Cleaning

[vic davy]

I saw this discussion about how to catch cleans. The Russians believe in practicing catching the cleans as low as you can with light,medium and heavy weights, while others including many Americans and I am pretty sure the Bulgarians believe you pull it as high you can and catch where you catch it.

IMHO, I believe that ,to learn to get under the weight, you have to practice cleaning low, until you establish the muscle/cns memory to get down.
Watching many elite lifter some look they can barely deadlift the weight and then they're under it, an example is Illin.

Opinions?

[stevens]

Get low from the get go, sounds like a plan.

thanks

[Whitney]

Originally Posted by vic davy

I saw this discussion about how to catch cleans. The Russians believe in practicing catching the cleans as low as you can with light,medium and heavy weights, while others including many Americans and I am pretty sure the Bulgarians believe you pull it as high you can and catch where you catch it.

IMHO, I believe that ,to learn to get under the weight, you have to practice cleaning low, until you establish the muscle/cns memory to get down.
Watching many elite lifter some look they can barely deadlift the weight and then they're under it, an example is Illin.

Opinions?

i agree with the russians, however it's not either/or. i went back and checked the texts that reference this and the basic concept is this

1) a lifter should learn to be able to pull any "working weight" (iow maybe from 60% of max on up with the same tempo and pull dynamics, which will result in roughly the same height. bar height, like bar path is an effect, not a cause... of technique

2) given that, lifters can ALSO lift lighter weights with a different tempo to help develop speed and russians have no problem with that, but it should be done with a conscious awareness of the difference and with the understanding that doing the former is of primary importance

as medveyev said (iirc) "training is technique and technique is training"

also, even though the height should be roughly the same, they recognize that lifting different weights is , frankly, different technique, because the lifter-barbell system is necessarily different with lighter weights (the CCOG is obviously different). in brief, the horizontal displacement will, and should be somewhat different because the bar will displace more with a lighter weight (horizontally) given the same force applied to it and the body a bit less.

if you think about it, it makes sense.