THE Guide To The Snatch: The Most Powerful Movement Ever

the snatch it is both one of the most technically demanding and the most powerful movements one can do with a barbell in order for a movement to be considered a snatch the bar must move from the floor to a full overhead and locked out position in one continuous movement without any overhead pressing motion [Music] complexity of the movement starts with what we call the first pull the lifter must maintain their back angle without allowing their shoulders to go too far over the bar or too far behind the bar then as the bar passes the knees in what we call the second pull the lifter accelerates the bar rapidly and explodes the bar off of their hips this is where we can see the highest power output within the movement and likely the highest power output possible in any barbell sport in one particular study an 82.5 kilogram lifter had a power output of 3634 Watts during a snatch by comparison 100 kilo power lifter exhibited only 1 100 Watts during a back squat this is why commonly people say that weight lifting is a misnomer and that it should actually be called power lifting as we watch this 220 kilo near 500 pound snatch we must understand the incredible detail and gargantuan levels of strength empowered required for such a as soon as he extends the bar rapidly stops accelerating because the bar stops accelerating it quickly reaches its peak height this height is nowhere near high enough for the lifter to lock his arms in an overhead standing position so the lifter must rapidly descend underneath the quickly decelerating and soon to be descending bar however he isn't just falling underneath the bar no that wouldn't be fast enough if you notice his wrists are still above the bar after he extends this is because while he is in the air he's actually pulling himself underneath the bar the wrist position denotes The Leverage he maintains on the bar as he pulls underneath as he hits the bottom position his elbows lock out overhead and his hips knees and ankles act as shock absorption to the falling barbell the bar settles and he stands to a fully locked out position all of this occurs in just over two seconds none of this was meant to scare you away from trying to snatch as to say it's too difficult you shouldn't even approach it no over my years of training weightlifting completely self-taught I solidified my progression to get anyone to begin to snatch I went from not even being able to sit in a full depth squat to seven years later snatching 143 kilos or 315 pounds if you haven't realized by now weightlifting requires a serious amount of mobility in all joints there is no better display of this than the bottom position of a snatch much like knowing how to skate is a prerequisite to playing ice hockey development of the mobility required to sit at the bottom of the snatch is a prerequisite to begin snatching what is required of the bottom position is having the hip crease noticeably below the knee crease full compression of the hamstrings to the calves and full compression of the quads to the Torso and flat and equal pressure in the feet this is our home base everything starts and stops with this position and here's how we develop this the first thing you're going to do is find an upright or something that is solidly planted into the ground you're going to stand about shoulder width apart you're going to hold on to that upright and you're going to lower your hip crease to noticeably below the knee crease now this isn't really close to the bottom position of a snatch but we're going to work towards that as you get used to this position this compressed knee and compressed hip what you're going to try and do is wiggle around to the point where you can put more pressure on your feet and less pressure on your hands you can start to then let go of the upright you'll notice your back is probably really round but as you work at this your back will end up straightening up and you'll be able to sit in this position it's going to be very hard it's going to be very difficult at first but the more time you spend down here the more your body adapts and then the more comfortable you will be in this bottom position now realize that this might take a lot more time than just one session this is something that you should be doing at your home you can do it at the gym but you should allot a decent amount of time at this per day if you want to get comfortable in this position now what we're going to do is stack up some plates and we're going to sit to these plates and relax we're going to do a similar thing that we did with the upright we're going to wiggle around we're going to try and get our feet maybe closer to our hips but again our hip crease is below the knee crease and all we're going to try to do is develop tightness in the adductors in the groin area and then also develop pressure in the feet before we begin to stand off the box you can start to lean forward slightly and you can feel your butt lifting off of the plates this is good this means the pressure is in your feet and you're in a low position squat from there all you're going to do is just stand you're going to try and sit back down and reset to add a challenge to this you can simply just take one plate away weight lifters must use what's called a hook grip this really is a non-negotiable in optimizing your weightlifting performance this allows the weight lifter to maximally load the lift with the focus on the main muscles in the legs and the hips to develop the power in the lift without having the grip be a limiting factor the change of speed and power adds a ton of stress to the hands to prevent the hand from opening and dropping the bar the weight lifters must put their fingers around their thumb like this this will be a slightly painful experience at first but you can use things like thumb tape to mitigate this pain and also in time you'll get used to this and there really won't be any more pain then we must establish our grip width while placing the bar in the hips we'll move our hands out to the side so that with locked out arms and good posture the bar will lie right in our hip crease if our grip is too narrow or we allow our shoulders to hunch Over the Bar will not lie in the hip crease now we'll focus on the overhead position and the name of the game here is stability with our new snatch grip we will put the bar overhead we're going to actively and forcibly lock our elbows almost as hard as we can then we're going to pull our scabs together and what you'll notice is the bar will be placed more over the base of my skull or more towards my ears you'll see my head kind of poking forward a little bit that's a good thing we don't want to be directly in one line we want that bar to kind of feel as if it's sitting back but again it's important to not allow your elbows to unlock and the scaps to rotate away from each other now we must put both of the previous Parts together we must understand that we shouldn't approach this like a typical squat remember our aim is to hit the required depth without allowing the points of performance in our upper bodies to collapse elbows locked scaps together hip crease below knee crease if any of those things change we are not doing what we should do now with the bar on our back and with our snatch grip we will sit to the plates from here we're going to do a very similar progression that we did without the bar move your feet into a position where you feel as though you're getting tightness in the legs and you can open up your chest we're going to press the bar overhead and then if we have to slightly lean forward and you'll feel yourself starting to come off the box there you're going to use your legs to stand then we can just bring the barbell back and repeat what you'll notice is there's this slight incline in my torso and that's okay what we're doing is allowing our hips to find that pocket so that they can sit below the knees if the hips stay in line with the knees and the barbell in line with kind of the middle of our head it's going to be very difficult for our hips to then displace below the knee they're basically going to kind of stop at about halfway once we get used to this we're going to take the plates away we're going to put the barbell overhead in that standing position and again what we're going to try to do is pull the scaps together keeping the elbows forcibly locked all we're going to do from here pull the hips back and try and get them below the knee crease you may see some of these points of performance fall apart and that's totally okay all you're going to have to do is develop that Mobility so that that doesn't happen maybe more time in the squat without any weight maybe more time with the barbell overhead next we have the barbell progression the first thing we're going to do is a muscle snatch from a hanged position the barbell is going to start in the hip crease and while keeping our wrists down we're going to raise our elbows what we're going to think about is keeping our wrists down and basically whipping the bar into the overhead position what we don't want to do is raise the bar up to about chin height or shoulder height drop our elbows and press the bar we want to be able to pull that bar and feel it in our hands all the way to the last moment in the turnover remember our overhead position has to match what we talked about earlier elbows forcibly locked and shoulder blades together next what we're going to do is add in that squat with the first movement so we can call this like a muscle snatch plus squat we're going to do the same thing remember this is initiated with the hands pulling up we're not moving our hips at all this is a strict very strict movement so pull your elbows high as the bar gets to about chest height then you descend underneath it next after this we're going to develop hip contact another non-negotiable this is something that really isn't talked about much but it's ever so apparent in Snatch techniques all we're going to do is slightly Bend our knee and let the bar go away from us a little bit and what we're going to do is very slightly hit our hips and we're just going to tug on that bar upward after it makes contact with the hips start really small with this and just start to build momentum and build height on the bar then after a while you can just turn over into that muscle snatch after a certain time you can turn over into that muscle snatch with the overhead Squat and then you can start moving your feet and really exploding the bar will hit the hips and now we can jump and catch in that overhead position at this point if you feel as though the progression has caught up to you and things are getting a little confusing all you have to do is take one step back so if contact was a little bit difficult for you just practice the turnover practice the muscle snatch plus the squat if that was too hard for you practice just the muscle snatch from the Hang position it's important that you become efficient in one part of the progression before moving on to the next so what we're going to do here is basically the same thing the contact to catching in that snatch and we're really close to snatching all the way here what we're going to do instead of the contact is we're actually going to bring the bar from the mid Shin or just slightly below the knee so instead of the bar going away from us we're going to bring the bar down to that below the knee position and immediately come up and hit the hips again if this is getting too difficult go back to the contact drill in this next step it would be helpful if you had plates that were really light whether they're 2.5 kilo technique plates or what I have here which are just 10 pound plates what we're going to do is basically the same drill we just did instead of our marker being the bar at the mid Shin our marker for changing direction is going to be the plates tapping the floor very lightly we'll call this the touch and go snatch so we're going to stand all the way up get a good posture take a breath in we're going to lower very slowly just tap the bar to the ground now as we tap the bar to the ground it's important that we don't just turn over and go as fast as we can we have to develop speed so that means when we tap the floor move slowly after the tap then once the barbell passes the knees then you can explode off of the hips at this point we've pretty much snatched that's pretty much it and now what we're going to do is approach the bar like we're going to snatch it what I want you to do is pretend like the bar is in your hands and basically do the exact same drill we did you're going to stand tall take a breath in and lower slowly while maintaining posture then you're going to grab the bar in the grip width you had decided on in the beginning and you're going to immediately turn over and slowly go to the knees then when you pass the knees explode essentially this is a touch and go snatch it's almost exactly what we did before except you just don't have the bar in your hands to begin with now what we're going to do is take some time in between going down to grab the bar and lifting this is it this is the final step after this step you are snatching with your feet right around shoulder width and your toes may be slightly out depending on your morphology they could be more out or they could be more forward I like to point my toes out a decent amount try and keep your chest up as you go to grab the bar find your grip width and settle do not let your back round from here you're going to take a deep breath in and you won't start the lift when you finish that breath in do not breathe out so you take the breath in what you can do is slightly lift your hips and then lower them this is called a dynamic start and we use this like we would use any stretch reflex in any lifting if you're not comfortable with the dynamic start that's totally fine grab the bar take your breath in and go but remember as we learn this it's important that we have control off of the floor and then we explode we do not want to just go fast off of the floor so look now you know how to snatch go out there do some research watch some weight lifting get obsessed with it it's a fun thing to get good at also say you're able to build your snatch from nothing to a hundred pounds you might notice some serious gains in Mobility leg strength and just kinesthetic awareness I can tell you from experience this is an incredibly pleasurable thing to get good at it's why I've pursued the sport of weightlifting for damn near a decade thank you guys so much and I'll see you in the next video thank you

Channel: Zack Telander

Views: 287,654

Keywords: snatch, clean, jerk, tutorial, weightlifting, olympic weightlifting, oly lifting, how to, guide, beginner's guide, beginner, noob, learn, teach, mobility, strength, power, mat fraser, rich froning, craig richey, eddie hall, thor, overhead squat, shoulder, athletic, sport, crossfit, bodybuilding, powerlifting, klokov, lu xiaojun, li dayin, giulia, imperio, miserendino, italy, karlos nasar, nino, pizzolato, clarence, kennedy, clarence0

Id: Y9Zgo8FiwnM

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023