Power Clean Advice by Mel Siff
<I’ve just started incorporating some power cleans in my routine. I’m doing
them twice a week, but I havent been making much progress. How potent are
power cleans in increasing strength and size? Are they as growth-producing
as squats/deadlifts? Will I lose a lot not doing them? >
*** Increase in strength with any exercise depends on your training load. If
you power clean with 25kg every day for weeks, your strength will hardly
increase by much, even if you try to accelerate the load as much as you can
(there is a limit to how much you can increase force in a given exercise with
a given load). What you lose by not doing power cleans depends on what your
training goals are.
Just remember that the power clean as a single exercise involves far more
muscles and joints in stabilising and moving action than any other machine
and most other free weight exercises in the gym — that will tell you
something about its training value. Regarding its safety — as with any
other exercise, be it ballistic, explosive or otherwise, this depends on
technical skill and avoidance of overtraining. Many of us have used this
exercise and numerous other derivatives of the Olympic lifts for decades
without any injury, so, if someone attempts to dissuade you from doing such
movements, ignore the fear-mongering and simply train carefully and
intelligently.
<BTW, how are you supposed to lower the bar in a power clean? The people in
my gym lower it quite quickly and it drops to the floor. I tend to let it
fall onto my thighs then do the reverse of a deadlift. What’s the proper
way? I can’t find any reliable resource on the net.
*** The lowering also depends on your goals. Many weightlifters (using bars
with rubber bumper plates) often drop the bar from quite high up simply to
save energy for the more concentric actions of pulling or jerking. If you
wish to obtain some eccentric training, then, by all means, lower the bar
slowly and even hold it isometrically at different points on the way down for
some isometric and “postural alignment” training. Whichever way you lower
the bar, just do in a manner which approximates what you did to clean the
load — in other words, keep the bar close to the body, don’t round the
lumbar spine and rely on knee and hip flexion to do a great deal of the
lowering from below mid thigh level. Anyhow, it sounds like you are doing
that, so fear not!
<Anyone has any advice on a power clean gaining routine? I’m a
beginner-intermediate, trained for about 4yrs., can squat 100kg x 20. I’m
thinking of making gains in my squats and power cleans.>
*** For a start, you do not need to do high rep back squatting. Nothing
“wrong” with doing occasional high rep sets, but to increase maximal
strength, you need to do many more sets with few reps (2-3) and higher loads
(including explosive power training with 55-70% loads). To make gains in your
power clean, you need to power clean regularly, but make sure that your
technique is efficient and safe — and don’t waste your time with anything m
ore than 3 -5 reps at a time. There are several articles on squat training
in our archives. Incidentally, we cannot judge whether or not your 100kg
squat is “good” or not, because the load which you lift depends on your
bodymass and age.
Mel Siff
