It seems to be all the rage as of late…online debates on whether or not athletes should use Olympic Lifts as part of their training. As much as we love the Oly lifts, we believe that the answer lies in the gray. Can the Oly lifts be used to develop an athlete? YES!! Can an athlete become elite in their spot without ever doing Oly lifts? YES!! Should an athlete train like an Oly lifter in pursuit of improving in their sport of choice? NO!!!!!
We believe that some aspects of Olympic Lifting can play a great role in the early, general development of athletes from multiple sports. Here we will lay out the three that we use most often or what we feel are the most beneficial……as well as the three that we tend to avoid or do not value highly.
Top Three
Hang Power Clean (or cleans). We find the power clean to be our most used lift. They help to improve power output, force absorption, and develop kinesthetic awareness. We define hang as any position not off of the floor or blocks. Above knee reps tend to be easier to teach and the setup emulates the athletic stance. The below knee (while trickier to learn) helps to develop co-contraction between the quads and hamstrings.
Hang High Pulls. High pulls are great for minimizing technical difficulty while allowing us to overload for improving overall power output. They are also great for athletes who lack the front rack mobility to receive a power clean. We use snatch or clean pulls (and occasionally Sumo High Pulls), and vary them between above knee, below knee, and block work.
Push Press. While technically not an Oly lift, we count them. Front rack to overhead with help from the legs is a huge part of the training for Olympic lifters. It is good to have strong legs. It is good to have a strong upper body. It is even better to be able to coordinate things to maximize the transfer of power from the hips into the upper body. That is why we love these. For those with limited overhead mobility, single or double kettlebell variations are a great substitute. For those with limited front rack mobility, behind the neck position can work well too.
Bottom Three
Lifts from the Floor. There are two main reasons why we do not have our athletes do lifts from the floor. The first is technical difficulty. It is significantly more difficult to execute a power clean from the floor than it is from the hang. While one can argue that there is some benefit to an athlete learning this, the amount of time spent mastering this is not worth the time that it takes away from developing other skills that are more important for an athlete. The other reason is simple; rate of force development. A proper clean from the floor is about acceleration. It is slow and steady from the floor to above knee, and then explode. An athlete needs to develop force rapidly. Hang versions help to develop a high rate of force development. The slow cadence of a clean off of the floor does not. Thus we do not highly value them.
Snatches. They require more technical precision than cleans, demand much higher levels of overhead mobility, and due to the lighter weights used, will not help to develop force production/power output as much as cleans. Due to this, we rarely have our athletes snatch. Those with adequate shoulder mobility and in sports that require rapid power output more than force production (i.e Javelin compared to Shot Put) may benefit from these.
Jerks. The one advantage that they have over push press is that they can be loaded with more weight. The down side is that they are more complex, difficult for those without adequate overhead mobility, and can lead to unilateral imbalances. As we know, lifting heavier weights does not directly equate to improvement on the field of play. Due to this we find the juice is not worth the squeeze with jerks.
Hopefully this article can give some context to the debate on inclusion of Olympic Lifts for athletic training purposes.