Weightlifting: Total and Complete Upward Displacement of the Bar

As we approach Lift Run Hang season, there will be a heightened focus around variations of the Olympic lifts. As a premise, it’s important to note that this lifts are a reaction to a task oriented sport. The task is simple: 

“Put that weight over your head.”

In the clean and jerk, we’ll let you rest the bar at the shoulders and in the snatch you’ll have to put it over your head without any stops along the way. When we declare this as simply as that, one starts to understand that weightlifting “technique” is any technique that best supports the task (SEE: “put that weight over your head”). If the technique makes that task easier, it’s a better technique and vice versa. 

These obvious facts about weightlifting invites another obvious truth about great weightlifting technique, which is that a lifter’s movement ought to support maximum upward movement of the barbell. This is specifically why total and complete upward extension is required for wonderful weightlifting technique. By definition, having incomplete or ineffective extension with the barbell would leave very valuable upward potential on the table. 

Ultimately this means that no lifter (who wants to lift heavy weights) can afford to miss upward potential. Naturally, this means one must fully extend the hip, knee, and ankle in an effort to displace the bar vertically as much as possible. The same logic that gets us this far into the conversation also informs most any “movement fault” in these lifts as anything that impedes our potential to lift heavier weights. Pulling on the bar before hip extension is a fault then because it mutes the potential for upward movement of the bar. Getting to toes too soon is a fault for the same reason, etc etc. 

Weightlifters jump with the bar, not because it’s a rule or in a book about technique, but because that’s the best way to accomplish the task. Once you can see weightlifting for what it is, things can be almost simplified to support aggression. 

If you plan to weightlift today, make your sole focus the total and complete violent extension of the barbell.