, if it's, if it's light, if it's like, you know, 50%, 70%,

whatever, like I know it's going to be an easy rep. Then, then normally in that case, I'm just like, I'm just thinking, okay, you know, if I'm snatching, I go collar to collar. If I'm cleaning, I'm, I'm, you know, I just set my hands hands where i know they go i'm making sure my feet are in the right spot i'm thinking about like how to get into the perfect start position for me and then if it's light after that i'm thinking i'm thinking speed yeah i'm thinking just go as fast as possible i think that's an appropriate thing to think because i don't think about the technique anymore yeah like i just do it well enough where i can just not have to think about it too much. If it's really, really heavy, that's different.

If it's a 1RM type weight, 95% plus, then I'm not thinking speed on the pull specifically. I'm thinking maintain an upright torso, my butt down and clear my knees like i'm trying to make sure that that i do a perfect first pull and then and then i'm going to pull as hard as possible on that second pull but i'm not thinking speed right away because at at the heaviest weight if i if i focus too much on speed on the first pull then then i might slightly get out of position and then i don't have the best second pull possible so if it's really really heavy i'm thinking have a perfect first pull and the second pull will take care of itself it's really light i'm thinking the fastest first pull possible and then the second pull

take care of itself i think one of the things that really separates when you start to talk about kind of higher level intermediate or advanced lifters is that first pull is the thing that people know right away if that's going to be a mislift. And that is something that I like to teach people, even when they are in the beginning stages of becoming a weightlifter, is we have to understand where your midfoot's at. And I talk a lot to people, and this is something that I do on my own, but grabbing the floor with their toes, kind of like a bird grabbing a tree branch. And that is going to help you find your midfoot.

If you pull that weight off the ground and you feel that weight pull you forward into your toes a little bit, we need to be able to pull that bar back into our body. If you're in your heels, you're not going to be as very strong, you're not going to have as much upward elevation into the bar as possible. You're not creating as much speed as possible because nobody jumps off their heels it's not a very athletic position but when you come off the ground in your balance and you can feel the weight in your midfoot that is when i know we're going to make some lifts like that balance to me is a big thing and i i really try to find a way with people when we're coaching them to like feel the ground,

make a connection with the ground, because that's the thing that we're driving off of. You talk about jumping. We're really driving through the floor to create speed and momentum on the bar so we can drive ourselves under it. And the more I'm able to help lifters or help people connect with the ground and really feel themselves driving into the ground, I feel like we have a little bit more success, and they don't think about throwing their chest up and lifting out of their low back. They're thinking, push the ground away, almost as if it's a deadlift. That cue worked really well for me when I was really young.

When I was late teens, early 20s, the push the floor away cue worked really well for getting me to be in a good position throughout the entire first pull and to do a first pull that's long enough where a lot of people cut it off too early and they end up hitting the bar right above their kneecap and like on the lower part of their quadricep and that that's not ideal at all of course you want to hit you know pockets upper thigh ideally right across your belt line that push the floor away cue worked really well for me where before i was thinking i was thinking stand up which didn't just didn't seem to to resonate with me for whatever reason but when i heard push the floor away all of a sudden i started doing really really good first pulls yeah i didn't there's a lot of things that i still it's like i've always known that

that cue and that we're driving through the floor and And then even to this day when I'm squatting or doing heavy deadlifts or doing cleans, I will notice that there is a, like, I can feel my core bracing. I can feel my legs driving. Like, there's an extra tension in my body that really helps create a lot of power and speed on the barbell. And just the more we can connect with the ground, I think the more we're able to really influence people and help them understand what's going on

and how we create that speed and power. Sorry, fixing the laptop here. Coming back. Plug that guy in before he goes dead. The grabbing the ground with the floor, the grabbing the floor with your toes thing, I think works really well for a lot of people also. My friend Richard, who's a strongman guy out in Memphis, he used to always talk about deadlifting and you want to be able to wiggle your front toes.

And I think that works really well for a lot of people, but it never really resonated with me very much. It was never really my style. To your point about, like, coaches always are talking about pressing through your heels, that's really kind of what he was getting at. It was like, if you can wiggle your toes, then you're not on your toes. You're on your heels. Is he doing that for Olympic lifts or just deadlifts?

For deadlifts. Yeah. Right. But that one helps because you – who was the coach? There's a really famous coach who used to talk about falling back, not falling backwards, but pulling back. Go ahead. Name will pop up and it's like a weightlifting lore.

I just dropped in. Folktale. Yeah. But I think people, they hear a cue like that and then they don't know where to apply it. Like, do you do that on snatches and clean and jerks? You do it on deadlifts. Deadlifts, you're picking up as much weight as possible.

It makes sense that you're lifting weights off the ground. There's probably, like, one best way to lift weights off the ground. Yeah. But they're not quite the same thing. There's two different goals there. So being super heel heavy, unless you have, like, perfect weightlifting leverages where you have super short legs and a really long torso, and you can be very upright and still have a vertical shin.

And so you're pressing through your heels because that's what you do when you have a vertical shin. If you're Suli Mangalu and you're on the cover of the Encyclopedia of Weightlifting, go look at his star position. He has the most fucking ideal star position you could have because his his body type is just perfect for weightlifting like his torso is super long his arms are super short his legs are super short i mean he's he just i mean he's four foot eleven or whatever the hell he is like he's a short person so he's he's in a great position moreover if you're four foot ten and you're as opposed to six foot or whatever more like us your your start position the bar

isn't going to be lower shin it's going to be just below your knee yeah you're already in a really that was my strongest position in lifting ever was below the knee yeah it's like pulling from blocks yeah so he's in a slightly different position for that reason as well but um for a lot of people they they they can't start heel heavy they midfoot like you're saying or you're even even closer to the ball of your foot for some people um having having a foot position where you start more more midfoot and then you rock towards your heels throughout the first pull and then when you transition to go to that second pull you're going to rock back from from heel to toe as you jump into your triple extension. And that basically tracks the bar path.

Like the bar is going to swing into you on the first pull, and then you're going to make contact upper thigh or at the hips, and then the bar is going to swing away from you at least a little bit, and then it's going to kind of come back into you and land on your shoulders for cleans and overhead for snatches. So if you have ideal leverages, you're not going to have that center pressure shift from midfoot to heel and then back out to the ball of your foot. The only time that's going to happen more is if you have less ideal weightlifting leverages.

Because you can start more toe heavy at the bottom, which means the bar is further away from you, further away from your shins, which means you have a better chance of clearing your knees. But you need the bar to be close to you as well, so the bar has to be swinging into you as it's clearing your knees that actually in that start position i always teach people to start the ball or the bar over the knuckles on their big toe like wouldn't at the at the base of their big toe because yeah if you start that bar how many, anytime I see somebody that's got the dinged up shin from cleans and snatches, you're not doing it right. That's a bad sign. Yeah, we should not have the bar that close. How are you going to load your hamstrings?

But getting past the knee, that's something that is like... I was that guy for a long time, by the way. Were you? Oh, dude, I still have scars on my shins. I mean, from deadlifting, certainly yeah but i used to have them from cleans because i thought you were supposed to drag the bar up your shins yeah so i had bloody shins for years look look how cool i am so tough look at me you know what it's like i'm a senior in high school that see that scar right there that's 140 um but getting past your knees this this is like, man, I think that this is the hardest piece, assuming your catch position is all right and you're strong enough,

but I feel like this is the piece that really separates kind of the novice from intermediate and then getting into the advanced lifters is the ability to get by your knees and actually start loading your hamstrings to be able to elevate the barbell yeah you got to be able to get into a perfect start position and then pass your knees while still being in a good position yeah and a lot of people just can't they just plain old can't get into a good start position that's the only problem we can talk about but if you can get into a good start position clearing your knees and staying in a good position where once you go to transition and get into that power position so you can do a very strong biomechanically advantaged second pull where you're as strong as possible

or at least the weight feels as light as possible because you have ideal leverage, clearing your knees is the obstacle on the way basically. There's many ways to go about clearing your knees. Some of them are better than others. If you have really long limbs and you try to to emulate what a lot of people preach about about weightlifting when they're being idealistic about there's one way to do it like you have a close stance and toes are straight ahead like if you have really long legs you can't do close stance with your feet pointing straight ahead like

they're the only way to clear your knees in that case is to pop your butt up really high where you're all bent over and fucked up, and then there's no chance you're going to have a good lift. You actually lose all the tension in your hamstrings and have no chance of recovering. Yeah, as soon as your butt flies up like that, that's like the – if you're a coach and you watch your athlete or if you're an athlete and you feel that your butt just flies straight up,

just stop. Just put the bar gently down. It's probably not off the ground too far anyways you've gone too far yeah you got to fix your your stance is is probably the biggest thing and it would even even be so it's staying in the first pole the ability to find your hamstrings and load your posterior chain in that position to me is a very challenging skill for a lot of people to understand. Because that initial drive, you talk about the foot placement going from midfoot back to your heel, that's a really tough thing. If you don't have the glutes, you don't have the hammies, and you don't have the lats,

all things that just run right down the back of your body, you're going to struggle getting that bar into your body past your knees because it's got to float back into your body. And you need to be doing a ton of accessory work if you can't maintain that position. If you don't feel that bar coming into your body and scraping against your quads, there's a really good chance that we just need to do a lot of accessory work in building your hamstrings, building your back, back like general strength like probably add a bunch of bodybuilding accessory movements into your program because that is going to if you feel that bar coming straight up off the ground and you notice that it's three four inches away and

by the time you're past your knees it's way out in front of you you're having a really hard time just getting into a start position and activating everything in your posterior chain, and now the lift is screwed before we even pick it up. You've got to develop the strength and do the work to turn your hamstrings on, understand how to develop tension in your lower body, specifically in your glutes and hamstrings, so that you can pull that bar back into your body. And as you get to your knees, be able to shift that weight back into your heels

so you can clear your knees without the bar getting too far out in front of you. Yeah. I mean, I think some people feel their hamstrings more than others. You said that multiple times with that terminology. Feeling your hamstrings, some people, if you have really tight hamstrings, I think as you pass your knees, if you're in a good first pull position where you're basically standing up almost not quite to a locked knee, but like to a vertical shin with an almost straight knee and you're bent forward,

you might start to feel a little bit of a stretch in your hamstrings. The more flexible you are, the less you're going to feel that tension build in your hamstrings. I never really felt a whole lot of tension in my hamstrings when I did the lifts or when I do the lifts. But I've always been relatively flexible because I did gymnastics for years and years when I was younger. And so I just like kind of had the requisite flexibility my whole life.

But I do think there's an aspect of the stretch shortening cycle there that we talked about on the last show that we didn't record that we can retouch on here. That's relevant. This show is way better than the first. This is so much better than that other show um the the stretch shortening cycle is a really

interesting thing that people don't really talk about so much anymore that um some people probably do but like i just don't feel like i've heard as much in the last in the last couple of years and i feel like it it deserves more attention like once i got out of the the speed power aspects of strength conditioning training people for to you know be better sprinters better football players whatever um i stopped hearing so much about about plyometrics and stretch shortening cycles but i think that it's a very relevant topic for olympic weightlifters and a lot of crossfitters don't don't know a whole lot about it where if you as you go through your first pull and you you get to that to the top of your first pull and

then you do you do your double knee bend before your second pull there's an there's an element where or within your muscles you have muscle spindles and they monitor muscle length basically like when you're at the doctor's office and you and you you know you sit on the table and they they tap the front of your knee with a little, you know, rubber hammer and they hit you right on your patella ligament. And by smacking that with a hammer, it very quickly stretches your quadricep muscle. And your quadricep muscle, after getting that very quick stretch, has involuntary muscle fibers that contract. And they automatically make your leg extend in that case. When you're doing a vertical jump or or something like that

you're standing you squat down really quickly and then jump as high as you can you jump higher in that case because you have all of your voluntary muscle fibers then you have all of your involuntary muscle fibers that your muscle spindles control or either they are i don't know the exact physiology there if muscle spindles are muscle fibers or if they control the most involuntary muscle fibers i have to actually go back and look that up because i haven't looked at that stuff in a textbook in a long time so it's a detail i have to ask ask andy about next time i talk to him but but anyway when you go to double knee bend if you're doing it very quickly you're going to go from a relatively straight knee to a bent knee and then as you bend your knee you're you're

stretching your quadricep and that enables you to have a stronger second pull than you would otherwise. And so if you can get good at being in a good position at the top of your first pull, it makes it where you can transition into that power position much faster. And when you do it much faster, you kind of kick in or enable that plyometric stretch reflex that you wouldn't have if you were going slower so when you get top of that first pull the transition should be quick and then your second pull will be stronger if you can get that transition to be very very quick on top of that once you actually do your triple extension you get a very strong stretch in your upper traps your shoulders get depressed because

you're you're extending with with straight arms holding onto a very heavy weight you get a plyometric effect out of your traps as well where it kind of slingshot you back under the bar a lot of people wonder how do i get under the bar faster this is one very good way to learn how to get under the bar faster it's not to learn how to pull on the bar harder it's to use that plyometric effect you get from your traps to sling you under the bar more quickly than you ever could by trying to pull on the bar. That's why it's an Olympic event by itself because there's so much athleticism in connecting all those little pieces to make those guys be able to clean jerk 400 pounds. Yeah. And the guys at the highest level, they're all very strong.

But the guys that really do well are the guys that get under the weight really, really fast. Because if you can both squat 500 pounds or whatever it is, and you can both pull 500 pounds from the floor, well, the bar's not going to be moving that fast once you're getting to the top of your first pull. And so there's not a whole lot of momentum. Once you stop pulling on it, it's going back down immediately. There's no momentum that's going to keep it going up while you're going down because it just wasn't moving fast enough to keep going.

So if you can get under the bar really, really fast, then you can put more weight on your shoulders and stand up with it. And people that go not quite as fast, they're going to drop it. So the guys at the highest level are the guys that get under the bar the fastest. You mentioned a couple times the double knee bend. Do you want to walk through that? Because that's a really funky one that i see a lot of people thinking about yeah and unfortunately i wish nobody ever talked about it a lot of times even though it's necessary

to lifting really well it's kind of something that happens naturally if you're in good positions so as you clear your knee you have to straighten your shin out and you're in a really poor jumping position we talk about how the the weight shifts slightly back to your heel as you're passing your knee in order to get into a jumping position or to you know create some velocity on the barbell it's going to you have to re-bend your knees and able to to enable your chest to become upright when you're in that power position and that's where the double knee bend happens if you are hitting all these positions and you're able to get past your knee flawlessly which very few people are but if you're able to get past your knee very well forget we even mentioned the double knee bend there's no

reason to really like go and practice something like that. It's get in good positions, and your body will learn how to jump properly. And that double knee bend is really responsible for, one, a good jumping position, but two, vertically moving the barbell. Because if you were to do it more like a kettlebell swing where you didn't do the re-bend, you'd be bumping the bar so far out in front of you.

Yeah, with two people, you shouldn't talk about the dull knee bend no because it just fucks them up yeah and i i catch myself sometimes thinking oh maybe i should tell them they need to know and i tell them and it just messes them up yeah people they if you're inexperienced you rarely just like go oh well that makes sense all it does is make you overthink it yeah and you sit there and you go like like like like this like yeah no no no no like it turns into this horrible conversation i'm not no not no okay it looks so awkward i want to just be like no just okay i practice that i'll i'll come back to you yeah you're doing a good job yeah good job just keep jumping just keep jumping. Just keep jumping.

Well, yeah, that's actually where we go with that. Like, if you're overthinking it, that's when I think it's okay, with beginners especially, to regress back to just fucking stand up and jump. Balls on the ground, stand up and jump. Yep. And that's oversimplifying it, but that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to oversimplify it for someone who doesn't know all the nuances and complexities of something that is pretty dang complicated it doesn't look complicated but inevitably anyone who tries it goes oh wow this is way more complicated i thought

i think if you were to think about like doing a snatch grip rdl or just a clean grip rdl and the position that your knee is in when you get just below your knee you know when you're thinking that you're doing an RDL that that's not a position that you should be exploding off the floor from. But that's also a really good position for getting past your knees after your first pull and getting to your mid thigh. So as an accessory lift, that's really great. If it's a way in which you can recognize that position, you should recognize being at the bottom of an RDL is not a way that you would try and jump. You're loaded way too deep on your heels,

and just things aren't going to work out well. That double knee bend eliminates that problem. When you get past your knees, that's where the knee bend comes in. But leave that away from the beginning, the the beginners they don't need to think about that stuff yeah our friend justin thacker says it very well he he says that when you're new it's jumping with weight in your hands but once you're once you're intermediate or advanced it's it's not a jump anymore you might your feet might leave the ground and all that but you're not thinking jump specifically like you know the rest of the distinctions for how you set up yeah how the first

pull is supposed to feel how you're supposed to be kind of sliding your knees under the bar to get into that power position how you're extending using that that stretch reflex that i talked about with the upper traps kind of sling yourself under the bar so you can catch it like deep deep deep in your neck or or straight overhead for snatches like there's there's more nuances that you're going to go into and and if you get out of position there's there's sometimes depending how bad it is you know things you can do to try and fix a slightly off pull and whatnot you're not just thinking you know jump up jump down yeah but jump up jump down if you're new works great because it makes you think just fucking stand up and jump and then get low as quick as you can and hope it lands on your shoulders yeah and that's what you need to do a

bunch of times to figure out what feels good and what doesn't feel good um yeah and and getting really the bar to your hips this is this is like the this is the meat of the thing this is our launch position what um i think that one of the biggest ways that I'm able to tell kind of the novice to the intermediate to the advanced is this idea of just the patience in the first pull. When you see somebody that doesn't really understand kind of how all the pieces flow together, you see them just jump right off the ground.

There's no first. Everything is second pull. They're just ripping the ball off the ground and trying to catch it on their shoulders, and it looks funky. And that's no first. Everything is second pole. They're just ripping the bar off the ground and trying to catch it on their shoulders, and it looks funky. And that's totally cool. At least you're jumping. You're understanding that you're at least trying to move the barbell up with your legs, even though you're probably using your low back a lot.

But the idea that you know that you're jumping to elevate the barbell is really important. And the more you get comfortable with it and the ability to really be patient up past your knees getting it to mid-thigh before you bring your chest or their more vertical torso to start jumping how can we teach that progression a little bit because there's such just like a body awareness that goes along with where's the barbell on your body well it depends which thing you're trying to fix if you're one thing that i that i used to do with people that i don't see done a lot is if you have trouble getting into a good power position and like getting the bar to connect with with your

hips like right in the bladder like right across your belt line, that type of thing. I used to like to put people in a power position where you have a vertical torso, your weight is midfoot, maybe like right in front of your heels, and you have your knees bent a little bit and pushed under the bar, shoulders back, arms are straight, you're in that perfect power position. And then I would just kind of like rock my hips forward and just bounce the bar with straight arms, just like bing, bing, bing. Just like bouncing the bar where it was just kind of tapping my hip, floating away from me, tapping my hip, floating away from me. I'm just kind of bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.

And then I'd do like one, two, three, snap. I would just bounce it off my hips and catch it overhead. Just so I could get used to where the bar is supposed to hit. Because the bar, it might brush your thighs, but it shouldn't connect and disconnect, especially on snatches, anywhere but right across your belt line. It should hit your belt if you had a belt on. There's a sweet spot right in your hips when you do it right,

and it just feels right. It doesn't hurt. It's nice. It's like the barbell was supposed to go there. Right. If the bar really hits and disconnects anywhere but right across your bladder, then your leverage was not as good as it could have been. Yeah.

We're going to take a quick break because then we – once we get past pull one and pull two, chaos. What happens in the middle? How the hell do we get underneath that thing um make sure you're getting over to flightweightlifting.com it's a 54 page ebook we've got diagrams of everything we're just talking about we've got write-ups um taking you from beginner to intermediate to advanced everything you need to know about the snatch and clean and jerk making you stronger better, better technique, all the fun things. There's probably links to, I don't know, 20, 30 videos that are linked within that e-book as well.

So it's not just sitting there reading a bunch of stuff. There's links to all kinds of great stuff. Yeah, you'll blow off a four-hour afternoon at work, no problem. Flightweightlifting.com. Learn how to snatch, clean and jerk way better. We'll see you guys after the break. Hope you guys are having fun listening to the show. Getting stronger, feeling all the positions.

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Use the coupon code THANKS50, T-H-A-N-K-S-5-0. shrugcollective.com forward slash vault. Thanks to 50 to save 50% on your first month of the program vault. Back to the show. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. We're hanging out in my garage. I've got like four mats in here. It's dirty as hell though.

I don't work out in here that much. I see that. Your weights are in the corner. Do you work out well in a garage, Jim? No. I mean, I have a fucking sweet setup in my garage, but I don't use it very often. Full LECO everything. Yeah, I got the whole LECO competition set, which is fucking totally awesome. I wanted that my whole life until I got it a couple years often. Full Aleko everything. Yeah, I got the whole Aleko competition set,

which is fucking totally awesome. I wanted that my whole life until I got it a couple years ago. Happy I did that. And I use it on occasion. But I like being around people. Yeah. I don't like lifting weights by myself. I just like going to the gym.

I like doing my own thing with other people around. I don't want to actually be alone for most of my working out. I like to have some energy. Now that I have wife and kids and I'm home a lot, I don't want to lift weights at home too. I'm already at home quite a bit doing the family thing.

I usually want to get out into the real world, be around other adults. I agree. More so than I used to. I used to not have a problem lifting weights in my garage by myself because I was doing fun stuff with my friends and business stuff with adults all day long, and then I didn't mind having a little bit of solitude. Yeah.

I just want other people to spend the money on really nice equipment, so I'll just pay for the membership for them to do that. Yeah. It would be terrible if I – well, I shouldn't say terrible. I just wouldn't use the thing enough because I want to go out where I'm at home or at a coffee shop working all day. It's like, no, I'd like to see people. I'd like to be around energy, humans. And if I had like a sweet decked out, like reverse hypers and machines and all of that you'd be like ah what a waste of money

team we're gonna start second half of this thing we're going third pull the magic i want to finish it up with some um some favorite accessory lifts that we can get into um because we've got a couple questions that we need to answer but we've got a couple questions that we need to answer but the big one that comes across especially some of the people that are in the program vault private facebook group here john tracy and peter zaharis they want to know drills and we should start off with what are the technicalities of the third pull and in getting people you mentioned some of the stretch reflex in your traps and pulling yourself under the bar but everybody probably understands like elbows high and outside what the hell does that actually mean

and starting to maybe get rid of the the scariness of a snatch flying all the way over your head? Or just how do people start to connect with pulling themselves under the bar? It's such an odd concept that you would pull down on a static barbell that's hanging in the air in hopes that you would catch it on your shoulders or above your head. Yeah, I mean, once you're at full extension, the bar is not going up anymore yeah you're like the bar is done you you need to go under the bar as fast as you possibly can um where i think a lot of people get that wrong is that they they kind of just drop they think they're dropping under the

bar like like gravity for you is going to be faster than gravity for the bar for some reason yeah it's not you're both going to fall at the same rate unless you're pulling really, really hard on the bar. So the number one thing is just to keep pulling on the bar. You never stop pulling on the bar. You're always pulling on the bar as hard as you can in some fashion the whole time you're holding it until it's on your shoulders. And so that's a big piece. Just make sure that you're actually pulling yourself down under the bar. Getting that stretch reflex should be a big part of that

because that's going to accelerate you very quickly from the very top position, and then you're still pulling on the bar until it's on your shoulders or overhead. Yeah, and one thing that's kind of a hot topic, and I'm a super sucker for this, is an early arm bend. Thinking that it's a lot easier to get, like it's almost like you feel like you're cheating that motion a little bit. Something that actually when I went and lifted with jess glucero a couple months back she yelled at me so depressing she's like what are you doing you don't have a body that needs

an early arm bend and i was like yeah but i'm athletic and it helps me pull under the bar i feel like i'm like like a tenth of a second ahead the bar. If I can just pull it up just a little bit higher, I can like athletic myself underneath it. She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't do that when we lift together. And I was like, okay, you're the strongest girl in the world. Okay, whatever you want. But I think that there –

have you seen anybody whose body type does need to have a little bit of an early armband? And you want to know something else that's depressing? I put a video on Instagram of it. And I called myself out and I was like, does anybody, I feel like this is okay for me. And then Coach Travis Mash was like, actually, it's not good for you at all. You have a terrible body type to be doing something like that. I was like, damn it. I suck at lifting.

MASH thinks I'm weak. MASH doesn't like me. But do you ever see anybody? Clearly, we're supposed to. Anytime I'm teaching a beginner to do this, I try everything in my power just to loosen their body up. Because everybody wants to hold the barbell like it's so tight. Just squeeze the shit out of it.

Relax. That's why we have the hook grip. It's not going anywhere. You're not going to lose it. You don't have to hold on to it so tight. Diane Fu does a lot of work with with chinese weightlifters and one thing that she was emphasizing with us four or five years ago is that like chinese lifters aside from that little bit of tension around your hook grip and and keeping a nice rigid you know back position where you're you're not rounding your spine aside from those two things everything's supposed to be

super relaxed yeah just super chill fast and whippy, like, you're not holding any tension anywhere. Just enough to hold on to the bar and keep your back straight. Yeah. Other than that, nice and chill, fast. So how do we teach somebody when we're telling them that we want them to be incredibly fast and to pull on the barbell as hard as possible, yet now we're telling them to be as loose as possible? Yeah. I mean, it's not something they're going to get all at the same time.

No. In most cases, like, that's going to take a not something they're going to get all at the same time in most cases. That's going to take a lot of experience for somebody to get to that point. I don't even really try to tell people

to stay super loose at first. I'm just trying to get them to get in the right positions. If they can't get into the right positions, I don't care how loose

or not loose they are. I just want them to be able to get into the right positions. Once they can do the right positions, then you can start worrying about

these other debatably smaller details i think the smaller details in this case um when we get into a catch position i think that so many people like if there's a single thing that people struggle with in olympic lifting it's we've got mobility problems with everybody yeah and getting into a front rack or an overhead squat is completely miserable we don't want to do an entire show just on mobility for olympic weightlifting because that's another three hours long um but one thing i've i've really and had success with when you're working with people you're going to have people that are dealing with a lot of limitations

mainly in their upper back maybe some tricep lat stuff and it's going to be very very challenging for people to be able to catch a heavy load and if you have people that are doing that and they're able to pull under the bar they're able to catch or working people through positional work in that front squat is something that i have had a ton of success with like going from power clean to front squat or working drills somewhere in there in which people are doing the thing they're good at and then you start to add the or challenge their body in a manner that allows them to progress but not going straight into squat cleans. There's disasters that happen when we try to do the full movement without having the requisite mobility and positional work

that we can get to when we're finishing the movement. If you're snatching, there's some serious things that can happen. Yeah, I mean, mobility is an enormous part of it. We haven't talked about it yet, but if you don't have the requisite mobility, then it's basically impossible things that can happen. Yeah, I mean, mobility is an enormous part of it. We haven't talked about it yet. But, I mean, if you don't have the requisite mobility, then it's basically impossible to have good technique. If you have good technique, you're not going to pull very good weight.

It's such a technique-driven sport. Strength is a fucking enormous factor. Like, the strength component never stops. Like, you always can get stronger. But with mobility and technique, those are limits that are approachable. Yeah. Where you're like, okay, you don't need any more mobility. And okay, you don't really need any better technique. But then you just need to get stronger and faster.

Yeah. That becomes the whole game, of course. As far as the third pull is concerned, that's actually a big problem with the third pull as well, is that a lot of people, especially the people that can power clean more than they can squat clean, like that archetype of a person, that's a very common thing. A lot of times when I coach those people, there's potentially a variety of things that could be doing wrong that are just putting them in a position where catching a clean at the bottom just isn't going to happen because the bar's not landing in the right spot, whatever, whatever.

But some people, they don't have the mobility that they need in order to actually get into a super deep squat position or a super deep overhead squat or front squat position so so they think they're not getting under the bar fast enough but really the the main problem is that their bottom position is only like halfway down and so of course they're not getting on the bar fast enough because they only have half the time to do it. Yeah. That type of logic here. So if you can get into it all the way, rock bottom, not just like parallel squat or like if you squat to parallel or a little below parallel, that's good enough for like normal health, fitness, muscle building, whatever. But if you want to be a good weightlifter, like you need to be as low as you possibly can get because that's where you're going to be able to catch the most weight yeah you got to be strong in that position and stable in that position but you need to be able to get there before you can

be strong and stable so so having a lot of ankle mobility a lot of hip mobility a lot of shoulder mobility a lot of upper back thoracic spine extension mobility these are all critical components to being a good weightlifter, especially for catching snatches, like overhead squat. You've got to have all of it. Yeah. As far as specific drills helping people get through the third pull and understanding how to continue pulling on the barbell, tall snatches, tall cleans, that's like the go-to,

just learning how to connect with the barbell and feel the barbell and feel the barbell as you pull under it so if you're if you're standing just in the high hang or just standing straight up bars in your finish or at your hips go up onto your toes shrug your shoulders nice and high that's going to be your finish position and then continue pulling the bar or continue by pulling your body down under the bar until it gets to either the snatch or the clean position that is hands down the best drill that you are going to come across to really develop speed you don't really need a ton of weight to do it because it's so

it's it's not a very powerful position you're never going to be able to have a ton of weight on there, so it's a very safe way to practice some of these catch positions as well. Getting into a little bit on the accessory lift side of things, getting off the floor, what's one of your favorite accessory movements to coach people a little bit stronger, pull off the floor? Well, it depends what their problem is. If they have really long legs and they have trouble keeping their butt down,

a lot of people, actually in that specific example now that I'm saying it, a lot of people in that example, they'll see that you're getting bent over and they'll be like, well, you're bent over and so you need to have stronger hips so you can extend and get your torso up. I don't think that at all. I think the reason that you're bent over is because you fired your quads. Your quads weren't strong enough to move the barbell, but you decided to let your butt pop up instead of actually moving any weight with your quads. So now all the loading's on your hips.

So yeah, you would need stronger hips in that case to move the bar once you're out of position. But if you want to stay in a good position, then you would need stronger quadriceps. So especially if you have long legs, that's going to make it all that much more difficult to stay in a vertical, not vertical, if you're in a very upright torso throughout your first pull while

extending your quads the longer your legs are the the more mechanically disadvantaged your quadriceps are at extending your knees so you need even extra strong yeah quads so your quads are going to be your limiter if you have long legs is basically the what it comes down to so um doing a lot of extra quad focused work is is going to be good for for people like that um front high bar front squats and back squats are of course already a staple gotten to if you're not doing those yeah i mean that's that's just like duh yeah you should do those that's a way and you should sit all the way down yeah doing doing pauses at the bottom to drill that drop that bottom position and uh and whatnot but but doing some extra quad-focused work,

even if it's like natural knee extensions or even leg extensions on the machine, like assuming you're doing all the rest of your very normal weightlifting stuff, you're doing all of your normal lifts, you're doing pulls, you're doing accessory movements, front squats and back squats and everything else, then you want to just do like a little bit something extra for your quads, you know, just to get like a little bit extra quad hypertrophy, et cetera, then, you know, you can throw in some like little movements like the ones I just mentioned. It shouldn't be the bulk of your training.

You should do it like twice a week for, you know, three or five sets of ten or whatever it is. But just to like add a little bit of extra work to your quads. If that is your problem. If you're just not used to pulling in a low position, then you could do deficit pulls. You're standing on plates and you're just trying to pull from a really, really good position, but you're extra low just to drill that

very bottom position. Some people don't pull very well just off the ground, but once it gets moving, they do fine. So if you can make it even a little bit harder in that bottom position, then they'll get stronger in that bottom position i actually do a lot of that stuff now yeah pulling from as low as possible love it put your hips in a really weird place and it helps your deadlift helps cleans helps snatches all of it everything coming off the floor yeah um just below the knee i mentioned uh a little bit earlier but i if if you are moving well in

these positions i um one of my favorite all time it is one of the lifts but three positions snatches and cleans hands down are like the greatest tool i ever used in my own training to drill positions. It was the ability to just put the barbell. If you don't have blocks at your gym, put the barbell where you have a problem. Hang out there. Get some time under tension. Build your back and do these things. Getting in that below the knee position, though, RDLs.

I love RDLs so much much they will light your ass on fire um but understanding like how big of a back you need to have to be very strong in the olympic lifts yeah um understanding how big of an ass you need to have to be good at the olympic lifts um i can't think of a better like positional piece than the rdl which just on top of yes it's going to make your posterior chain significantly stronger um balance is something that i loved teaching to people through the rdl because everybody always just pushes their hips back and they fall directly back onto their heels and then if you can get their weight to shift forward into their midfoot, now they find their hamstrings.

They start to feel that big stretch in there. And it's a really interesting thing where people, like the brain and the hamstrings and the glutes all of a sudden talk all at the same time. And it's the position I think that people struggle with the most is getting around your knees. So getting a barbell there under tension,

hanging out for a couple seconds and then coming back if you were to add like a snatch at the end do three or four rdls and then finish it with a power snatch um that that position right there i think is in that accessory i think is something that is like invaluable to people that are learning the lifts and learning how like the function of all the pieces kind of that transition from first pole to second pole works yeah i think i think if you if you can look at your body type and or just like even if you don't have an archetypical you know stereotyped body type that's like super weightlifting specific like long torso short legs or you're the opposite we have really torso short torso and long legs like you're built like a spider that type of thing

um it's better to be built like a baby than to be built like a spider. That's what I'm trying to say. If you have a really short torso, then having stronger quads, like I just said, where I went all the way to the extreme and talked about single joint leg extensions and things like that, but like pistol, shrimp squats, reverse lunges, roof out those split squats, these are other assistance movements that can can be very helpful to someone who needs stronger quadriceps so in that case those make a lot of sense in the case of someone who who whose weakness is being in a bent over position because they have a really long torso and everything they do they always try to make sure they have a very vertical torso so they can use their quads, which are stronger.

If you can get that person to do a lot of RDLs and strengthen the place where they're naturally weaker, then now you've kind of fixed the weak link in the chain. So that's what you're looking to do. You're looking to find where am I the weakest, what's the weakest link, and how do I fix that problem? So these are, you know, we're generalizing here. You may have a long torso and short legs and maybe RDLs aren't the solution to whatever your problem is. But that would be a very common thing to take where you're mechanically disadvantaged and make yourself really strong in that position.

Yeah. One thing we haven't talked about a little bit is that overhead position. That's a tough one because we've got a lot of mobility issues um with a lot of people and coaching that position um clearly for you don't we don't want to just go and load this thing up and have people put a bunch of weight overhead um but the the snatch specifically, and people picking whatever their hand width is, is there anything that you use specifically? Or is that just get the bar to your waist and wherever it feels comfortable?

As wide as you can get while the bar gets to your waist? Well, yeah, as far as snatching goes, you want to figure out the position that's going to be able to put you in the best position for your second pull, your best power position so yeah you put the bar on the crease of your hip and you basically grab as wide as you yeah as you need to to have the bar just rest comfortably at arm's length where it's touching you right on your belt line and for me that's collar to collar i have really long arms you gotta figure out where it's at for you some

people like to stand and and hold the bar and then raise up one leg, and if the bar gets in the way, then the bar's too low and your leg's running into it, then you need to widen your grip and raise the bar up a little bit. I've never heard that one before. Oh, really? Good work.

New shit, new shit. As far as overhead, well, I mean, if you're snatching, your grip's already determined by the time it gets overhead. If you want to train overhead squats, you don't necessarily have to use your snatch grip. You can do wide all the way, whatever the same grip is that you use to snatch for overhead squats if you want to, but you could do a totally separate exercise where if that hurts your wrist, as an example. If I grab collar to

collar i do a lot of overhead squats it cranks my wrist pretty good yeah because i have long arms if i if i do you know if i move my hands in five or six inches on each side it doesn't crank my wrist nearly as hard but i need i would need more overhead mobility to do overhead squats by moving my hands in just a little bit it's harder to do i have to be that much more upright and or have that much more shoulder flexion abduction in that in that slightly more narrow position than i would if i was a little bit wider so it's it's a trade off of sorts but you can treat it as different things like you can you can do overhead squats without a snatch grip and still get great benefits from it but if you want to be really really good weightlifting then you need to be as strong as possible with the same grip that you have when you're actually doing snatches

yeah when you transition in the clean and jerk from the clean to the jerk we got a question um what and i think that the person is struggling because when they front squat they don't they lack a little mobility and the pinky comes out maybe their ring finger comes out. And they get really comfortable in that position. So is there a benefit to maybe them just moving their hands out a little bit to create a little bit of extra space in there? How do you teach the, I guess, maybe not how you teach it, but do you geek out really hard on the elbows being super elevated in the front rack when you're doing the jerk.

Because I'm kind of an elbows down to lock out. Yeah, I'll see a lot of people. And I think what happens for me is there is more of a push down when I am jerking than people that have that really high front rack. And it's much more of like a jump. And then to me, it always felt like there was some weightlessness, just catch. Like I lost my connectivity with the barbell when I did this super high elbow front rack. That's just me.

I always just felt like I had much more control over the barbell by having my elbows down. Does it go both ways? Is that just a comfort thing for people finding themselves in the front rack and making sure they have the mobility to keep all of their hands on the bar or all their fingers? Yeah, not having enough shoulder external rotation range of motion is is probably one of the biggest the biggest things that keeps people from being in a good rack position where they can have a full grip on the bar um and be able to put it overhead without having to like you know have just my fingertips on yeah that's the one that i see people do that the fingertips only yeah they jump and i'm like where does it go how do you how do you get your palm back right i don't know how they do it you're more athletic than me yeah that's i mean that's how i

that's how i mostly used to do it and i was totally comfortable with that yeah i mean in back when i used to compete but that was it was 10 years ago now so uh in retrospect you know i've still learned a lot in the last 10 years even though i haven't been competing anymore i think i i would change that i don't do a lot of jerks these days because i still got chronic shoulder issues but um these days i would i would really push for having a full grip on the bar and i would grab a little bit wider on my jerk um and i would need a lot of external rotation to do that but but i think that's the best position if you can achieve it having your elbows down at like a 45 degree angle i think is okay any lower than that depending on how big your shoulders are yeah if you have more if you

have bigger shoulders and you have kind of more of a shelf to rest them on then it's not going to roll off if you don't have very big shoulders you're a relatively thin lifter still then having your elbows down the bar is not going to rest comfortably on on your on any kind of shelf and so you're gonna have problems but uh if you if you can get to the point where where you can keep your elbows mostly mostly up and then on the dip push them up even a little bit further that was that was a tip that i got at i'm not even sure if i said this on this show or the last show but um i was talking about my my strength coach mark he used to take me to ncaa conferences i used to live with all the elaco guys out there and i got a lot of

tips and uh lou demarco one time came up to me and was like you gotta push your elbows up on the way down i was like oh i never even considered that before chest big keeps your chest big and it what it did what it did for me is as i dip and as i dip i push my up. And what that did was it kept my torso vertical. So I did my dip with a vertical torso, super heel heavy. And then if you think about what's happening on a jerk, you're throwing a barbell from the front of your chest to overhead. And overhead means that your arms are vertical and your arms are connected to your

shoulder blades which are on your back so really you need to throw the bar back an inch or two in order to not have to move your body around yeah you gotta if you're if you want to move the bar to the right spot without having to you know hop yourself forward or whatever um if you look at someone jerking from the side and they're doing it well, like just like you see bar paths, you have that kind of like the S curve of a bar path where the first pull, the bar swings into you and then it kind of bounces forward a little bit on the second pull. And then it kind of comes back into you as it lands on your shoulders. If you look at that same, that same profile from 90 degrees, right at, you know, right out the side of somebody,

you'll see the bar when they dip go back a tiny bit and then when they go to throw overhead on the jerk it'll go up but it'll go up and back just a little bit as well relative to a vertical reference line it's going to go back and then back back down back and up and that also is helped out because you're driving your head through the bar bell well not through the barbell but as the bar elevates over your head and you're driving your head through the barbell. Well, not through the barbell, but as the bar elevates over your head and you're driving down, you are also driving your head forward. You're not trying to crane your neck forward,

but your neck gets through the barbell so that it lines up in the strongest position in line with your spine. Right. Yeah, actually on the elbows front for the second piece of that, as you dip, you push your elbows up. But then as you drive through your heels and then eventually rock toward your toes before you do your split, you're driving your elbows up again.

So it's elbows up on the way down, elbows up on the way up. And that's what's going to keep the bar traveling slightly backward in both cases. And then when you split, you split whatever your dominant leg is forward all the way to a vertical shin you just push yourself as low as you can you're pushing yourself down because once you do your extension with your legs the bar's not really going to go anywhere it's going to go up to about the height of your eyes

and then if you want to catch something at the height of your eyes with a locked out elbow overhead you've got to push yourself down really really quickly. Right on, dude. We could go on for days. We sure could.

We might. Get over to flightweightlifting.com, 54-page e-book, taking you through all the technique, all the videos, all the demonstrations, how to get strong, improve your technique, and love the snatch and clean and jerk. You're going to PR, I promise. Where can people find you, dude? You can find me on Instagram,

Douglas E. Larson. Obviously, everything is Strug Collective. We've got Barber Struggle Wednesday, most Saturdays these days, and I do Tech Peek Ward every Sunday. And then I also have my own site, DougWashmanFitness.com, relevant to this conversation. I have a product called Movement Specific Mobility. I have one made for front squats, for back squats, and for overhead squats as well as deadlifts.

They're in the shop on that site. So go to DougWashmanFitness.com and click on Shop. And I basically just walk you through any problem that you have where you can't achieve a perfect position on overhead squats. If you're common compensations, like you're rounding your back, or you can't hit full depth, or your knees are diving in, your heels are coming off the ground, or whatever it is, I basically have a video that just shows you, if you have this problem, here's the things that could potentially be causing that problem. Here's how to test to see if you have any one of those things. And if you do, here are the exact steps you need to take to fix it. Here's all the drills you need to do the stretch you need to do etc so it's it's very methodical and just like

shows you exactly what to do if you have any kind of technique issue for those of you listening at home the word's comprehensive that's what we're working with douglarsonfitness.com they are very comprehensive they're awesome you can find me on your commute in your family vacation on your radio every wednesday and saturday on barbell shrugged at anders varner get into the shrug collective You can find me on your commute, in your family vacation, on your radio, every Wednesday and Saturday on Barbell Shrugged at Anders Varner. Get into the Shrugged Collective. Six shows a week. Technique WOD on Sunday.

My wife just walked by the garage, which means she's like, what are you doing in the garage talking about weightlifting? Yeah, at Anders Varner in the Shrug Collective. You bet. And we've got the Program Vault. Check it out. Program Vault, $47 a month, 12 programs, shredded, Olympic weightlifting, mass gain, CrossFit, all four of those are 18-month-long programs.

Then we've got all the accessory programs where you can mix and match, make it special, make it your own, or use them as accessory programs to the main programs. You literally will never have to go and find another weightlifting program. Not weightlifting, one word, like Olympic weightlifting, like lifting of the weights. There's probably 10 years of workouts in there. Yeah, you're in the right place. Just be there.

Strongman, mobility, food, Faction Foods is in there. Insurance for weightlifters along with all the long-term programs. Get in there. You'll love it. $47 a month. Shrugcollective.com backslash vault. He said it. He's better at this.

See you guys on Wednesday. Once again, thanks for listening to the show. Love these shows. There's so much good momentum going on with Shrug right now. I looked at the iTunes Top 100 in health and fitness last night. I'm at my in-laws in New Hampshire. I woke up yesterday, and it was like 65 degrees in San Diego. And then by the time I got out of the airports and the airplanes,

I landed in a place where it was 14 degrees. That is a rude awakening, especially when your warm clothes involve sandals. Anyways, got into iTunes Top 200 and found out I had five shows, four of which were barbell shrugged in the top 200 of iTunes of health and fitness. And man, we've only been at this thing like eight months now. I took over some co-hosting work with these guys in January and it's just been an incredible year. So much appreciation for you guys tuning in. Thank you so much for telling your friends. I am just, it's that time of the year where we're thankful for things. There's a lot of gratitude and I appreciate all of you for tuning in. I appreciate everyone for listening,

enjoying the show, reaching out. If you enjoy the show, shoot me a note over at Anders Warner on Instagram. I love hearing from you guys and I just really appreciate all the support over the last year. Big things coming your way. 2019 is around the corner. We're going to light this thing up, and just a lot of good momentum, and I very much appreciate everyone for tuning in. We'll see right back.