Barbell Shrugged - Three Biggest Mistakes In Your Clean Set Up and How to Fix - Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #558

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Why people confuse the clean with a deadlift start position Hip positioning to optimize first pull Can you cheat foot positioning to increase speed How to find the right grip in the clean Finding your mid foot and balance Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we're talking about the three biggest mistakes in your clean setup and how you can fix them. We dig into why people confuse the clean setup with the deadlift start position, as well as hip positioning to optimize the first pull. Cheating foot position, what is the optimal foot position to increase speed and power through the first pull of the clean, how you can find the right grip in the clean and where that grip is, as well as finding the midfoot and balance in your start position. Before we get into the show, we got to talk about our sale going on right now. March Madness. For all you crazy kids out there watching all the basketball happening, March Madness has also happened on Barbell Shrugs.

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When you get back to your computer or when you're on your phone and use the code MM30 at checkout. MM30. March Madness sale. 30% off store-wide. Friends, we're going to do reads in the middle. Appreciate you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner.

Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mast. Coach Travis Mast is back at college right now. Yeah. Back to school. He's got a real office. Back to school. I can't hear the words back to school without thinking about Happy Gilmore

and singing that song in my head. To prove to dad that I'm not a fool. Rodney Dangerfield. That's the reason back to school. I hope all of our audience is at least 35 years old or that song would not make sense to them at all. Or Rodney Dangerfield. Most people don't even know that he was ever a person.

Our younger audience, they don't even know who the fuck that guy is. I'm sure they don't. These guys stay talking about lifting weights. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about getting off the floor in the clean, having a stronger setup, hand position, arm position uh some of the biggest faults that we see just getting the bar off the floor and how the floor or your setup uh equates to bigger lifts or missed lifts from rushing the bar off the floor hand grip hip setup

back angle and all the musculature involved in having a strong setup. Doug Larson, on the highest level, what are some of the big points of performance that you're looking for when you see somebody address the bar and how they... I truly believe that when I see somebody address the bar and grab it, just based off the first inch off the floor, you can see if they're going to make the lift or not. But what are, what are some of those like high level points performance that, that you're looking for when you see somebody grab the bar in the clean?

Yeah. I feel like having a good foot position and a good grip position is, is the most important thing just right off the bat. Like if you're, if your feet are in the wrong spot or you're grabbing the bar in the wrong spot, then it's, it's very tough to get anything else in the right spot. Does that make sense? So that really comes down in, in, in many cases to body type, uh, as well as mobility. So if you have a very ideal weightlifting structure, you're, you're relatively short person. You have that long torso, you got short limbs,

but then it's pretty easy to get into a good clean position it's it's just it's like it's like dunking a basketball when you're seven feet high it's just easier yeah so if you if you happen to be seven feet tall and you got really long limbs like a basketball player and you're trying to do you know cleans or snatches well man your setup is going to be radically different than someone who's who's five feet tall um and has have has the prototypical weightlifting um architecture where they have the long torso and the short limbs so so it really comes down to body type um shorter lifters with the more ideal body type they're going to be able to have a closer foot position a closer stance they're going to be able to have their feet pointing

more straight ahead and they're going to be able to grab a little more narrow more than likely because uh very long limb people they need to grab a little wider just to just to have the bar um you know when they're in the power position making contact just a little bit a little bit higher uh i used to train a guy who he played pro basketball for for a number of years uh in europe and he was six foot eleven we used to have him do his snatches with with the deadlift bar because it was just you know it's not it's not a good it's not a good bar for actually doing anything real with snatches and cleans but this person's not competing he's he's just doing it for fun uh but it's that it's it's longer it's a longer bar so that that guy can grab much wider that way when he's doing snatches he's not hitting the bar mid thigh he's actually like pulling it into his hips.

Yeah. That's a good idea. It really comes down to body type. Yeah. Mash, you're writing a book. I want to hear the whole chapter about set-up today. Yeah. I just finished it, so it's going to be a really good book. But, you know, with set-up, normally you start with your feet at about hip-width,

but that's very, you know, that's just a great starting place. The reason why is because if you, you know, you watch someone do a vertical leap, normally that's where the feet are going to be. And that's so, therefore, you can make an assumption that that's where they produce the most force. Now, like if they can't get in a good position, then it doesn't matter. You know, so then you have to like, you you know work around a person's anthropometrics you have to work around a person's you know style and structure like for example jared fleming um who's snatched 170 kilos first person to do that at 94 kilos in america he had a super wide stance and he's like you know maybe five eight or five nine not not not very tall but it just based on the way his hips were structured,

I'm sure it has something to do with how his actual neck of the femur, the angle that it's at, I'm assuming. But he was wider, which is not as common. But he snatched 170 kilos. So a lot of things are not going to be absolute they're going to be this is a good starting place so like you're saying hip width that's a good starting place i like to um one thing that maybe i don't agree with kelly start it but i wouldn't say if i explain it you'll understand like instead of like toes straight ahead

toes slightly out it just makes it easier to clear the way you know as far as your knees yeah that was exactly kind of what i wanted to get in when we just see somebody walk up to the bar um you know as the weights get heavier and kind of like as a as you become a more elite weight lifter or you get more comfortable with the movement, I think that pointing your toes out just a tiny little bit really helps just cheat the speed under the bar too. You don't lose much power in just having a little bit of a toe pointed out. And you're able to keep your feet underneath your hips so that you're still driving up. And I feel like you're talking about Jared and that he has a very wide stance. I always felt like I had a very wide stance as well. You do?

But I think it was a little wider. Yeah, a little bit. It's a little wider, but I also think that it's because I just toe my feet out just a little bit. And that just, to me personally, it's not the most technically sound thing, but it really helps the speed under the bar when you start to get into maximum weight just because you don't have to all and there's the people who are more traditional

who are going to triple extend and jump your feet out pretty drastically and like uh in my book i cover the very thing is that you know don mccauley the late don mccauley who was he worked you know worked with me at muscle driver and then worked with me at master elite but he would you know he was all about like minimal foot movement like you're saying, because it's a quicker thing, he would say. I would say that I'm not 100% on it. I mean, obviously, if you look at who is the great – oh, Vardanian. If you look at not Norik, but his father, the late Vardanian,

he didn't move his feet hardly at all. If he did any kind of plantar flexion, it was very minimal. And he's arguably the best of all time. Why do you even – I don't even know why you would have to move your feet. Like what is the argument saying that it's necessary to move your feet? You can still triple extend and not move your feet out at all. Here's what I would say is that the reason why you would jump it out, if you have your feet at hip width where you feel you can produce the most force,

it's going to be a better base slightly wider when you catch a snatch or a clean. So it's a little bit better base. So that would be one reason. But I would argue to say that you might be a little bit faster. So if you look at Columbia, who is probably the fastest weightlifters on earth, they move their feet. And what happens is as they're pulling under,

they lift their knees. And so there's nothing to resist their pulling under. Does that make sense? So when that bar is steady in space and you're ripping under it, if your feet are still on the ground, like a lot of people are, there's a potential of pushing and resisting the the pull underneath but when i lift my knees my feet are off the ground and i'm jumping my feet out there's zero resistance so i would say but you know none of this can back it up until studies have been done which is one of the things

i want to do is actually see you know who's faster a guy who like jumps her feet out because their feet are off the ground and they have no resistance or the person who you know has their feet on the ground and it's better timing yeah it's hard to say it's it's always some combination of putting your feet in a position where you're getting optimum force production but balanced with optimum leverage so you're right you're trying to find the the position where you can produce the most force with the optimum bar path. So you gotta, I feel like you gotta have the bar path first and then, and then you're tweaking it to, to maximize force production within the constraints of, of an optimum bar path. There's one study that was done with, you know, cause you know,

the Chinese, everybody, I hate pet peeve when people say the Chinese pull, because if you watch them, they're just like, some do it this way, some do it that way. But what people see in their head when they say Chinese pull is they will drag the bar up their hips. And so, you know, they'll come, it kind of slides up. And so that would be the ultimate bar path. That's as close to the center of mass as you can get. And then you look at like the traditional European where it's like slightly off, you know, slightly off the thighs, that bar is going to be moving much faster because it's not dragging.

So that bar is faster. The other one though is like, you know, has a better center of mass. So when they did the research, they found that it equaled the exact same. So whether you, you know,

whether you drag it and have the perfect bar path, whether it's slightly in front and faster, it doesn't really matter. It equals the exact same amount of power at the top. Yeah, I also think it really gets into understanding yourself as an athlete, right? Like for me, I lifted as an 85, so I was 187 pounds on the platform. Right. And I'm, I'm not the biggest and strongest person.

That's an 87. There's a lot. There's, there's monsters that used to lift it or that you said that 85, my guy, 87, like I'm just, yeah,

he's a thick, like they're five foot five and they're thick kids. Monsters, right. And then you take just somebody that has like muscle fiber types that's just fast as hell and just a brutally strong person for one rep. Like I can't beat that guy in pure strength. So my, anytime I was lifting, it was always about how do I maximize the amount of athleticism that I have, knowing that I'm going to have to give up something on the pure strength side of things. And that's why I always found the wider stance because I could be quicker under the pure strength and jumping side of things

and the force side of things and gain that in the athleticism and the speed under the bar to be able to get down faster and be able to get out of the hole in the front squat. I would not change anything about your snatch after watching it. I think it's – just like with Fleming, I sure wouldn't change someone who can snatch 170 kilos. So, yeah, I just – I think a lot of things when coaches just say, you know, start with your feet at hip width,

start with your toes slightly turned out, those are just a starting place. And then you have to look at the person lift and see what mistakes they're making and make adjustments. It's just trial and error at that point. Regarding how much to toe out i feel like that's mostly a function of of how much do you need to toe out in order to push your knees out wide enough where the bar doesn't have to go around your knees as you as you go through

your first pull with your hips lower than your shoulders where you're having a consistent back angle so if you're you can you can do that two ways like if you if you widen your stance oftentimes it's easier to push your knees out and then also if you if you have a narrow stance and i do this when i when i snatch i have a pretty narrow stance right it's not really towing out it's more like bringing my heels together because i have such a narrow stance um and i push my knees out all the way to where at the bottom in that bottom position like my knees and my elbows are touching and i'm grabbing and i'm grabbing all the way to the ends of the bar all the way as wide as i possibly can grip and yeah only in that position can i have you know a quote-unquote like perfect

first pull where i keep i keep my hip down keep my back flat uh the bar drifts you know ever so slightly toward me as it's as it's passing the. It's still coming into me as it's being sucked up into my hips. If I had more of a toes straight ahead stance or even when I try to widen my stance, I can push my knees out far enough, but I don't feel like I'm nearly as powerful. I don't feel like when I extend, I pull the bar quite as high. And so I found this kind of middle ground where I keep my feet very close together. I push my knees out super wide and then I can maintain that perfect position throughout my first pull. That's an example of like looking at someone's anthropometrics, looking at multiple reps and making adjustments until you find what's perfect

for you. So some of the absolutes though let's talk about like you know something that the audience can take away is like here's some absolutes when you start that initial pull off the floor the bar is either it should come back or go straight up but never forward that's one of the things that you know that is an absolute trying to keep your chest up and you know pushing with your feet through the floor and like instead of like a lot of people in america will talk about you know toes or they'll talk about the um you know the balls of the feet if you'll just think about pushing your whole foot through the floor that center of mass will handle itself because the center of mass of the system which is like the bar plus the body it's going to be in the middle of the foot so like unless you

mess that up like it's going to be where it needs to be. So just think about driving your entire foot through the floor, keeping your chest up, and squeezing the bar in. If you do those three things right off the floor, the odds of you making the lift are a lot higher. You have a 90% better chance than if you mess that up. And I think that I see an overwhelming number of people start way too far back on their heels. It's crazy. And it's not their fault that one,

they've been told their whole lives if they've been in the gym or even if they're just starting out weightlifting, like sit back in your heels. So they assume that that means you're literally sitting all the way back on your heels, which is a very just unbalanced position. If you have somebody just stand there and have them shift their weight actually back into their heels without any weight attached to it, they very quickly get very unbalanced, may even stumble backwards when they do it. But nobody realizes, unless you've been around weightlifting, you don't think about your midfoot or where your midfoot is or your center of mass. So it's very tricky to feel weight or pushing down through the floor and equally balancing your weight from your heel to your big toe and then kind of like that knuckle on your pinky toe to actually connect the ground to your feet. It's a really strange thought process that the majority of people have never thought about until all of a sudden now they're supposed to lift weights and push through the floor in their midfoot. It's a bunch of terms that

most people don't understand. And if you're a coach out there and you're talking to your athletes and you start this process of like, well well it should be just in your midfoot but slightly forward when you set up and then you come as you pass your knee now you're you're slightly shifting that weight back a little bit behind closer to your heel like all of that have you ever lifted weights if a coach does that mike have you ever been a lifter because so confusing because if you put it on like a force plate it it shows these these slight little back and forths as the way as the bar moves but right just jump get the weight in your midfoot and the bar will handle itself as you get it past your knee just try that that is what's happening like the yeah there there is a shift in the center

of pressure of your foot position from midfoot toward the heels and then back more toward midfoot or the ball of your foot when you when you're in full extension like the there's there's good research to show that uh world championships but teaching it teaching it can be tough like a beginner is going to be very confused because that's like super details to think about when you're going through a complicated movement there's lots of other things to still think about. Like an advanced lifter where they have a lot of experience, like you might be able to educate them on that amount of nuance, and maybe it can help them.

But a beginner, it's going to be super overload. It's like way too much to think about. Just jumping hard with a bar in your hands is like the big, broad, general thing. You can say to someone who's brand, brand, brand spankinganking new and then you can give more nuance as they get more experience i would argue that even for an advanced you start saying if you start anytime you start using a lot of internal cues i mean the all the studies are going to say that's probably not going to work that well especially in a movement like the snatch or the clean it's just too fast you know yeah so like you know but you're just using something like i simple q i like to use pretend it's a leg press you know and then you know if you're on a leg

press you just push your foot into the platform just think of the floor as the platform of the leg press yeah form a leg press and squeeze the bar in and that's all you need to think about man like you don't need to think about toes i think you know like you said balls are the heels by saying balls or toes is is the opposite it's it will you know a lot of times when people are thinking okay i need to be on the balls of my feet first thing off the floor now they're pulled forward because they've shifted that weight too far forward just drive your damn feet to the floor man it'll it'll handle itself i promise it'll be just yeah hopefully i was told i was told growing up to push the floor away yeah very similar concept to like press yes yeah if you think about pushing the floor away rather than pushing yourself away from the floor it's it's the same it's same same but different

but for some reason it it seems to help people with the first pull position with with with staying covered and having a long enough first pull before they, you know, before they double knee bend too early, which there's another thing that we could talk about that you may or may not want to teach. It's too confusing. Never. It fucks people up. It's good at explaining what's happening,

but never really teaching in that moment. Everybody does it. Work on re-bending. Yeah. Don't do it. Right. Yeah, we do. We work on like a transition. I just don't do it. Right. Yeah, we do. We work on like a transition.

I just don't say, you know, we talk about going from the second position, but really it's just at the knees. You know, there's a pin lay that said position one, position two, position three. I argue that position two, like is that really a position? You know, we're at the knee. It's like there's a first pull that ends whenever you start the transition into the second pull and it's hopefully it's not at the knee because it's at the knee it's pretty early in my opinion so like anyway that's a whole

another thing but like that's like a sign of a beginner is when they they bang the bar on cleans like right above their knee you could you can see you can see like the scraping on their actual skin sometimes you can see that people have like if they have a like sweats that they wear but you can see it's like worn thin right there where the bars hit for so many reps and you can just you can just see it right on them like oh well that that person pulls incorrectly you can tell by looking at their pants and you see an advanced guy that's going to be like upper thigh or you know sometimes even the hip you know then you know that that person knows hip, you know, then, you know, that that person knows what they're doing.

That's how you know when you're in shape versus out of shape, where you're out of shape. When you get all those little red marks, those little tiny little skin pimples, because the bar has been, that means you're out of shape because your skin is not prepared to handle the barbell. You're in shape when you don't have to worry about the bar scraping your legs. Take that one home with you, friends. Next time you do a bunch of cleans and you scuff your thighs up, you're out of shape.

Congratulations. But the biggest fault off the ground is always the bar getting too far forward. And what do you think the biggest cause of that is? Is it the midfoot or is it a poor back position? Is it all of the above? It probably isn't just one single variable. But when the bar pulls you forward, as somebody that has done a snatch and clean enough times,

I know the instant that that bar comes off the ground, I go, oh, man. Like you're able to slow it down enough and understand the feel of when everything's in the right place and your weight's actually in your midfoot and that bar doesn't pull you forward because if it pulls you forward and you start to feel your whole body kind of coming in the direction and the bars yanking you around the weight's lifting you and you are not lifting the weight anymore but what causes that that forward feel to um is is it mainly just the weight being in the midfoot or does it have a lot to do with just the hip setup and being able to to sit and pull the bar in tight well i think if you if you look at like a great place first to tell people is to you know a great start one thing we didn't mention in the basics of the setup was like you know where should the butt be in relation to the to the shoulders definitely below the shoulders but a great um starting point that we use is you set up to

where the knee is either equal to or slightly in front of the elbow. Normally that matches 99% of all anthropometrics to a good position to where they can push. You know, they can still use the legs in the initial drive off the floor. So find that position first. And then I would say the reason why people mess up the most is because they're trying to yank the thing off the floor. So find that position first. And then I would say the reason why people mess up the most is because they're trying to yank the thing off the floor. They're trying to get all the speed from the initial pull. That's a person who I realized they don't understand that the magic happens in the second pull, not the first pull. The first pull sets up the second, the second sets up the third and then so forth. So if you mess up right off the floor, you have no chance.

So, like, you know, pull it as fast as you can, but under control. So for some people, that's going to be, you know, steady off the floor, then accelerate. But when they yank it or they think pull, that's another thing. When they think, you know, of pulling versus, like, pushing the floor away, like Doug said, or pushing through the floor. When you think pull, normally that's a yank motion. Same thing with deadlift. The butt shoots up, the chest drops, the bar drops forward.

And part of that is really just not understanding pulling mechanics and that you're driving your legs through the floor, and many people try and lift it with their back when they lift when you try to yank the bar off the ground you're doing that with your back versus jumping or driving the floor away um through your legs and that that that's that's a lot of just the hip setup um if you're if you're bent over and more of like a with your waist too high and like a little bit more of a deadlift setup it's really hard to engage your glutes in that bent over position so you end up pulling just with your back and that's when everything just like it gets really fast or you're yanking the bar off the ground. You're just not using your legs and driving off the floor.

We're always told to squeeze the bar off the floor. And that was a good cue for me, like to keep people from yanking it. Squeeze the bar off the floor kind of implies like smooth and fast to me at the same time. I like that. Take it a quick break, friends. We've got to thank our good friends over at the U.S. Air Force. Special Air Force, Special Warfare Operators in the U.S. Air Force are experts in skydiving, scuba, and motocross. Wouldn't you think it would be so awesome if not only were you in special warfare for the U.S. Air Force, but you were taught how to drive in motocross

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Organifi.com forward slash shrug. We'll see you guys after the show. Down to our conversation about foot position and pushing your knees out. Where, again, if your knees aren't pushed out enough and the bar now has to go around the knees well then the bar is moving forward already which means it's not coming back into you which means you're not going to get into a good hinge position which means you're not going to hit you know hit pockets when you get into that power position it's all it's all going to be forward out in front of you so if you can if you can push your knees out wide enough where the bar can float into you throughout that first pull then it's much more likely to continue as you as you extend to come up into you you know onto your collarbones

or over your scapula if it's if it's floating forward then you're going to be chasing it you're gonna have to jump forward to go rescue the bar and that's just a losing battle yeah every time the bar goes forward you know maybe people don't understand like when the bar and that's just a losing battle yeah every time the bar goes forward you know maybe people don't understand like when the bar goes forward the reason why things are harder is because every thing you know your spinal flexor moment your hip flexor moment every everything now just the the force now that you have to produce in those areas just goes up because the center mass switches you know the bar goes forward now the center mass of the system shifts forward you know so now it's harder on your back harder on your hips harder on

your quads and so like uh well not necessarily quads but harder on your hips and harder on your back and so that makes the whole thing and like you said earlier um andrews this was an interesting thing so you know you said like more like a deadlift setup. I argue, I don't know if that's true. Now here's why I say that. Like I did that, you know, I wrote this book, Pulling Science. And so I interviewed over, it was over 200 coaches and like everybody's view of what a deadlift setup is totally, I would set people up the exact same way as I would a clean, because I feel like that's the best position for a pull period whereas some people would say keep your butt higher because um I know like starting strength they would say keep your butt higher because it puts more um it puts more

work on your hips and in your back and those are strong movements but I would say with my butt down you know my quads can help but it's still super easy on the quads if you look at the flexor moment that you know the quads uh or the extension moment the quads have to overcome it's still very small but but it makes it easier on my back and my hips so they can you know continue to be strong throughout the pool much longer but you know but i'm a much higher i'm a much higher hip deadlifter i do the clean i've never had a coach really teach me to to sink my hips down i think it's it's probably is like a a school of thought in that in crossfit the the goal being to move as fast as possible oh yeah being uh where it's just you want to just

almost like rdl hinge it as much as possible. That makes total sense. Fastest way possible. But in powerlifting, it doesn't matter what your angle looks like as long as you can be as strong as possible. Right. I do the same setup for the deadlift as I do the clean because I feel like that's my strongest position to do a pull. But that makes total sense with CrossFit. You mentioned the back,

and I think that this is one of the more complex pieces to getting, especially beginners, and understanding the back angle and how off the floor. There's almost a moment when you see somebody, and it's kind of like in the setup where if they're too far over or they're lifting with their back, but getting somebody to understand the actual back setup and how little your back angle changes from the floor to your knee, there really should be no, no change to your back angle until you get really high on your hips and you start to get into that power position where you're elevating the bar up. But the musculature, the lat setup, and the shoulder angle, I think is also a really interesting conversation for people. You see a lot of people that just kind of round over and grab the ball

without actually thinking about depressing the shoulders, getting the scap at a good place, activating their lats so that they have a really strong back. I always notice when I'm taking the bar off the ground, one, I can feel it in my grip. For some reason, my grip, I know I'm going to make weights when the bar is able to sit just deeper in my hand. I don't even know if the bar is actually deeper in my hand, but there's something about the neurological feel of how the bar is sitting deeper in my hand, but there's something about kind of like the neurological feel of how the bar is sitting deeper in my hand. I'm like, this thing's money. And then if I can get my back in a good angle and my lats are activated where I'm able to almost, one of the reasons I, you're not,

you yelled at me like a couple of years ago, Mash, on our private Facebook page. But I love the, like a slight early arm bend. Cause I always felt like I could like pick the bar up and put it wherever I wanted with whatever weight was on the bar. If I could just like get a little bend, I could just pick the bar up and my, my lats would be almost like I was doing like this tiny, tiny little row, like a tiny little bent row. And then I have a strong, my lats would be locked in. Everything would be stronger. And I could just place the bar anywhere on my body that I wanted it to get it into a good position.

But the lats are super, super important in creating a good back position to actually be strong off the floor and keep that bar in tight to your body. Yeah. I, I do a little early on bend too, but it's very debatable. In America, we're very dogmatic, long arms, elbows out. And I understand that too because then you can move – normally you can move faster. You know, like if Doug were boxing, he would not have a flexed arm. It would be loose so he could snap it.

Same thing, that's why they want your arms nice and long because once I've extended, now my arms can move faster underneath the bar. But, you know, CJ Cummins has an early arm. There's plenty of Olympic champions who had early arm bend. You know, CJ's arguably the best. No, he's not. He's the best

weightlifter of all time in America. He has early arm bends, so like it's, you know, it is debatable. It's the same thing as the foot position argument we made earlier about optimizing force production within optimized leverage so if you you can give up a little bit on force production if your leverage improves and so now the bar feels lighter and it's easier you can't pull it quite as hard but it's easier and so you're you're always looking for this little balance like if you're a person that when you pull and if you don't bend

your arms you're hitting upper thigh and so in this little balance. Like if you're a person that when you pull and if you don't bend your arms, you're hitting upper thigh. And so in the power position, two things are happening there. Um, the bar, one of the most notable one is that the bar is further forward relative to your center of mass. So if it was right, it sucked up into your hips. You'd be very close to your center of mass. But if it's, if you're in that power position with a vertical torso and a slight knee bend, and now you're hitting upper thigh, the bar's also moving forward an inch or two. Yeah. And so, and so you're,

you're much more likely to have to catch it forward and it's hard to pull it back into you. Uh, if you can do an early arm bend and suck it up into your hips, you'll get better leverage on the pole. Even if you're pulling a little bit, um, less forcefully.

So it's, it's always a balance. You're trying to figure out which one's going to work the best once again i was always just trying to hack a more athletic way to do it for for what i needed to do knowing that i was not the strongest person at my weight class i would say the one thing i would say is it's a absolute about that is if you're early you know if your arm bends and then during extension it unbends then that's a definite negative and you definitely want to avoid that yeah i think that

the uh so i i say that i had like this tiny little arm bend and anytime you see somebody with a little bit of an arm bend like you do have one travis when you when you hold but for i mean you're also way too jacked for the weight you're lifting in a way. Anytime I start to get to weight that is like a one RM or max for the day, I may feel like I'm bending my arm, but I'm not bending my arm. My arms are straight. It just a little bit when I feel like I'm putting a little pull on the bar before i even take it off the ground it just tightens everything up and it allows me to feel like i'm putting the bar in good position but if i go back and watch it on video i'm not i'm not doing a a quarter inch

bicep curl like i do with uh with so ugly yeah the way I do it. But, yeah. I mean, so why do you think that you do it in your own clean outside of just a habit? I think you hit the nail on the head. But it feels more athletic. You know, before powerlifting, when I was at the Olympic Training Center, I didn't do that at all. Like, I was very long arm, elbows out. And then I spent all that time in powerlifting and added a lot of musculature to my upper body. So, I think what you said is right. I think it would take me to be in getting back to those bigger weights, like 180, 190 kilos, to unbend them.

But right now, I'm at weights like 140, 150, which is not that heavy for as strong as I am. So it's easy for me to bend them and put them where I want. But the other thing about the, Oh, but not bending your arms would be, you know, in the, especially in the setup by pushing your shoulders down and turning elbows out when you finish at the top, if your elbows are, you know, I'm talking about, you know, internally rotating your arm, but like if your elbows are turned out, there's a good chance that the bar stays close there. But like, if you put in your pocket, like Doug said, if you're not careful because now your elbows are back, that now the way that your arm's bent is out versus in.

So there's that too. So you just got to be careful. If you can do the arm bend and not unbend and keep the bar in once it's in the hip, then I don't see a whole lot. And if you're CJ Cummings, I'm sure as hell not going to say, all right, CJ, I know you set multiple world records, but we're going to change your technique because you've been in arms. I read this book on weightlifting, CJ, and it says you're doing it wrong. Yeah.

Let that man be CJ. Let him be CJ. If you're not a competitive weightlifter, you don't have to choose between these two lifts, by the way. Like, you can do both and just call them different lifts. Like, it's like doing a wide stance back squat or a closed stance back squat. Like, if you're just an athlete, you don't have to choose. If you're competing in powerlifting, well, maybe you need to practice powerlifting style squats, whatever's going to get the biggest number on competition day.

But if you're just a regular athlete and you need to be strong in many different positions then you can squat with all kinds of different um grip positions and foot positions whatever else because if you're an mma fighter you're going to end up in all kinds of crazy positions you need to be strong in all of them that's a great point so you can you can do hip cleans and you can you can do you know long arm triple extension cleans and just count you know count them as separate skills and get good at all of them. Yeah. When you're looking at back angle, though, we spent a lot of time talking about lats and arm position there. But with the – we lost him.

I turned around. He wasn't there. You're looking at the extensors and just how the back angle does not change. What is like the kind of the big flaw when you see, I don't want to say beginners because it happens to everybody. I feel like when, you know, if I'm missing lifts a lot of the times just because I'm not staying in my legs long enough. But how do we teach that patience to just stay over the bar as long as possible? It's like if you're not used to how slowing a lift down

or having the kind of like the neurological pathways of knowing like this is a long path past your knees and then it's even longer to get it to your hips and a lift that takes less than a second to do can feel like an eternity at times when you're standing over the bar. But how do we get people's chest to stay over the bar longer once they're even in a good setup? Because it's really easy to want to jump as soon as possible and start putting a move on the bar. I mean, I would say if you want to use an exercise using like halt cleans, like pausing a few inches off the floor, and i would recommend longer pauses because when you just say pause it'll be a yield but if you say three to five seconds it'll be a real pause and so by doing that um using hand clean with slow eccentrics making sure the

focus is on the exact position but you got to do things to slow down and strengthen that pathway but as far as like what verbal cue I would use, I think we've all talked about it already, you know, thinking, you know, push and squeezing. I love, you know, I say the same thing. I think feet through the floor, squeeze the bar in. And so, like, by doing that cue with those movements would be a good way of fixing that.

Yeah. You can just tell people the very obvious cue of just lengthen your first pull, just long first pull, long first pull, which is the halting cleans or halting snatches are basically just doing that.

You're doing a very long first pull and then you're pausing at the very, very, very top. That way you can drill that top position, which is the position most people are missing out on when they're cutting their pull early.

Yeah. I actually think doing that exercise as well is a great way to understand where your midfoot is. If you're holding a bar in that position for three to five seconds, you will have no option but to feel your foot pushing through the floor and it will balance you out very fast because it's the optimal way to drive the bar off the floor. And after you get tired, your body will just immediately revert or find the most optimal way to stay in that position.

Don McCall used to say, pretend your legs are longer than they really are. So, you know, pretend you have super long legs, even when you don't. And yeah, that worked for a lot of people. I like that. I've actually never heard that. I've never heard that in that very of people. I like that. I've actually never heard that said in that very specific way. I like that a lot. Doug, one thing that is a characteristic of your clean

in the hand and grip position, and you move your hands out, you start wider and then bring them in, even in the clean. Why is that something that you do? And somebody with appendages like you have, long arms, would they see benefit in maybe doing something like that? Yeah, I have kind of, we'll call it funky clean technique because I have super long arms. For the same reason he can tap your chin with his middle knuckle whenever he wants sleep right great for kickboxing

yeah i do a funky clean technique so i i have that that short torso long limb build uh luckily you know i'm fairly mobile and so i can still clean and snatch uh you know pretty well even with a body type that's not optimum for weight lifting. But with cleans, I do, I put my, I put my ring finger on the, on the hash mark on the bar, uh, which, which is pretty wide. A lot of people think I'm going to snatch it. If they, if they don't know me, they, they might expect me to snatch the weight. Cause some people do grab, um, I'd say for me that narrow when they snatch, uh, cause I grabbed collar to collar when I snatched, but, uh, I have say for me, that narrow when they snatch, because I grab collar to collar when I snatch, but I have a wide grip on cleans because I have such long arms, and so because I have such long arms

and legs, I need to push my knees out far enough to, you know, all the things we said earlier, to get the bar to come into me as I'm going through my first pull, and so because I need to push my knees out far enough to get the bar to have a proper bar path, I have to grab wide enough where my knees have the ability to be pushed out. And so at the very bottom, I'll be grabbing wide, but my knees will be touching my elbows. I'm grabbing as narrow as I can for my foot position. As I go through the pull,

I don't really do a lot of like one rep max cleans anymore and so if i'm doing one rep max then i tend to do that the more straight arm technique um but if if i'm not doing one one rep maxes which is most of the time these days you know if i'm like at you know 60 70 80 85 percent whatever it is, I'll usually have a little bit of a early arm bend as I'm transitioning, just so with my long arms, I can pull the bar a little bit higher and pull it up into my hips. And then once I pull and I'm racking the bar, I do, I slide my hands in quite a bit where my hands are now just in the rack position, my fingers are on the bar just outside of my shoulders, but they've, they've slid in a couple of inches. Um, that's

a cool, I love when you do that. That's very cool. Yeah. It's, it's, if you're, if you're not familiar with snatches and cleans, like you, you might wonder how that's even possible to like, let go of the bar and then move your hand position but it's in that kind of that that weightless phase i do have to stop pulling on the bar though so that's that's not that's not optimum because i have to i have to let go of the bar just just for a second um so i wouldn't recommend doing it necessarily but but for some people i think it's it's a good idea but it's not like something i would teach necessarily to like grab super wide and slide your hands in. Yeah, and one thing also that I think it really helps with you is it helps get the bar into such a better position on your hip since you do have long arms.

Like you would be making contact way down on your thigh, like very low thigh just because that's that's where your arm you'd be you'd be at full extension and your arms would still be down yeah monkey arms all the way down at your knees um so it allows you to get the bar uh just my bad i was saying it allows you to get the bar much higher on your thighs even to your hip like your your contact and the clean i feel like it's much better than mine for sure, just in that you're able to elevate the bar much higher with that grip. So whatever you're probably losing in being able to pull on the bar for the entire clean, you still make up in probably that distance

and just being able to get the bar higher on your body into the power position. I think most people are going to have to give up things. I'm sorry. That was my point. Go ahead and finish my bad. No, I'm sorry. I was just saying

that most people have to give up certain things. You know, you have to like, you know, you have to give and take unless you're just like a perfect body type. Like, you know, like a Morgan who like,

you know, has that perfect, you know, catches the bar with a complete hook grip. There's just not many of those. Otherwise, you got to give and take some things. Right. And I didn't actually lift like that back when I used to compete in weightlifting. It wasn't until I had a shoulder surgery, you know, many years ago now where as a result of that shoulder surgery, I can't get in full external rotation on my left arm.

And so having a wide grip in the rack position, you know, if your hands are straight back right next to your shoulders, you're not very externally rotated. But then as you grab wider and wider and wider on the bar in a front rack position, you're externally rotating more and more and more. And I can't externally rotate very far on my left shoulder after that surgery anymore. So I have to be in a very narrow rack position so it's like so i'm making these little tweaks for me in my very specific situation where i have super long arms and i want to push my knees out so i have to grab the bar really wide on my pole but then because i can't actually rotate in a rack position i have to have to rack it really really really narrow and so i just i i've made this jump from a wide position to a narrow position um just because it

just happens to work for me in my very specific situation. Yeah. Awesome. I have shorter arms than that. So we get to cheat a little bit more being close the whole time. Bash, when's your book coming out, bud? It's finished. I would say within, definitely within a month. Cause I know now we got to do like, you know, coming out, bud? It's finished. I would say definitely within a month. Now we've got to do some graphics.

We're going to take some pictures and videos along with all the stuff I said. I think it'll be at the worst case a month, but hopefully two or three weeks. We'll try and get the show out before then. Right on, team. Just to wrap this thing up, make sure your feet are underneath your hips.

Whether your toes point out a little bit or not, that's up to you. Figure out kind of your best angle. Drive your feet through the floor. We can all agree to that. Your hips in between your shoulders and your knees, where you keep your hands. Make sure you can just be athletic, fast and strong. Um, let's,

uh, let's wrap this thing up. Where can they find you? Mash. Ashley.com. Look out for the book. Hopefully it'll be, um,

when the show comes out, hopefully it'll be soon after Doug Larson. You bet. I'm on Instagram. Douglas C. Larson. I'm Andrew. I'm Andrew.

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I'm Andrew. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged to Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash store. That's where you find all the programs, e-books, nutrition, mobility to make strong people stronger. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash store. This week, use the code MM30. March Madness sale going down.

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