[Closed] Power Cleans better than Barbell Squat?

There's a bit of a difference between 'power' and 'normal' cleans, the depth of the squat pretty much: If you don't squat with your hip crease lower than your knee level, that's a power clean. A full squat will be lower than that.

Just looking at my logs, I can/could front squat 115kg, but only had a 102.5kg power clean (and that must have been shaky as hell). My full clean was heavier than that, but not by much at all (105kg).

if you are looking to get into Olympic lifting properly, really focus on technique before you go heavy. The moves are really dynamic and you have many opportunities to mess up and injure yourself. You also have a few more lifts to try, Clean and Jerk and Snatch being the most open to s****ing.

I mean, where else can you ask someone how big their snatch is?

if you are doing cleans what weight do you lift compared to your barbell squats?

I used to do BAWLA Olympic Weightlifting 32 years ago!!!

For any of the lifts you start off with a broom handle, progress to the bare olympic bar & only then add weight.

Technique, technique, technique.

[claimtofame] *i once had a schoolboy British record for a left handed clean & jerk!!!!!!!!!!!! (45kg single handed clean & jerk using an olympic bar, when i weighed in at 52.5kg) [/claimtofame]

My cleans are pathetic compared to my front squats, i'm under 50% of the weight, even worse for back squats. However, I do have a few reasons - mainly I have one particularly knackered wrist from a bad break a few years ago. I have to be really careful in the catch & anything in the front rack is uncomfortable, made worse by the fact I broke my collar bone a few years ago & it sticks up right where the bar sits.

They basically suck for me (as does pretty much anything in the front rack position), which is a bit limiting, but there isn't anything I can do about it, so I just have to adapt accordingly.

But i'd rather be better at what I can do than fall into the usual trap of just slapping more & more weight on.

if you are doing cleans what weight do you lift compared to your barbell squats?

A power clean (caught and held with knees above parallel) is never as strong as a squat clean, where you catch and then descend into a deep squat.

Greg Everett gives tables in his book

I did an Excel sheet of the ratios, here is a table using Snatch as the baseline, eg for a 100kg Snatch:

[url= https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7806/46493341194_d8d98a3f32.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7806/46493341194_d8d98a3f32.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2dQswwW ]OL Ratios[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

100kg snatch? Hell, if only... I am really weak with weight above my head and putting any serious weight over there with a full squat in the mix is really tough.

I think most of my snatches have been power snatches more than full squats.

100kg snatch?

Sorry, I meant to say 'One handed snatch'...

Yours in lifting,

Dmitry Klokov

It is the technique that interests me. I have this book

Strength Training

and it shows a bend of the arm on the shrug which from what I have been told and read is a big no no.

This guy seems to have good technique, but I could be wrong.

Power Clean

and it shows a bend of the arm on the shrug which from what I have been told and read is a big no no.

Such a big no no that almost all lifters have it, including Olympic champions. I really wouldn't worry about it.

From a mechanical point of view it's inefficient but from a physiologically perspective, most lifters will bend the elbow during the pull phase.

The main reason it gets mentioned a lot is it's a useful cue when teaching the lift, as the thrust comes from the hips snapping open not the biceps pulling on the bar. People then take it too literally as any bend is bad.

Power cleans are an explosive exercise, squats are not. You shouldn't substitute one for the other. Continuing to do squats will significantly improve your power clean though, so I would do both.