Specificity? State your position.

[Dave Van Skike]

Thanks for that Greg and Glenn. pretty cogent arguments...here's a sideline hypotetical, how do you deal with somone who's PL or SM, strong but has shitty technique at the oly lifts. I'm thinking every heavy or super heavy SM competitor I know who wants to improve his explosive pulls.

Guys like this pull from about 7 million different positions and recieve the weight in a split, a splot or a jerk seemingly at random. Would you use the same advice to refine their pull and recieving positions?

On the one hand, I could see the argument of taking it back to zero and breaking every bad habit he's got but on the other hand, he's tossing 300 pounds of bb, axle or log into the rack whenver he wants and these implements are never going to behave properly. On the other hand, you can SM guys like Misha that pull heavy deadlifts that look like a clean pull with very little rounding at all.

It's sort of a different question but what's your experience here?

[glennpendlay]

Dave,

I would train such a person the same as anyone else, that is, try to teach good form and use as a primary training weight the most weight he could so with consistently good form.

Ive actually coached a LOT of guys like this, most came from PL, very strong and had done some powercleans and such with horrendous form in high school or whatever. The first ever national junior squad member and one of my first national champions was such a guy, Justin Schlager. Good kid, came to me with a 400lb bench, 600lb Pl squat and deadlift. He was doing 130kg snatch and 160kg clean and jerk in less than a year. Good kid.

Since HS powerlifting is a varsity sport down here in Texas, i have gotten a lot of these kids right out of high school, strong from powerlifting and have done their particular football coaches version of powercleans and maybe powersnatches, but WILD technique. Most of them have done well in OL within a year or two.

glenn

[Greg Everett]

I'm with Glenn - Really no different, other than that you may need to work around a bigger ego when convincing said dudes to use weights they can actually handle correctly. Really it's just a matter of making them understand that committing to technique work for a bit will in the long run get them much farther much faster.

Glenn and I actually talked about this yesterday - it's a hell of a lot tougher to train someone who has some poor experience with the lifts than none at all, and I think even tougher when that latter person has a ton of strength because they're more apt to believe they're a lot farther along in the game than they really are.

[Rick Deckart]

Glenn,

if you don't mind... in such a situation, do you use the most weight the athlete can handle in good form for the squat or do you restrict this to an intensity much closer to the maximum clean & jerk? I know partly this will be reduced because of the likely switch to an olympic squat, but that should still be way ahead of the clean & jerk.

Originally Posted by glennpendlay

Dave,

I would train such a person the same as anyone else, that is, try to teach good form and use as a primary training weight the most weight he could so with consistently good form.

Ive actually coached a LOT of guys like this, most came from PL, very strong and had done some powercleans and such with horrendous form in high school or whatever. The first ever national junior squad member and one of my first national champions was such a guy, Justin Schlager. Good kid, came to me with a 400lb bench, 600lb Pl squat and deadlift. He was doing 130kg snatch and 160kg clean and jerk in less than a year. Good kid.

Since HS powerlifting is a varsity sport down here in Texas, i have gotten a lot of these kids right out of high school, strong from powerlifting and have done their particular football coaches version of powercleans and maybe powersnatches, but WILD technique. Most of them have done well in OL within a year or two.

glenn

[glennpendlay]

Peter,

In a situation like that, we will basically do maintanence work on the squats for a while. But usually in this situation, you find a guy with a a big backsquat, and no front squat. Pretty common for an ex-powerlifter type. So if thats the case, we will let the back squat ride for a while, and do all or almost all the squat work on the front squat and try to get that up to par. Ive seen quite a few guys who came on board with big back squats, like in the 600lb range, who couldnt stand up with a 275lb clean. Seems odd but it happens.

And these guys all dont like the programming, because they miss the heavy benches, deadlifts, and squats, they miss the feeling of training hard... because they arent doing that anymore, and they arent good enough on the Olympic lifts to really use heavy weights or really challenge themselves from a strength standpoint. So we try to find "strength lifts" which are more appropriate to OLing. RDL's, overhead squats if they can do them, push presses or military presses, front squats, etc. They can do these "slow" movements and they can push themselves and get the same feelings they got from bench presses and deadlifts, it helps the transition both mentally and physically from the powerlifting workouts to the OL workouts.

glenn

[glennpendlay]

And one other thing. You would be surprised how much a big powerlifting style squat DOESNT apply to a big high bar squat. I coached one kid who had just done over 600lbs in competition a month or two before starting OL, and he struggled, and I mean really struggled, to do 385lbs on a high bar squat for a couple of reps. thats not uncommon. Some of these kids have never used their quads in their life. You ask them to keep the chest up and squat all the way down, they are incredibly week. I was pretty much the same way when I started OL, had an PL backsquaqt of over 800lbs, couldnt hibar squat or front squat my way out of a wet paper bag.

But its a mistake to just hammer the back squat in this situation... they inevitably bend over every time it gets heavy... simply because that is the position they are strong in. Better to keep the back squats light or non-existent for a while, till they have built some quad strength with OHS and/or front squat, both of which pretty much FORCE you to do them right or you dump the bar.

glenn