Team Underground - I would LOVE any weightlifting training tips you can drop below pertaining to my technique on this olympic lift in the video below.
HUGE thanks in advance, I am learning some NEW stuff and LOVING it. It's a challenge to say the least! Please see my video below.....
Just drop your comments below, you can even throw in a link to a video if it will help.
HUGE thanks, Undergrounders!
MUCH respect
--Z--
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29 Responses
Zach – great work. First let me say that I’m no Oly lifting expert but I spend a lot of time scouring resources for Oly lifting knowledge. Those power snatches look good. From the ground, it looks like you start to pull the bar with your arms about a split second before the hips start to extend. Let your arms be like ropes with a hook grip. The hook grip is essential as it doesn’t engage the forearms like the traditional grip does, thus allowing your arms to act as “ropes”. When you stand up, lead with the chest, and the hips will follow. Hip thrust looks good though. Tight Core, flat lumbar and accelerate (explode) as soon as you hit the point above your knees. BTW – I need to work on all those items as well!
For starters, lower the weight. Next, watch this 3 part series on how to snatch, by Nicholas Horton:
– http://www.theironsamurai.com/2011/11/30/episode-7-how-to-snatch-part-1-catch-it-and-ride-it-down/
– http://www.theironsamurai.com/2011/12/02/episode-8-how-to-snatch-part-2-the-romanian-snatch-deadlift/
– http://www.theironsamurai.com/2011/12/08/episode-009-how-to-snatch-part-3-floor-to-knee/
@Edvin: by lowering the weight do U mean drop it?
Will check the vids PRONTO, thank you, Sir!
Like most guys that have been in the iron game for a long time, shoulder flexibility is hindrance. Work on trying to keep your shoulders externally rotated. K-Star has some recently posted vids on this topic. Thee were also a few reps where you were pulling in ther second pull with bent arms. You have a tendency to loose effiency when that happens. You can also work on getting under the bar more as the weight goes up. I hope this helps. Good work.
Zach,
need to work on your 2nd pull, really try get the elbows high and back and then drop under it and catch it. when you start the 2nd pull with your hip thrust get the bar weightless as much as possible and then swing under the bar and catch it. It appears that you are muscling it up too much instead of dropping under it.
yes, too much of a muscle snatch…. it feels fast, till the video shows the TRUTH!!
Good start man
I think that you should really focus on maintaining the arch in your back and strength/tightness in your stomach. You start off of the ground and you are trying to arch but it looks like you lose that arch which kills the vertical chest. That looks to be causing you to thrust the hips forward too much instead of being able to extend and drive your legs up (before the drop). When that thrust happens it is very difficult to drop under the bar. Just remember that it’s an extension up and then a fast jump/drop under the bar. Hope that makes sense and can help. Arch. Of course added flexibilty will help with this as well. Good luck
Slower first pull making sure you sweep the bar towards you, elbows pointing outwards and arms staying locked. Then increase your speed on the lift after that.
Break down the lift by working on power shrugs where you are hitting the bar with your hips and getting powerful triple extension.
Finish position with your feet should be more like your squat stance width so you can drop beneath the load as needs be when it gets heavier (similar to OH Squat stance). You could use drops to practice this where have bar on your back and then drop as quick as possible to bottom of OH squat position
Awesome idea to learn the Snatch! Once you learn how to Snatch literally all of your lifting will improve. It’s the ultimate in lifting mechanics, and once you get it down everything will make more sense.
Now I am no expert by any means. Hell, it took me a year to get the balls to drop under the weight in a full squat snatch. One day it just snapped and I got it, and once you get it, you’ll never loose it. I just started doing it again, after not doing it with anything more then a bar for years. And I still got it! Like riding a bike!
Anyway like the guys above said. You arms should be like hooks, you’re using way too much arm strength to muscle up the weight. You want all the momentum and force to get the weight up to be coming from first your legs, your back and lastly your traps. NOTHING from your arms.
On the first pull from the floor, keep your back flat and over the bar, try not to move it, and lift to your knees. Then once the bar is past the knees, start speeding up and explode! Literally jumping, ending with a shrug of your traps!
Take a empty bar, hold it in front of you, stand on your toes, and shrug your shoulders to your ears. Look where the bar is, this is as high as your muscles should be acting on the bar. That’s it! All other upperward movement is going to be from momentum of the speed at which you explode. Literally zero force from the arms afterward.
Something else I noticed you were doing on your pulls from the floor, is you are pulling to your knees, pulling the bar to your hips/waist hinge, THEN you’re exploding. Making almost 3 movements out of it. WAY to late, you want to explode as soon as the bar passes your knees. Making it 2 movements, not 3. You will get much more power this way.
When people start doing it this way, often they will let the bar swing out in front of them (kinda like a kettlebell swing), you don’t want to do this. You want to keep it as close to the body as possible like a deadlift. I like to think about dragging the bar up by body and literally try to throw the weight BEHIND me. Sometimes if the weight is light, or if I pull to hard, I literally DO throw it behind me and lose the lift, that’s fine. You can make adjustments from there.
I know you want a good workout and it to be hard, but even for someone as strong as you, I would practice with something even lighter. Just the bar. You’ve probably heard that before, and it’s hard to do when we’re always trying to lift heavier and heavier weights, but it’s so true. I just was reading an old Milo issue in which they were talking about Shane Hamman’s conversion from World Powerlifting champion to Olympic lifter. This guy was a thousand lb squater and he worked with JUST THE BAR for 2 months. And all he was doing was practicing the lifts, with some squats thrown in.
There will be plenty of time to add weight. I don’t think you need to wait until your form is perfect to add weight (where the fun in that?), but you need to at least spend some of the time with little weight.
I hope that all makes some kind of sense. Hard to type out ideas clearly without showing you, but I hope you get something out of it. Again I’m no expert, so some people might not agree with me. But that’s my 2 cents!
Yo big dog! I’m NOT a fan of the Barbell Snatch for sport specific training or for general training. There are too many drawbacks and impraticalities with little reward of it mimicking real life. Inspite of that, much like you, I LOVE being pushed to my absolute limits and force myself into uncomfortable scenarios. During this time i’ve been competing in the Crossfit games and posting that experience for all of my clients and friends to see. As a former bodybuilder and now a powerlifter these lifts are forcing me into realms of flexibility, strength endurance and metabolic conditioning that i’ve NEVER had before. When this weeks WOD came up I knew I had to adapt and compete because i refused to come up with an excuse. I recruited a few people to help out and all I did was muscle snatch my workout and got by on strength. In that time, I learned a lot about this lift that I should be able to help you with.
1. Mobility, technique and explosiveness are more important than raw strength.
2. Learning to break this technique down into components like working on overhead squats, power snatches from the hip (where you explode up), partial lock outs being held overhead by chains while you mimick the explosive to lock out portion(Frank Dimeo turned me onto a series louie Simmons did on this), visualizing the lift, and working through K Stars (FYI, you turned me onto him at the USC cert) shoulder and hit mobility all have come in clutch. Last but not least, Pavel’s theory of greasing the groove. At the time I did this WOD for the games I had only done the barbell snatchs 4 times in my whole life and it’s all within the last month of this whole thing. Since wednesday I would just pick up pvc pipe or an olympic bar and go through each iteration of the snatch: muscle snatch, power snatch, snatch with the squat, etc. For you, much like me, your shoulder mobility and your rotation power and speed need to increase to match your hip explosiveness on your second pull of the exercise. This is really easy for me to say now that I have watched my performance about 10 times.
FYI: I rocked my USC strength shirt in my video of the Snatch. Keep pushing the pace my brother.
My best advice would be, to get a lifting coach. These movements are near impossible to learn properly without a trained eye watching each lift. I know it seems time/effort consuming to find a coach and find the time to have him teach you. But it will be WELL worth it. I admire all the training you do, but this is something that cannot be self taught, you wont be able to reep the rewards of this style of training without learning the lifts properly. There are so many things to take into account when performing a snatch or clean and jerk, that it really is a skill that needs to be learned through someone who has experience doing them and teaching them. Best of luck!
I tried to post this on youtube but they wouldn’t let me. I use this warm up to get the high and wide elbows drilled into my young athletes heads as well its a decent warm up
The burgener warm up:http://youtu.be/5oG11fZ0TR8
Hey Zach,
We are on spring break the week of 4/2 – 4/7. If you’re interested, I can come down to the Underground and help you and anyone else with your Olympic lifting. Or you and some of your crew can come up to Morristown High School for an Olympic weightlifting session. Let me know what’s good for you.
Your old NJ buddy,
Rob Izsa
rizsa8@hotmail.com
The first thing that I noticed is your are not shuffling your feet out from the jumping or pulling position into the into the receiving position when your catching the bar. so your having trouble getting under the bar and you are catching the bar with slightly bent arms. The receiving positing should be about your sqauting stance and the pulling positing should be hip width apart. a simple way to practice your turn over is to use a light training bar or pipe holding it just under your chest and practice dropping under it with out moving the bar or pipe. Remember you should be catching the bar with straight arm and this should happen at the same time your feet hit the floor in the receiving position.once you master that drill work from the top down. snatch with bar right in your hip crease. then mid leg, above knee,below knee, then the floor. if you could shoot out a video from a side angle that would be helpful as well.
Harry Paschal called it the most beautiful lift ever. Old school York for you Zach!
I would like to see a video of your one handed snatch with a dumbbell. If you move faster with one handed then it is a between the ears issue. Instead of increasing speed once past the knees you are pausing, then starting. You are loosing the potential for force generation.
Take a high plateform for plyo jumps. Get into position to jump (squat down) then jump. You explode up with maximal force against the floor to launch your body up to the plateform. Now put a bar in your hand with some light weight and imagine having to generate that same explosive force upward, but this time your feet stay on the floor. In the plyo jump you don’t squat, come up to a standing position then try to jump. All one movement.
Then again I am no expert I just play one on TV !-)
BROTHER! You got a beast on your side! BIG Matty W! Waiting for his tips ! haha Dude knows his oly lifts!
Hey zach,I notice in the 2nd video you start to slow down alot almost pressing the weight to lockout,from my own personal experience when I start to do that on snatches im getting tired.I would keep the reps low no more than 3per set drop some weight of the bar really focus on snapping the hips.also I found overhead squats helped my snatch.I would recommend you check out dan john olympic dvds there great.
Mike’s Gym http://www.mikesgym.org/ is a great resource Coach Burgener is a great coach!
Another excellent resource is Catalyst Athletics http://www.cathletics.com/
Hey mate. You have some solid power there but some real positional issues.
1- your perception of the movement is pulling the bar from the ground. It is important to change how you see the world of physics. talks by Dr Romanov the guy behind the pose method speaks well on this topic. There are three bodies in motion here. You, the bar and the earth. None are fixed. Your first pull is there to seperate the bar from the earth, ie push the earth away from the bar. the second pull is all about applying momentum not only to the bar but your body. this allows you to pop and move those feet. At the moment you are ripping that bar away from the earth. This puts you in a linear motion (think tug of war), this puts too much force in your feet when you should be floating and the only solution is to keep pulling that bar higher over your head.
2- Hips: take control of that pelvis but creating more external rotation from the hip. this changes a few things. Mainly it will make the first pull a lot more verticle and a lot less forwards and back. You need those knees to stay out and feet stay straight until you shrug. A good visualisation is thinking how a crab would squat. It is purely verticle because its legs run sideways. Although we can’t operate the same we can externally rotate from the hip over a narrow foot position creating abigger angle and a verticle shrug and pull. If you do this the bar and your centre of gravity will pop up, you will feel snug and light on your feet and you will nail that third pull into that lockout with way more speed.
there are a few more things but fixing your perception of what happens and your hip position are number 1. To get the point accross your snatch is similar to the motion of a low bar back squat, mostly forward and back movement as opposed to say an olympic front squat or crossfit air squat… More external rotation mate
Peace B-rad
Hey Zach,
BIG KUDOS to you brother for putting yourself out there and being vulnerable so that you can get better.
For what it is worth, here is my two cents.
A couple of times I saw you shoot your hips which means that you started moving, but the bar was not, therefore you are playing a game of “catch up” as you lose some ability to generate force on the bar. This was a little more noticeable as the weight got heay (2nd video). As someone already suggested squeezing the bar off of the floor will keep it in a much better position as move through other parts of the lift.
The second thing I noticed, as some of the others have suggested, your 2nd pull is where it looks like you are starting to run into the most noticeable difficulty (i.e. bent arms, not accelerating through the middle). In my experience this is where alot of people run into problems, especially stronger folk who want to muscle it in place (thus the early arm bend, lack of full hip extension) as opposed to learning to generate speed on the bar.
One of the things that has helped me and others that I coach is just to work on the snatch pull (from the ground and off of risers). By just concentrating on accelerating the bar without thinking about the transition under it (the 3rd pull), alot of the problems that we see (early arm pull, slow through the middle) those problems get worked out. Hope this may help. Catalyst Athletics http://www.cathletics.com is also a great resource.
Again, great job on all your doing and striving to help others do as well.
Hey Zach
The snatch is an awesome movement!
I would say lower the weight and think about SPEED! It looks like you’re muscle snatching (which can have a place, but may hinder learning the correct explosive snatch movement pattern?).
Learn to use your thighs as a trigger point and explode.
James
HOLY shyt, you guys are AWESOME with ALL these tips:
1) Funny how video shows the REAL deal. It “feels” fast till I see it on video, then I see just how damn slow it REALLY is
2) Yes, 2nd video, TOO heavy
3) YES, gonna need to find a Coach, but, w/my hectic schedule, that may wait till some time in Spring and will try and sneak in w/my Coach Megz at Underground….
4) After doing pull ups almost daily since age 13, my t spine is so insanely tight that OH squats half way down r BRUTAL
Time to get 2 work, U guys r AWESOME!
@Edvin: by lowering the weight do U mean drop it?
Will check the vids PRONTO, thank you, Sir!
All the tips are great and there are some awesome mobility cues that all the guys have posted. I’m not an O lifter but I have wanted to start squatting and deadlifting more and get these lifts better because I never trained with them. So I went with my go to guys. I got a chance to lift with Jim Smith and Joe DeFranco and got some solid cues and my lifts have shot up like crazy. I’m lifting 2X my body weight and the biggest problem was my hip mobility. Almost the number 1 thing that got me starting the bar properly was going shoeless or wearing Chucks. Shoes with heels pitch your hips forward. IN the video your shoes look like trainers or running shoes. Even “minimalist” shoes have a heal. So with only one thing to add to all the great tips above…. if your pull from the ground starts out of balance the other flaws may get exacerbated. Give it a shot. Everyone is built different but I believe that proprioception is fairly constant.
lots of great tips up here!
1. learn the hook grip
2. find a comfortable starting position with upright torso
3. bow knees out when pulling past knees
4. be patient and keep arms long throughout the pull against the thighs
5. pull bar into the pockets and jump hard vertically, but not high
6. learn a fast foot transition from pulling to receiving position
7. not so much focus on muscling bar UP, but pulling body down UNDER it
8. find a stable overhead position, via behind neck push pressing and overhead squatting
9. finish hard with a solid push under the bar by practicing snatch balances
*** quick notes***
-pull bar up with floor as anchor
-pull body down with bar as anchor
-push body down with bar as anchor
-push bar up with floor as anchor
Hi Zach,
my comments have prob been all addressed but will share anyway.
Lighter weight until you are happy with speed then add weight on.
Focus on more of a jump. At the UKSCA weightlifitng workshop I kept trying to pull it off the ground then as it hit just past knee height jump the f in the air and get under the bar in at least a half way OH squat position.
I feel that if I just rise onto toes like you are doing then I slow down. When I try and jump and feel my feet leave the ground for that split second my speed is ok.
Again these have prob been covered but hope it helps.
Good luck bro!
Brother Zach, some great observations and tips so far.
Many of the brothers have mentioned your early arm use which is true, but I also notice a pretty big swing at the top instead of a more vertical top pull. At this point I don’t see a huge problem from the floor to the knees, but after that its not so much a muscle snatch as a modified “continental snatch”. The pull should be smoother from floor to finish with ACCELERATION. I think you get decent hip and ankle extension, after all, you’re a powerful athletic mo-fo.
Im gonna give you the instructions given to me by the great TK some 30 years ago:
1) Think about pushing the floor away from the bar when you start your pull
2) Keep the shoulders over the bar as long as possible, until it feels as though
you’re going to fall forward. (At this point the bar should be at the upper thigh.)
3) Explode your hips forward/up and shrug as hard and high as possible. Get those
shoulders to touch your ears.
4) Keep pulling on the bar…yes despite what you might hear to the contrary, use
your arms at the top (but only after shrugging per number 3). If you hit yourself in the chin with the bar, congratulations
and welcome to the bruised chin club.
My suggestion would be that since you probably have access to the best coach out there I would have Dan John take a look at your video.
He’s the best teacher I’ve seen & I bet he’d give you some great feedback.
Zach,
Solid power you got there!
I only got one tip for you–
Try experimenting with a closer grip. I did it the same way as you—then one day I moved my grip WAYYYY closer. I put my hands like right besides my shins as in a conventional, double overhand deadlift grip. For some odd reason, I was able to generate more power, man. The transition from the ground to the top felt much smoother and twice as powerful. Although, it is common for your arms to be bent mid-way through the pull in this manner. Maybe this is better suited for you?
Ok one more tip—you’re probably not going to like it. I would utilize singles (and I do) when doing Olympic lifts. I was just at the Arnold Classic and I had the pleasure of observing the US Weightlifting team—what is the one thing I saw from all the competitors? Heavy Singles throughout the competition. I think for Olympic lifts—you may want to concentrate on putting all your effort into multiple singles. You could probably eventually go even heavier since you’re not repping out.
All in all….Keep on Grippin’ n Rippin’ it!