Tried fixing form, now it's harder

[CHS55]

I took the advice you guys gave me about keeping a straight back and getting set before the pull in the clean, but now I am always catching the bar forward, which causes it to be way harder. What do you think I am doing wrong?

Also on the jerk, as you can see in the vid below, I would almost do a diagonal jerk with my legs, back leg not being lowered at all but rather put to the side. Now i land on the ball of my foot with the back one, but that foot slips when I try to recover to the end position and I lose the bar. It's only with 90 kilos for crying out loud!

[madaozeki]

No video posted?

On the clean, it sounds like you're cutting your pull short. After breaking the bar off the ground, maintain your tight back position. When the bar passing your knees, your torso starts straightening up, and the bar moves toward you automatically. Only when you completely finish straightening up (ie. standing up as HARD as you can) do you change direction and move under the bar. Any sooner and you'll leave the bar out front.

Have you tried power jerks? If you're having coordination problems in the split, then power jerks might be a good remedy. If anything, they'll help you get consistent in the dip and drive, and enable you to transition back to split jerks later on.

At your bodyweight, 90kg should fly up with any sort of leg drive. If you want to keep working on the split, try freezing in the receiving position until you feel 100% balanced before recovering. I'll take a vid of what I mean tomorrow night at the gym if you're interested.

[CHS55]

I think I know what you mean by pausing. A vid would help tho. Think I should try the squat jerk? Pyrros Dimas has no trouble with it. :P haha..

Man idk whats happened to me. i havent lifted for like a week and my day back it was a horrible day. With my bad form I could always catch 110 at the bottom of the clean, but now its like the weights gotten heavier. Is it from the week I missed? and will it take me a while to build it back up?

[madaozeki]

I think I know what you mean by pausing. A vid would help tho. Think I should try the squat jerk? Pyrros Dimas has no trouble with it. :P haha..


No need to go into a squat! Just a simple power jerk might be a reasonable alternative. Sorry I didn't take vids tonight since I didn't see your response til just now. I'll try to get into the gym on Friday afternoon. Freezing the receiving position on split jerks can do wonders for diagnosing problems, not to mention force you to not rush them!



Man idk whats happened to me. i havent lifted for like a week and my day back it was a horrible day. With my bad form I could always catch 110 at the bottom of the clean, but now its like the weights gotten heavier. Is it from the week I missed? and will it take me a while to build it back up?

This is a lifelong endeavor, right? A week off here or there, or little bumps in the road are not a big deal at all. It's the big picture that counts. You should measure your gains in 3-month, 6-month, or even 1-year intervals, depending on your age and training experience. Weights might feel heavy one day and light the following week, or vice versa, but those feelings can be based on so many factors, like sleep, activity level, diet, etc. There will be blips in the road, but as long as progress is up in the long term, you're doing OK :) Just keep putting in the work, stay focused while you're in the gym, and the gains will come.

[CHS55]

I guess it was an off day, because a couple of days ago i power cleaned my clean and jerk max. maybe my legs are just that weak too though that i cant squat it?

[madaozeki]

There ya go :) Another thing to keep in mind is that until your form is razor-sharp, you'll be pretty inconsistent with the weights you can handle. That's totally normal!

I'm off to the gym in a few minutes, and since I said I would, I'll take a vid of freezing the split jerk position to work on form.

[madaozeki]

Here you go:

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Notice the 1st jerk is pretty crummy - my front foot hits first, and I'm slightly off-balance. The 2nd jerk is the one you should pay attention to. Positions are better, and when I freeze in the receiving position I'm completely balanced and solid. Give that a try as a diagnostic to see how solid your receiving position is.

PS Sorry about the bizarre audio... something went awry during my video conversion.

[J.L.C.]

I'm working on this as well so I tend to hold my receive position as a reference to gauge the lift by (since every jerk is an adventure for me :p )

Here's a vid of some rack jerks from today:
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Mine doesn't have any cool hypnotizing-mind-control audio though :D

When I got really frustrated by split jerks I tried power jerks for a while, I think they're a good way to work on the dip and drive and to work on tempo. I've since gone back to the split and I think the time spent with power jerks helped.