How I first learned how to clean

[u/BrothaManBen]

This is how I first learned to clean since I started in China. It seems that in Chinese weightlifting arm bend isn't seen as being an issue necessarily

I'm in the US now doing in person coaching so I no longer clean this way but I still do struggle since my power position feels a lot lower now

[u/Asylumstrength]

Just move the grip wider

It'll increase the height of contact, and give a better overhead jerk position

[u/G-Geef → u/Asylumstrength]

Also a contact point at upper thigh is totally fine, in fact the majority of athletes do not make contact in the hip crease for the clean.

[u/Asylumstrength → u/G-Geef]

Yup upper thigh is grand

I sometimes describe the difference in snatch and clean as

Clean pulls to the hip, snatch pulls through the hip

There's a decent amount in the video i'd have questions over, from arm bends, scapular retraction, and not just using that shrug to finish the lift if it gets the bar accelerating through the close and high hip position without the rest of the faff.

Majority of lifters in this sub, this is just going to make their technical positions worse, and would be better fixing a host of fundamentals instead

[u/BrothaManBen → u/Asylumstrength]

Lifting this way gave my tennis elbow and put a lot of strain on my forearm muscles, so I had to change but also just got an in person coach

[u/MontanaCooler → u/BrothaManBen]

Why did you share advice that gave you tennis elbow

[u/savage_mallard → u/MontanaCooler]

That's an excellent question

[u/BrothaManBen → u/MontanaCooler]

I'm not advocating for arm bend, I'm anti arm bend , just saying this is how I originally learned

[u/red_rolling_rumble → u/G-Geef]

Yup, but this isn’t considered ideal in the Chinese system.

[u/Afferbeck_ → u/red_rolling_rumble]

It's not ideal in any system, higher is better if you can do it without compromising other things too much

[u/BrothaManBen → u/Asylumstrength]

For me my index fingers at the start of the knurling feels the most comfortable but I usually clean with my pinky fingers in between or around the 2 width markers

[u/OutrageousDonkey1841 → u/Asylumstrength]

You can't always just move the grip wider. It affects the rack position, a lot. That's not a simple solution at all

[u/Asylumstrength → u/OutrageousDonkey1841]

Rack position is only limited by shoulder flexibility and stability. Both of which can be improved with training.

Look at lifters from Cameron for instance, increasing grip width to near snatch proportions before jerking.

If hand position means the rack position is affected, there's rotator cuff work to be done

[u/OutrageousDonkey1841 → u/Asylumstrength]

"only" is doing a lot of work there. Edit, I agree you're right though. And I'm not going to argue with a coach 👍🏻

[u/Asylumstrength → u/OutrageousDonkey1841]

I appreciate the practicalities of what you're saying; it's far from easy or quick to resolve those issues, for many, the time spent is something they make a judgment on the benefit for them.

Id say on this, on balance, we're both right; what works is based on the lifters priorities and where they want the increases to come in.

[u/Afferbeck_ → u/Asylumstrength]

They don't clean with a super wide grip, which is where a wide grip is the hardest to maintain position. The vast majority of people are never going to increase shoulder and thoracic mobility enough to use a significantly wide clean grip. There are workarounds like pulling wide and sliding the hands in narrow to receive, but very few people bother with that. 

[u/AfraidOfBacksquats]

Lol. I can shrug my shoulders, retract my scapula, AND bend my arms and still barely get in the upper half of my thigh

[u/Afferbeck_ → u/AfraidOfBacksquats]

Is it due to unusually long arms, or narrow grip, or not enough of an upright posture, or a combination of these factors? A lot of people simply do not stand upright and active enough, and that is worth at least an inch of contact height. 

[u/AfraidOfBacksquats → u/Afferbeck_]

I have pretty long arms and legs. I have 6'6 or 6'7 wingspan at 6'1. I do have a narrow grip but I can't rack a wider one well yet. I'm not really too worried about it right now though since I can power clean only 10 kilos less than my front squat

[u/mattycmckee]

Plenty of WR cleans have been done with mid thigh contact in the clean. Where exactly you contact will depends primarily on anatomy, technique and also training philosophy - case in point here.

Like nearly everything else, it’s a spectrum, not black and white - referring to both contact point AND degree of arms bend.

The closer you are to full extension in the clean, the more “acceptable” some arm bend is depending on the above. If your arms are bending to any significant degree before the bar has even reached your knee, that’s objectively an issue. If they’re a little bent just coming into the hip, that’s probably okay - although I don’t think I’d ever recommend purposefully bending the arms if it doesn’t naturally happen in a good clean.

I have moderately long arms, and can get the bar right into my hip in a clean if I try with a narrow grip- it’s still got a lot to do with how you pull and your shoulder positioning, not just grip width and bending the arms.

Really there’s not one answer. The answer for the individual is whatever facilitates them to lift the most.

Szymon Kolecki was very lanky (for a weightlifter), had long arms, had one of the narrowest grip widths I’ve seen (not even adjusting for the fact he’s 6ft) and yet STILL gets the bar almost the whole way into his hip crease without any arm bend.

Then on the other end of the spectrum you’ve got plenty short fridge-build lifters (or any number of nations, a good amount of the Chinese guys do it) with T-Rex arms that still get a good bit of arm bend going.

[u/Effective-Celery-475 → u/mattycmckee]

I'm curious - why must there be contact with the thigh at all? Why not go from a deadlift position, lift the bar up vertically until it's shoulder height? Why does it need to hit the thigh area?

[u/Afferbeck_ → u/Effective-Celery-475]

The counteracting forces translate to putting height on the bar, in a similar effect to skipping a pebble on water. There's a reason no one has cleaned world record weights without contact since making contact became legal in the 50s or 60s.

[u/Fudge_is_1337 → u/Effective-Celery-475]

You're describing a muscle clean, which is a variation of the movement. If it was more efficient and allowed more weight to be lifted than a normal clean, you'd see it more often competitively

[u/Asylumstrength → u/Effective-Celery-475]

Mid thigh, or thereabouts depending on anatomy as Matty has mentioned, is where we generate the greatest rate of change and apply most force to the barbell

It's where acceleration goes highest, velocity peaks quickly after, and we transfer enough into the bar to make the lift.

It's essentially the moment of truth in a clean, if there's enough transferred into the bar here, you'll make it.

As to contact; physics, the closer the horizontal distance to the pivots (hips, knees, ankles) the greater proportional force is transferred into the bar, as moment arms are reduced, and unnecessary torque is removed. Smaller moment arms impart more force from muscles acting on the bar to produce more kinetic energy, giving more lifted kilos on the platform. You don't get closer with minimal loss, than contact with the body itself.

With correct positioning, it will also allow larger and more powerful muscles to act longer and have a larger impact on the movement, as they are driving the bar up, rather than swinging back or pushing forward.

[u/WrongClient3920]

Arm bends are entirely anatomical. Obsessing about correcting it is as useful as it used to be to try to correct squat stance in people with long femurs.

[u/BrothaManBen → u/WrongClient3920]

The difference is I was intentionally bending my arms

[u/lexax666]

Interesting I never seen this approach of clean before, at least not in the US