Power, Coordination, Balance, Mobility. Introducing the Full Snatch

The full snatch in its original form is one of the two lifts performed at the summer Olympic games. It involves taking the bar from the floor to an overhead position in one fast motion. The snatch itself is a more athletic lift than the clean and jerk. The reason why the snatch is more “athletic” than the clean is that the snatch is a lift that keeps the athlete honest. Below is a picture of  an athlete whose lift isn’t really keeping them all that honest in their technique.

Many athletes can pull off heavy cleans with poor form and poor use of the hips and lower body. A video that embodies the fact that Olympic lifts can be pulled off with horrendous form, overuse of the back, and minimized use of the hips (and high injury potential) is exemplified by the following video I saw posted by strength writer, Anthony Mychal. Here is the video:

Liberty Football Training… No shirts, No technique, No problems?

There are plenty of dark spots in the world of strength training in this video, but at 1:38 you are introduced to a hang clean technique that I was unaware of until I started working at a school that had a football team but no strength coach. I call it the “triple bounce” technique, and if you can find a way to take the lower body out of the lift to a greater degree, please let me know. Many of our players at the college I coach at could clean 20-40lbs more using this style of clean vs. their clean from the floor, which requires a greater use of the legs. (I was not their strength coach, and didn’t want to provide unsolicited advice)

The hang-power snatch is the most common and most easily applied variation of the snatch movement. This snatch starts from the “power position” and then finishes with the knees at an angle shallower than 90 degrees. The following video shows some variations of the hang snatch.

This movement alone, I consider better than a clean for the following reasons

• Lighter weights must be used, so technique will generally be better
• Because of the orientation of the bar with the wide grip, the athlete will have to bend the hips more than a hang clean to reach the power position
• Since the arms are straight out to the sides, they will not be in as much of a position to pull, causing the athlete to rely on the arms less as is a tendency at times in the hang clean. I feel that hip extension can be emphasized to an even greater degree during the snatch versus the clean, although obviously elite athletes do it very well for both lifts.
• Because of the nature of the lift, the athlete needs to get under the bar very quickly in the snatch.  Some athletes will be slow to get under the bar in a clean, or have poor leg strength, and end up virtually doing the splits to catch the bar.

Performing Olympic lifts from the floor is a great tool, if your athletes have the technique to do it. Many don’t and in this case, it may be better to focus your efforts on the hang variations or other ballistic lifts for power development. When an Olympic lift is started from the floor, great things happen. One is a higher loading level of the legs. As long as the athlete keeps their hips down throughout the inital pull from the floor, the legs will be loaded well. Even if the athlete cheats and brings their hips up in the inital pull, a high load is still maintained on the posterior chain (although I would never advocate cheating).

The floor starting position for the snatch in particular is awesome.  Perhaps my favorite reason why is due to my affinity for the snatch grip deadlift. Performing deadlifts from a “defecit” or parallel squat range of motion is a killer/irreplaceable way to work the posterior chain. These types of deadlifts have been heavily advocated by great coaches such as Poliquin to build muscle specific to sprint development. When you do snatches from the floor, the posterior chain will experience this heavy loading on the hamstrings, glutes and lower back. Below is a video highlighting the full snatch with wraps.

The final thing I love about a full snatch is the full catch. Catching the bar in a full snatch initates a rock bottom overhead squat just about every time, which is a great way to build mobility in conjunction with strength. Mobility is massively important for every athlete, especially athletes who are need to move their limbs through large ranges of motion, such as sprinting or a javelin throw. The rock bottom overhead squat will also place a high load on the glutes, hamstrings, and quads…. all good things for performance development. Finally, there is an element of balance associated with the catch, it takes athleticism to hold the catch without falling over. Also, in the performance of the lift, an athlete will rarely get a good rock bottom catch if they didn’t perform the pull correctly.  All in all, you can’t make a lot of mistakes and still pull off a good snatch for athletic performance.

It takes a while to really build the skill to do this lift correctly, and you will have to probably spend some time doing hang snatches combined with overhead squats to really develop the needed skill to excel at this lift. Once you do get it though, it is worth it, the feeling of getting under hundreds of pounds and standing up  with it is incredible!

Until next time,

Joel