Weightlifters are among the strongest and most explosive athletes in the world. So, let’s see how your athletes can benefit from doing them!
An old football programming staple, the clean is used (and misused) by hundreds of coaches every year. Clint Darden starts at the bottom and fixes everything a football player needs for better carryover and better performance.
Are you hurting your athletes more than helping them?
Teaching the Olympic lifts can be difficult. Using isometric holds can benefit both coaches and athletes.
Whether your sport is powerlifting, strongman, football or any other “strength” sport, the power clean should be part of your workout plan.
The power clean is the best lift for power and explosiveness and should be included in all strength and conditioning programs.
In part one of this series on Strongman training for athletes, I made the argument that Strongman training may be a great option for building strong and explosive athletes and a viable substitute for Olympic lifting.
You might disagree, but hear me out on this. As an ex-college football player and currently a strength coach, I’ve found the utilization and teaching of Olympic lifts to be tedious, inefficient, and downright boring. As a college athlete, I hardly found the patience to learn the correct lifting technique for the power clean. Although I held the St. John’s University power clean record in my freshman season, muscling 335 lbs (152 kg) off the platform, my technique was completely flawed. My attempt looked more like an axle clean and press in Strongman than the smooth pull of an Olympic weightlifter.
It’s extremely important that athletes perform Olympic lifts correctly. This means teaching lifts through a progression designed to implement proper form. Doing the lifts incorrectly, which is the case with the vast majority of young athletes, reduces the effect of the lift and creates a much higher likelihood of injury.