Clean Turnover - Relax Your Grip
If you end up like this in your cleans, check your grip in the turnover.
Part of a quick turnover and secure rack is relaxing your grip on the bar as your elbows come around.
We want to maintain a solid grip on the bar through most of the turnover to help stay connected and in control, but keeping too tight of a grip for too long can cause problems.
Even if you have the mobility to keep a full grip on the bar in a secure rack position, excessive grip tension will tend to slow the turnover and stop your elbows short.
Start to relax your grip and slide your thumb out once your elbows are starting to come up in front of your shoulders.
There are some very successful elite lifters who keep a pretty tight, full grip all the way into the rack position in their cleans—and you’ll see how the resulting rack position is comparatively low-elbowed. Artyom Antropov is a good example of this (he also keeps his hook grip into the rack).
Clearly this is working for them, so I’m sure not going to tell them to change it. But this technique is unnecessary to achieve all the things we need in the turnover (control of the bar, connection, proximity, timing, etc.) while having the potential for serious problems with rack security and therefore successful cleans—so I discourage it generally.
And yes, it’s possible to maintain the hook grip while relaxing grip tension adequately (as I show in this video)—it’s just an unnecessarily complicated way of doing things, and again has risks there’s no need to take on.
Remember too that there are a number of other reasons you may end up with low elbows and a sketchy rack position in your cleans—forward imbalance, bar too far away during the pull under, poor timing, etc.
Part of a quick turnover and secure rack is relaxing your grip on the bar as your elbows come around.
We want to maintain a solid grip on the bar through most of the turnover to help stay connected and in control, but keeping too tight of a grip for too long can cause problems.
Even if you have the mobility to keep a full grip on the bar in a secure rack position, excessive grip tension will tend to slow the turnover and stop your elbows short.
Start to relax your grip and slide your thumb out once your elbows are starting to come up in front of your shoulders.
There are some very successful elite lifters who keep a pretty tight, full grip all the way into the rack position in their cleans—and you’ll see how the resulting rack position is comparatively low-elbowed. Artyom Antropov is a good example of this (he also keeps his hook grip into the rack).
Clearly this is working for them, so I’m sure not going to tell them to change it. But this technique is unnecessary to achieve all the things we need in the turnover (control of the bar, connection, proximity, timing, etc.) while having the potential for serious problems with rack security and therefore successful cleans—so I discourage it generally.
And yes, it’s possible to maintain the hook grip while relaxing grip tension adequately (as I show in this video)—it’s just an unnecessarily complicated way of doing things, and again has risks there’s no need to take on.
Remember too that there are a number of other reasons you may end up with low elbows and a sketchy rack position in your cleans—forward imbalance, bar too far away during the pull under, poor timing, etc.
