Dan John Spiderchart

[Chris H Laing]

Originally Posted by Daniel Labuz

Most likely, I doubt Dan John would make a chart that maxed at 170# Back Squat

Haha exactly what I was thinking. Just wanted to be sure.

[Garrett Smith]

So I start marking my PRs on the spider chart yesterday and I realized that I really want to know how this chart was intended to be read.

The part that makes sense to me is this:

Power Snatch to Power Clean = vertical line directly up and down (or close to it)
Same as above for Back Squat to Front Squat

Power Snatch to Back Squat = Horizontal line across
Same as above for Power Clean to Front Squat

My simple confusion lies with the Snatch and C&J numbers. Should they fall in the same line as the PS to BS and PC to FS, or should they be a couple more levels further out from the center?

I ask this only because a "square" (all vertical and horizontal lines) doesn't look very spider web-ish to me, so I want to make sure I'm reading it right.

Or another way of asking this is, if a theoretical PS was 85kg, then should the other numbers be thus (I'm taking the last number of each "spoke"):
Sn 105
BS 170
PC 107.5
C&J 130
FS 145

If it is a yes to the above, that makes everything much easier than I thought. If it is read like the example above, this would make my numbers apparently fall pretty well in line except for my Sn:
Sn - 77kg
C&J - 105kg
BS - 140kg
FS - 119kg
PC - 87.5kg
PS (never done a max)

I think it's funny if that's true, because my coach said after our first training session, "you'll be snatching 90kg in no time", which I *think* is exactly where the spider chart says I should be! Weird.

[Blair Lowe]

Wow, according to this my oly technique really sucks! More so than I remember from looking at it from the 2nd post of the thread.

Looks like I need to really retest my FS to see where it is otherwise my clean potential is ridiculously pathetic. Or it could mean my PC is way stronger than my anterior, that's bad.

[Dave Van Skike]

I've seen other tools like this that come out similar using percentages.

If your Back Squat is 100% then:

Snatch=61%
PS=51%
FS=85%
CJ=76%
PC=62%

So a in round #'s a 405 back squatter would be really balanced at

245 snatch
205 power snatch
345 front squat
305 Clean and Jerk
250 Power clean.....

[Garrett Smith]

Here's what my coach (PMenu author Matt Foreman) said to me about OL ratios, at least in the competition lifts:

Here's the thing about proportions between your SN and your C&J. For an adult male athlete, you should have a minimum split between the lifts of
approximately thirty kilos. If you can snatch 80 kilos, you should be
able to C&J 110. If you can snatch 120, you should be able to C&J 150.
If you can snatch 150, you should be able to C&J 180, etc. If your split
is higher than that (35-40 kilos or more), it can mean you're better in
the C&J than the snatch or it can mean a lot of other things. There are a
lot of variables that can skew this ratio (flexibility, body proportions,
strength imbalances, speed development, etc.). When an athlete has
reached a solid level of technical proficiency and their gains become more
connected to increased strength development, the split will usually get
bigger because increased strength (especially squatting strength) usually
connects with the clean and jerk more than the snatch. That's why you see
so many top European lifters with 40-50 kilo splits between their lifts.
Their drug use pushes their strength levels through the roof, so their
C&Js increase dramatically.

So I actually found out that in his opinion, my jerk is my weakest link and I'm doing just fine in my snatching. That's good IMO, as snatches will likely never feel as good to me as C&Jing does.