4 rounds for time of:

10 Kettlebell swings 2 pood/1.5 pood

20 deadlifts 155#/105#

30 double unders

post times to comments.

Coache Mark’s Article in the Coaches Blog: “Are you an arm bender?”

Are you a very strong lifter?  Are you a fairly new lifter?  Or are you a very strong and new lifter?  Then chances are you have been observed bending and pulling with your arms before you fully extend your hips and legs during the clean or the snatch.

So you say “What’s wrong with that? I can still clean a heavy weight.”  Remember that the muscles you want to evoke in pulling that bar as high as you can off the platform are your legs and back (with forward hip drive), your traps, “lats” and then to some extent, a finish with your calves (though at that point of the momentum of a great pull your entire body will be lifted off the platform with your calves only appearing to apply some force to the platform).

Pulling with your arms forces by employing that bend,  forces them to begin doing work intended for the larger muscles.  Pulling with your arms will bring the bar toward you (instead of your hips toward the bar), hence setting it away from its required vertical path.  This will result in your body moving forward – remember Newton’s Third Law of Motion:

“To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.”

If you are an arm puller and want to increase those personal bests, then heed the following:

1. Allow the weight of the bar to passively extend your elbows until you are fully extended at the end of the second pull.  Like a plumb-line, let that bar keep your shoulders, elbows, and arms in a straight line. With this reduced motion you can focus on completing a full extension of your hips/legs.

2. Be cognizant of how tight your grip is on the bar.  If too excessive (perhaps because you may not be using the hook grip), far too much neuromuscular signals are sent to the forearms, when they should instead be sent to your back, legs and onward to hips and traps.

3. Check out your first pull.  Arm bending is often caused by trying to correct a bar that is too far forward.  Ensure you have a proper start position and first pull.  Refer to my previous article “Transition and Velocity” regarding how the bar is to be kept close to your body/Centre of Gravity.

4. Check out where the bar is at the start of second pull and how it got there.  Arm benders often pull up the bar with their arms bent, try to lift and position it on their upper thigh as they dip slightly. From that point, the lifter would then start their second pull as a quick, but noticeable, hang snatch.  Unfortunately, as poundage increases, arm strength provides little help and when it does, it causes loss in upward bar velocity.  So the arm-bender will have to be awfully quick in getting under the bar as it will not be as far off the platform as it otherwise could have been.  In competition, pulling from the hang is cause for a referee’s red light – arm bending is not.

As you gain more confidence in raising the bar as high as you can before dropping under it you will find less dependence on that arm bending.  And try not to rush under the bar while the bar is still, under your second pull momentum, traveling upward.

Soon your second pull will not resemble an upright row, a 45-degree Pendlay Row, or a reverse curl.  The momentum of the bar’s mass and velocity, your extension, your quick drop under the bar (with rotational assistance from the bar’s ball bearings), and a quick lifting of the elbows, will ensure a more successful and less strain full clean or Snatch.

Coach: Mark Gomes