Hang cleans: can be tough for individuals who are just getting started with a genuine strength training program. Getting the clean technique down might be difficult without the assistance of a qualified strength coach. The good news is that the learning curve is pretty high, and after you’ve mastered the fundamentals, it won’t be long until you’re ready for more complex variants and larger weights. This essay will highlight five crucial aspects of an effective hang clean. If you take them to heart, you’ll be well on your way to improving your technique (see what I did there?).
We emphasize the hang power clean in our athlete programming at Volt, but the same methods apply to classic hang cleans as well.
INSTALL THE HAMSTRINGS
Take note of how engaged the posterior chain is.
NOTE HOW ACTIVELY THE POSTERIOR CHAIN IS ENGAGED.
To get the power output you want out of the clean, make sure you’re using the most powerful extensors in your body. How do you go about doing that? Get into a proper hang position by engaging your hamstrings and glutes. This results in an efficiently recruited posterior chain, allowing you to generate maximum force.
To get into the hanging posture, hinge at the hips and press your buttocks back until your hamstrings are tight and rigid. A common mistake is to bend the knees as if sitting, which results in the knees pushing forward. Instead of sitting, press your buttocks back. Sitting causes recruitment to shift away from the hamstrings and toward the quadriceps. That’s not what you’re looking for.
Hang cleans:: Do you want to know how to detect if your hang position needs to be improved? Examine the path that the bar takes as it lowers. The bar should drop straight down as you hinge into the hang position, unobstructed by your thighs. You’re not getting enough rearward hip displacement if you bend into your hang and your quads push the bar forward. Assume you have a piece of string tied to the rear of your waistline. When you pull that string, your hips tilt straight back, and the bar drops towards the ground. A solid hang position aids in the execution of the hang clean and allows for the maximum development of fast-twitch muscle fibres in the hamstrings and glutes.
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REMAIN ABOVE THE BAR
Knowing that the hang clean is supposed to be an explosive movement, many athletes speed through the exercise in an attempt to gain greater power. That’s not good. When you rush the clean, you typically end up with a bar At the extension, I’m hitting off the thighs rather than remaining close to the hips, which causes a slew of issues. When coaching an athlete through the clean, urge them to take their time getting into the hang position.
Tell them to concentrate on keeping their chests above the bar. And please, for God’s sake, remind them to breathe. Keeping the chest over the bar for a longer period of time causes the bar to move higher up the thigh and assists the athlete to acquire greater timing for the extension. While speed and explosiveness are essential for a solid hang clean, keeping patient and finding the perfect timing can make the movement easier to execute, resulting in more power created in the long run.
DRIVE IN THE HEELS
Again, it comes down to patience and timing. Yes, we do aim to achieve full hip, knee, and ankle extension. However, we don’t want to stay on our toes until the very end of the pull. Being patient enough to wait to drive onto the toes, like keeping the chest over the bar, will prevent you from a messy bar path and a horrible receiving stance. Focus on pressing through the floor directly through the heels while dragging the bar until it reaches hip height. Extending onto your toes too soon reduces the power generated by the hip extension, moving the bar away from the body and making your pull weaker and less powerful. Cushioning allows you to extract every ounce of force from the draw while also limiting the amount of lateral roll in the ankle.
MAKE USE OF THE LATS
The lats aid to draw the bar into the hip without excessively bending the elbows, which is more visible in a snatch grip.
Hang cleans:: When it comes to perfecting the hang clean, getting the bar to hip height might be difficult. Novice lifters frequently lose tension in the upper body before, during, or after the last extension. Correcting this can be difficult, but one simple approach to feel and develop tension is to aggressively pull the bar with your lats. We spend a lot of time in our lives trying to get rid of stress, yet in this case, tension is a positive thing. Engaging your lats helps to stabilize your shoulders and upper back, letting you keep your torso above the bar and the weight closer to your center of gravity. Maintaining tension enables the additional force to be applied to the bar.
If your arms and shoulders relax, you’ll have lost a significant portion of the force required to move the bar upward by the time your hips expand. Engaging the lats also helps to hold the bar snug to your torso, preventing an unsightly bar path. Instead of swinging the bar out in front of your body, draw the bar straight up. Engaging the lats and maintaining upper-body tension will help keep the bar path nice and linear. I realize it’s a rather sophisticated cue, but as you have the feel. You’ll notice that your hang cleans will be crisper and simpler to execute.
GET IN TOUCH WITH AUTHORITY
If all of the preceding suggestions are follow, the only thing remaining to do is to receive the bar in the front-rack position. However, this is easier said than done. A good catch makes it simpler to accomplish
following reps (raising your overall effort) and allows for a smoother transition into overhead motions. The key to a great catch is to “actively meet the bar” with your shoulders and torso (assuming you already have strong shoulder/wrist mobility). Hello there, bar. My name is Jace. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
“Actively meeting the bar” simply refers to maintaining strong muscle tension as the bar travels upward following extension. Similar to the concept of using your lats to maintain tension during the pull. Novice athletes may develop the habit of “floating” the bar. Releasing tension in the upper back and shoulders as the bar rises. What comes next? The bar falls hard, requiring the wrists and torso to absorb a considerable amount of stress.
Pulling the body under the bar while moving the elbows forward is how you meet the bar with your torso. The forward elbow position strengthens and stabilizes the upper back by creating a firm shelf. The more solid the upper back, the less the torso will be drag forward by the force of the bar. Resulting in better stability on the catch and an easier drive to standing. The bar should come into contact with the body just as the legs are about to push upwards to return to a standing position. The timing may feel strange at first. But with repetition, you’ll feel much more at ease with the bar in the front-rack position.
Hopefully, these suggestions will bring you down a better hang clean route than the one you were on previously. And this is something worth working on! The more effective you become at weightlifting. The better you’ll be at quickly producing force and getting into secure and safe positions.