Early Arm Bend In The Clean For Tall Athletes
In 2008, I taught Olympic lifting for the very first time in an intro course at Carolina CrossFit. Since that day, I have preached to athletes of all levels, “Get the bar to your hips,” at least three million times. Somewhere from the knee to the hips, athletes get super excited to jump, they bang the bar off their quads and they lose a good six to eight inches of elevation on the barbell.
Unfortunately, for you genetically gifted, taller, and long limbed humans, getting the bar to your hips in the clean is a little trickier than us short armed, below-average-genetics humans. One thing is certain, the barbell does not care about your gene pool or your limb length, but, it does care about meeting your hips in the pockets to be maximally elevated.
Any quick YouTube search will lead to thousands of coaches talking about keeping your arms long to ensure the power transfer off the ground through the second pull in the clean. Although this is true, there needs to be some context so ensure the athlete is actually getting the bar into the correct positions.
As a rule, pulling up on the barbell with the arms before the athlete extends at the hips is incorrect. This results in a loss of power. However, keeping the arms full extended and not getting the barbell into the athlete’s hips is also not correct. By not getting the bar to the hips, the barbell never gets in to the proper high hang position and there is also huge loss in power.
However, if the athlete slightly bends the arms and is strong enough to maintain a static position with a slight bend in the elbow, this position allows the athlete to get the bar to the hips AND maintain the transfer of power from the ground through the bar all the way through the second pull.
In the video below, Emil Aassen, is a 6’3, 235# athlete with very long arms. As he moves through the second pull he jumps with his arms full extended and the bar begins to elevate from below his quads. With this form, he loses nearly eight inches of elevation on the barbell and a ton of power by having to pull from such a deficit.
By coaching an early arm bend off the floor, he is able to get the bar closer to his hips, create power through the second pull, and finish from a much higher position to aid in his sped under the bar.
Four steps to finding a proper elbow bend if you are a taller athlete:
- Stand tall with arms at full extension to your side holding the barbell
- Widen your grip about two finger widths
- Curl the wrists, felxing the foreamr, and bend the elbows until the barbell gets into the crease of the hip
- Maintain this elbow position as you lower the bar into a proper clean start position
Please understand that if you are an athlete with arms proportionate to your hips, you do not need to bend your elbows at any point in the first and second pull. This is a skill developed for taller athletes with long arms, or athletes with arms much longer in proportion to their hips.
If you have any questions of video that needs analysis, please send us an email at admin@sandiegoathletics.com and we will provide some feedback that will get you moving down the right path.
