Olympic lifting without dropping the bar?
October 13, 2015 9:54 PM Subscribe
It turns out I enjoy doing cleans, but my gym isn't equipped to let me drop the bar. What to do?
After I've cleaned the bar to a front-squat position, I should jerk it overhead and then drop it. Instead I flip it down, catch it overhand like I'm at the top of a deadlift, and lower it to the ground. This has worked fine so far, because I'm only doing about 20 reps at 0.8x body weight, but I can see if I keep adding weight that I'll soon be unable to lower the bar.
Is there any safe way to continue increasing difficulty without eventually dropping the bar?
Note that I don't actually care all that much about improving. I just enjoy the sensation of that lift. So I'm willing to accept that the answer might be, there is no safe way to increase difficulty under these constraints.
I'm unwilling to switch gyms because mine is in a great location and honestly, I don't lift seriously enough to commute any farther. I know I'd just end up not going to the gym. (Also, it looks like the only two Olympic gyms in New York are Lost Battalion Hall in Queens and South Brooklyn, which are sixty and thirty minutes farther, respectively. Does the entire city really have only two?)
After I've cleaned the bar to a front-squat position, I should jerk it overhead and then drop it. Instead I flip it down, catch it overhand like I'm at the top of a deadlift, and lower it to the ground. This has worked fine so far, because I'm only doing about 20 reps at 0.8x body weight, but I can see if I keep adding weight that I'll soon be unable to lower the bar.
Is there any safe way to continue increasing difficulty without eventually dropping the bar?
Note that I don't actually care all that much about improving. I just enjoy the sensation of that lift. So I'm willing to accept that the answer might be, there is no safe way to increase difficulty under these constraints.
I'm unwilling to switch gyms because mine is in a great location and honestly, I don't lift seriously enough to commute any farther. I know I'd just end up not going to the gym. (Also, it looks like the only two Olympic gyms in New York are Lost Battalion Hall in Queens and South Brooklyn, which are sixty and thirty minutes farther, respectively. Does the entire city really have only two?)
It sounds like you are dropping it straight from overhead to hip level. You will have better control if you do as un petit cadeau suggests -- from overhead, drop it to a front rack position (and make sure you do so with soft knees, so your legs bear the brunt of that catch), *then* down to your hips, and then the floor.
Even so, I think you basically have to accept that you won't really be able to push too close to a max if you don't have the safety of being able to get out from under the bar quickly.
posted by ktkt at 10:34 PM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Even so, I think you basically have to accept that you won't really be able to push too close to a max if you don't have the safety of being able to get out from under the bar quickly.
posted by ktkt at 10:34 PM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Often if I'm at a gym that doesn't let me drop the weight, I won't go overhead with the Oly lifts—no jerks, no snatches. Most of the time in those situations I stick to power cleans. When I do go overhead in a no-drop situation, getting the weight to the ground varies by lift. Here's the technique shown multiple times in slow motion. Accompanying article. That video is really the gold standard, but I'll describe what I do too.
If it's a clean grip, as in a push press or jerk, I drop the weight to my shoulders (bending my knees to cushion the impact) and then flip it to my hip crease with—and here's the key—a significant bend-at-the-hips motion. I "catch" the bar in my hips as I bend at the hips and knees, then straighten up again before lowering it to the ground as after a successful deadlift.
If snatching, I don't drop it to my shoulders first, but I lower the bar halfway to my shoulders before letting it drop to my hips. The catch-in-the-hips motion is even more exaggerated.
posted by daveliepmann at 1:04 AM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
If it's a clean grip, as in a push press or jerk, I drop the weight to my shoulders (bending my knees to cushion the impact) and then flip it to my hip crease with—and here's the key—a significant bend-at-the-hips motion. I "catch" the bar in my hips as I bend at the hips and knees, then straighten up again before lowering it to the ground as after a successful deadlift.
If snatching, I don't drop it to my shoulders first, but I lower the bar halfway to my shoulders before letting it drop to my hips. The catch-in-the-hips motion is even more exaggerated.
posted by daveliepmann at 1:04 AM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
There are a million Crossfit gyms all over New York now, most of them offer some kind of lifting only class or "open gym" time, and they will all let you drop the bar to your heart's content.
If you're not really about doing it 'right,' just doing it more without needing to drop the bar, I'd recommend adding overhead press and/or push press as accessory work to your workouts. With training plenty of people can overhead or at least push press their bodyweight, which will train you to be able to lower the weight under control.
posted by telegraph at 5:28 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you're not really about doing it 'right,' just doing it more without needing to drop the bar, I'd recommend adding overhead press and/or push press as accessory work to your workouts. With training plenty of people can overhead or at least push press their bodyweight, which will train you to be able to lower the weight under control.
posted by telegraph at 5:28 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
I second what telegraph said- CrossFit gyms are everywhere in NYC and most offer different levels of membership depending on what your commitment level is.
For me, dropping the bar after a successful lift adds to the fun of the experience. It also helps you do more reps because you expend a lot of energy trying to gracefully lower the weight back to the ground.
posted by robadobdob at 5:27 PM on October 14, 2015
For me, dropping the bar after a successful lift adds to the fun of the experience. It also helps you do more reps because you expend a lot of energy trying to gracefully lower the weight back to the ground.
posted by robadobdob at 5:27 PM on October 14, 2015
Well, you don't need an Olympic gym to do Olympic lifts. People drop barbells all over the place all the time in Crossfit, and there's no fundamental difference between dropping a clean & jerk or dropping a deadlift since it's still a thing being dropped.
One approach you may like to consider, which will allow you to keep increasing load, is the power clean as one movement, and the strict press as another. Strict press or push press done from a rack is a fun movement, as is the clean and press. You don't need to drop any of these lifts, you lower them sensibly either back to the rack/front squat position or back to the floor/hang. Do the lowering nice and slow and you've added an extra dimension to your workout.
For the record I hate dropping bars since I don't have bumpers and I train on a concrete patio with a shitty Oly bar. Either the hammertone plates will crack, or the floor will crack, or the sleeves will come flying off the bar. So I'm kind of biased against anybody dropping any bar for any reason.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:30 PM on October 14, 2015
One approach you may like to consider, which will allow you to keep increasing load, is the power clean as one movement, and the strict press as another. Strict press or push press done from a rack is a fun movement, as is the clean and press. You don't need to drop any of these lifts, you lower them sensibly either back to the rack/front squat position or back to the floor/hang. Do the lowering nice and slow and you've added an extra dimension to your workout.
For the record I hate dropping bars since I don't have bumpers and I train on a concrete patio with a shitty Oly bar. Either the hammertone plates will crack, or the floor will crack, or the sleeves will come flying off the bar. So I'm kind of biased against anybody dropping any bar for any reason.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:30 PM on October 14, 2015
daveliepmann already posted the article by Greg Everett I was going to refer you to. I learned to do that for every lift. I catch the bar on my quads, then lower it to the high hang, then the hang, then lower the bar to the ground. Done.
If you only want to do the clean & jerk, but can't drop the bar… you could always do jerks from inside a power rack, with the safety bars set at your shoulder height. Or use jerk blocks.
posted by culfinglin at 9:34 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you only want to do the clean & jerk, but can't drop the bar… you could always do jerks from inside a power rack, with the safety bars set at your shoulder height. Or use jerk blocks.
posted by culfinglin at 9:34 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for all the ideas! I tested and/or researched all of them and have a few questions now about lowering the bar slowly and the Everett method of dropping bars onto your thighs.
For those of you recommending that I flip the bar down from front rack position to a hang, can you describe how that's done? That's what I'm doing right now, and it's getting to be a close call each time whether I have the grip strength to catch the bar and whether I'm going to hurt my back bringing it to a stop before it hits the ground.
I tried the Everett method of catching the bar with your thighs. This seems like the most promising approach, except it kind of hurts. I practiced about ten reps with an empty bar (20kg) and my thighs were distinctly sore. (Although, surprisingly, not bruised.) Any advice on softening the impact?
daveliepmann, your description makes it sound like you're squatting down and letting the bar fall onto your nearly horizontal thighs, whereas the article describes jumping up, thrusting your hips against the bar in mid-air, and then coming down as one unit, man and bar. Squatting down hurts more, but the coordination of jumping up to meet the bar is a bit hit or miss right now. Should I practice jumping up more?
I looked into crossfit franchisees with open hours, but I think that's not in the budget right now.
posted by d. z. wang at 9:41 PM on October 16, 2015
For those of you recommending that I flip the bar down from front rack position to a hang, can you describe how that's done? That's what I'm doing right now, and it's getting to be a close call each time whether I have the grip strength to catch the bar and whether I'm going to hurt my back bringing it to a stop before it hits the ground.
I tried the Everett method of catching the bar with your thighs. This seems like the most promising approach, except it kind of hurts. I practiced about ten reps with an empty bar (20kg) and my thighs were distinctly sore. (Although, surprisingly, not bruised.) Any advice on softening the impact?
daveliepmann, your description makes it sound like you're squatting down and letting the bar fall onto your nearly horizontal thighs, whereas the article describes jumping up, thrusting your hips against the bar in mid-air, and then coming down as one unit, man and bar. Squatting down hurts more, but the coordination of jumping up to meet the bar is a bit hit or miss right now. Should I practice jumping up more?
I looked into crossfit franchisees with open hours, but I think that's not in the budget right now.
posted by d. z. wang at 9:41 PM on October 16, 2015
Grip: yeah, it's hard.
Back: one must never allow the back to round. It's as true during the catch as during the lift.
Thigh pain: I would reframe Everett's approach as the bar meeting the hip crease, not the thighs per se. There's a bit of impact pain as you first start doing it, but like thumb discomfort with a hook grip or neck/upper-back discomfort with a bar across your shoulders for a squat, you just get used to it. I emphasize folding my hips around the bar by bending over, which lessens the impact greatly since this lengthens the duration the impact takes.
I'm sorry for the confusion. I do not squat down and let the bar hit my horizontal thighs. That would be a good recipe for pain and injury. I have not yet experimented with jumping up to meet the bar, but I am upright with hips extended (and perhaps even a bit of backward lean or rising onto my toes?) when I meet the bar. I let the bar touch the front of my hips, and only then bend, mostly at the hips but at the knees as well. My intention is to catch it in the hip crease, not on the thigh muscle, and to dissipate the pain of impact by drawing it out in time. Catching in the hip crease also makes it a little easier on one's grip, since the timing of maximal grip strength doesn't need to be so exact.
Jimmy Schmitz' article may help by phrasing things a different way.
posted by daveliepmann at 11:33 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Back: one must never allow the back to round. It's as true during the catch as during the lift.
Thigh pain: I would reframe Everett's approach as the bar meeting the hip crease, not the thighs per se. There's a bit of impact pain as you first start doing it, but like thumb discomfort with a hook grip or neck/upper-back discomfort with a bar across your shoulders for a squat, you just get used to it. I emphasize folding my hips around the bar by bending over, which lessens the impact greatly since this lengthens the duration the impact takes.
I'm sorry for the confusion. I do not squat down and let the bar hit my horizontal thighs. That would be a good recipe for pain and injury. I have not yet experimented with jumping up to meet the bar, but I am upright with hips extended (and perhaps even a bit of backward lean or rising onto my toes?) when I meet the bar. I let the bar touch the front of my hips, and only then bend, mostly at the hips but at the knees as well. My intention is to catch it in the hip crease, not on the thigh muscle, and to dissipate the pain of impact by drawing it out in time. Catching in the hip crease also makes it a little easier on one's grip, since the timing of maximal grip strength doesn't need to be so exact.
Jimmy Schmitz' article may help by phrasing things a different way.
posted by daveliepmann at 11:33 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hmm, you're not trying to stop the bar completely with your quads, but rather, to slow the movement of the bar slightly with your hands, and then also using your hip crease/quads to very briefly catch, then slow the movement of the bar, by bending your knees and flexing your hips to absorb the impact. (My quads are really prominent, so they catch the bar more often than my hip crease; YMMV.)
If you think of the same kind of control over lowering the bar that you'd use on a deadlift, it's like that. Only starting from your shoulders, not your thighs.
posted by culfinglin at 11:26 AM on October 19, 2015
If you think of the same kind of control over lowering the bar that you'd use on a deadlift, it's like that. Only starting from your shoulders, not your thighs.
posted by culfinglin at 11:26 AM on October 19, 2015
Response by poster: I got it! Ten reps, at my working weight, and my thighs survived.
It is a bit of an upper body workout, though, isn't it? I wasn't expecting it'd be hard to just lower a bar.
posted by d. z. wang at 9:10 PM on October 22, 2015
It is a bit of an upper body workout, though, isn't it? I wasn't expecting it'd be hard to just lower a bar.
posted by d. z. wang at 9:10 PM on October 22, 2015
Awesome! Go you!
Lowering the bar like this kills my upper body, especially my upper back and grip. That's part of why I usually tend towards fewer reps at a time with short rests, for instance: 3 reps, then rest two minutes, then two reps, then rest a minute, then one rep, rest 30 seconds to a minute, repeat the singles (perhaps with longer rests, up to 3 minutes or so) until I'm crispy.
posted by daveliepmann at 11:31 PM on October 22, 2015
Lowering the bar like this kills my upper body, especially my upper back and grip. That's part of why I usually tend towards fewer reps at a time with short rests, for instance: 3 reps, then rest two minutes, then two reps, then rest a minute, then one rep, rest 30 seconds to a minute, repeat the singles (perhaps with longer rests, up to 3 minutes or so) until I'm crispy.
posted by daveliepmann at 11:31 PM on October 22, 2015
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If you gym has them, give jerk blocks a try.
posted by un petit cadeau at 10:13 PM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]