Wrist Strain

[Zack Stiles]

Originally Posted by Greg Everett

Well... practice! Aside from that, try some muscle cleans. the slower speed may allow you to concentrate more on getting the elbows around and up quickly, releasing the hands and delivering the bar smoothly to your shoulders.

Greg, by muscle cleans do you mean performing the clean without any explosive movement in the hip; bascially keeping the legs/hips in full extension throughout the movement?

[Greg Everett]

no, you still have good hip extension. i have a video i'll get up tomorrow. it's the same idea as a muscle snatch. essentially you're just doing a clean without ever re-bending the knees to get under the bar. so without that re-bending, with the clean, you have to move your elbows very quickly to get the bar racked.

[Zack Stiles]

Thanks, I think I got it; but just to be sure: the muscle clean is to the clean as the push press is to the push jerk?

[Greg Everett]

Originally Posted by Zack Stiles

Thanks, I think I got it; but just to be sure: the muscle clean is to the clean as the push press is to the push jerk?

Well... No. More like what the press is to the push jerk. Here's a video (I did rebend my knees a little like you're not supposed to. Ignore that. I was tired).

Muscle Clean

[Zack Stiles]

Good stuff; I'll give it a shot

[Kevin Anderson]

Man, my wrists are always sore because I have to rack the bar with my fingers. If I could just grip the bar, life would be so much easier. I don't know about others, but more wrist flexibility isn't going to improve my grip on the bar, it has more to do with my shoulders and elbows. Any type of clean with a strap and my elbows can't raise and I can't rest the bar on my shoulders. I tried stretching with straps and a lightly weighted bar but eventually I get an inflammed shoulder or my elbows feels like they are going to explode. At the gym, we sometimes do cleans of the blocks with straps which is impossible for me. This is when I wish I would have been racking the bar a young age. I have a 5 kilo bar and my soon to be 4 year old racks it beautifully. If someone has a recipe to cure this affliction, please let me know.

[Greg Everett]

Originally Posted by Kevin Anderson

Man, my wrists are always sore because I have to rack the bar with my fingers. If I could just grip the bar, life would be so much easier. I don't know about others, but more wrist flexibility isn't going to improve my grip on the bar, it has more to do with my shoulders and elbows.

I'm confused--you're trying to keep a grip on the bar in the rack position? If so, don't. You shouldn't. Those who can are few and far between and those who can and do are fewer and farrer betweener. Even in preparation to jerk, the grip is still fairly loose. So no, wrist flexibility may not improve your ability to grip the bar in the rack, but it will improve your ability to rack the bar with loose hands, as it should be done.

Am I not reading your post correctly?

[Elliot Royce]

Greg is clearly the expert but I would add that when you give your leg push to get it off your rack position the bar will rise without any need to grip it and you can then grip it more firmly as it goes up.

My problem is that to rack it I've developed the habit of having the pinkies off the bar. And I find it psychologically impossible to lift the weight overhead with pinkies off. That means I have to rerack it by heaving it up and down.

Any suggestions on this? Apart from get my pinkies on the bar!

[Rick Deckart]

When you recover from the clean give the bar a slight tempo, it will lift a couple of cm and you can regrip it. Works for champions and works for me too.

Regards,

Peter

[Greg Everett]

What Peter said. You can do it all in one motion when rising from the clean, or you can rise and fudge around a bit to get the hands in. My pinkies come off when i clean sometimes, and under a super heavy clean, i've had trouble getting them under after standing. Just takes patience. But if you start getting dizzy, don't push it.

here's a video of readjustment immediately out of the clean:
http://www.performancemenu.com/resou.../cleanJerk.mov