Clean and Jerk Video Analysis

Great work by everyone from last night's class. We had some first time one rep maxes and some PR's from some of the more experienced athletes.

Watching video analysis of your lifts is one of the best ways to discover flaws in your technique and ways to work through them. In the photos below, I'll describe what I'm seeing as far as the good and the bad...

Starting position for the first pull...

Here we can see that Joanna is in a pretty good setup position. Her feet are about hip width apart, her arms are pretty much perpendicular to the floor with her shoulders just slightly ahead of the bar. Her gaze is neutral (straight ahead). Would like to see a bit more of a lumbar curve but that's probably nitpicking.

The Clean...

Wow! Everything looks great. Torso is upright, bar is racked high on the shoulders with elbows forward. Nice!

Transition from Clean recovery to Jerk...

Joanna has used the momentum from the Clean recovery to pop that bar off her shoulders just enough so that she can get her hands under the bar and in good position for the Jerk. She has also shifted her feet back in to a narrower stance that is ideal for the drive portion of the Jerk. This is exactly what we worked in drills last night!!...

The Drive...

Good job of achieving full extension of the legs and hips before driving under the bar. Everything looks GREAT up to this point!

The Finish...

Uh-oh!! Something went wrong here. It looks like Joanna needs to focus on pushing her head and chest forward as the bar passes overhead. Look at the photo of Chad Vaughn from yesterday's blog entry to see what I mean. Her lead foot should also be a few inches forward but again, that is probably nitpicking.

Where are your flaws and sticking points? What are you doing to work through them? If you've never been to our Weightlifting specialty class, what are you waiting for??