How to Snatch - Updated Version

This is another tutorial for snatching. More specific I feel, as I see a lot of people pulling incorrectly, which leads to an ugly Snatch. My main issue is people that start with their shoulders way over the bar, then after the knees they have to swing their torso upright whilst using the lats to bring it in, this overuse of lats can cause arm bending if the timing of hips and torso verticality are off. This also result in a lot of bar banging, instead of brushing the hips, resulting in an arc motion, meaning the lift is very often lost behind them, as well as a lot of bruising and pain.

Some people have adapted to this, and got strong enough to muscle the bar into place, but I feel if you learn it the way I will describe, you will make more progress consistently.

Now, why should you listen to me? Don't, it's fully your right to ignore, there are hundreds of weightlifter that have much higher lifts and totals than me. But My status has had lots of downs, and the most recent being a Stroke in Vietnam. This reduced me to basically nothing. Now, I can just about Snatch (but it causes pain in my right arm) and my ability to clean is gone. I will work on bringing these things back, but I think it's safe to say my goal of becoming a British Weightlifter is over.

However, throughout my weightlifting career I have done absolutely insane amounts of research and theoretical work. I never had a Coach, because they weren't available, so I had to become my own coach, filming analysing myself, catching fractions of things being off, and forever tweaking and changing small things. So, this should give me a fair bit of Theoretical knowledge, particularly in the Snatch. So now, my goal is to become a Coach, but potentially through Email, as I will live out in Vietnam instead of England.

So, lets get down to snatching 101.

Alex

Takano Weightlifting Programs

Download Spreadsheet here
Spreadsheet is a work in progress; so far I've done Class III to CMS. I am running the CMS macocycle at the moment and enjoying it a lot, and feel that my consistency and strength have gone up.
Strongly recommend purchasing Bob Takano's Weightlifting Programming; excellent book. He has a great blog and website (with more information on) here.

Weightlifting Performance Matrix

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ierj1yo7eto05x2/StandardsMatrix.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vvbben23x9utevg/WLLevelCalc.ods

Mohamed Ehab - Clean and Jerk

185kg Clean and Jerk at -69kg

Fairly standard, but blisteringly fast, impressive because a lot of people chasing speed sacrifice hitting ideal positions.

Marcin Dolega - Clean and Jerk

Comes up his toes quite early as a result/cause of a more inclined torso at the power position. His hip movement is very upwards, so even though he throws his hips into the bar a little there is minimal outward travel on the bar. No real triple extension to speak of, the upwards movement coming from the hips means less need to shrug the bar up as the bar height is already present so he can pull under and use the force of his hips and the bar meeting to shoot his hips back down again. Very outwardly angled feet and vertical head position (similar to a lot of Chinese lifters out of the hole).

Shi Zhiyong - Clean and Jerk

how 2 jerk

jerken is p gud lift for wl gives gud delts and ok traps. bench is better tho cos it hits chest well gud.

jerk is p simple m8

Soviet Style Programming

Notes from Roman's Training the Weightlifter, with bits from Takano's Weightlifting Programming
Class system explained here

Yearly volumes (all volumes are number of lifts)

• Beginners: 10,000
• Low-class: 12,000
• Qualified: 15,000
• MastSport: 18,000
• MSIC : Slightly less

Intensity (% of biathlon total, average weight across all movements)

• Light classes : 36-41% (38.5% av)
• Middle classes: 35-40%
• Heavy classes : 34-39% (36.5% av)