Thoughts on efficient Jerk Training

[Greg Crawford]

So, I've been thinking about this topic a bit. Being without Jerk boxes and being active military (so building some is out until I retire at least - I'm not moving those since I have no way to predict if I will always have space) I've been trying to figure the best way for me to train the Jerk. I have a good rack, so jerks from the rack work fine (outside, I'm too damn tall to go overhead in the rack) for what it's worth - probably efficient in singles, doubles and triples up to 90%/85% or so without a miss. but what about limit jerks? Heavy singles where you try to push your max and miss much more frequently seem all but a nuisance (since my jerk max is pretty damn close to my clean max). Until my clean improves significantly, this is a bit of a challenge.

Thoughts? Thanks.

[Greg Everett]

You may just have to skip max jerks for the time being and push it in other ways. If you're doing max triples, for example, even if you miss the last rep, the weight may be one that you can still bring back down to your shoulders.

You can also do a lot of other exercises for the jerk during this time. For strength, jerk dip squats, split squats or split walks and push press. You can also do variations like pause jerks (pause in the bottom of the dip for 2-3 sec), jerks behind the neck, power jerks, etc. And complexes like push press + jerk, multiple dip squats + jerk, etc. In that way you can still push toward maximal effort, but with weights you won't need to drop in the case of a failed rep.

[Greg Crawford]

Thanks for the ideas Greg. Appreciate it.

G