Gym Shorts: The Power Clean

How To Power Clean

Gym Shorts videos provide short video demonstrations of correct form for various exercises.

Follow these steps:

• Bottom
  • Heels hip width apart
  • Bar over midfoot
  • Grip one hand width outside knurling
  • Knees in line with toe angle
  • Back straight
• Movement
  • Keep bar close to body
  • Arms straight
  • Shoulders over bar as long as possible
• Jump
  • Jump at midthigh
  • Forcefully extend hips & knees
  • Jump!
• Rack
  • Meet bar with shoulders
  • Slam elbows up
  • Partial squat: thighs above parallel

The power clean is an Olympic lift variant that allows you to improve your power–inasmuch as it can be improved–and allows you to express your strength gains from your strength training quickly.

Power–the ability to produce force quickly–is crucial to many sports and athletic endeavors: jumping, tackling, hurdling, a burst of speed, etc. All of these require not just a high level of force, but that force to be produced quickly. Strength training improves your force production. Practice applying that quickly with lifts similar to the power clean.

For the right person, we add power cleans as a light pulling day to replace the deadlift during linear progression (LP). Power cleans can also be performed as a warm up to the deadlift, as your power clean will be less than your deadlift.

We recommend doing power cleans in 3s, 2s, and 1s.

This is definitely a lift worth getting a coach to help teach and correct form. If you don’t have or can’t get a coach, patience and a camera will help, as you’ll have to observe your video and attempt to correct yourself the next time.

Click HERE to check out our in depth tutorial on the power clean and HERE to learn more about adding Olympic lifting to your program.