From the Floor or From the Hang?

I was speaking yesterday to a fellow strength and conditioning professional and the question came up “Do you like to do cleans from the floor or from the hang?”.

Are you training this guy?

or this guy??

Considering that my first experiences with training came at the age of 15 in an Olympic lifting club some people might just assume that my answer is from the floor.  It was what I was first introduced to and where I cut my teeth in training.  It turns out though that the answer is the complete opposite. I choose the hang clean for all of my athletes.

I choose the hang clean because for nearly all athletes it is the position from which they will complete most of their athletic skills. The start position from the floor is essentially a rolling start and the last time I checked linemen in football don’t get to take a running start to the line. Additionally there are too many chances for the bar to get out of position and take away the athlete’s ability to make a good pull on the bar.

Olympic Lifting from the floor is a sport, and good Olympic lifters are built for and made up to be good at that sport.  You probably wouldn’t make a 5’10″ Olympic Lifter a basketball player to improve their Olympic lifting abilty, so why make a 6’6″ basketball player an Olympic lifter to improve their sport?

The hang clean is a perfect way to overcome the difficulties in teaching and the physical limitations of many athletes.  By starting from the above knee position the athlete can take advantage of the strong stretch shortening cycle and maximize their potential pulling power.  I believe that the ability to move a load quickly and explosively is absolutely essential to being a good athlete. The hang clean is by far the best way to learn and develop this skill.

We have developed a great and quick method to teach almost 90% of our athletes that hang clean to do an actual hang clean on the first day.  This same method is employed over and over again to repeatedly get athletes to have huge personal records in the hang clean.  40, 50, and 60 lb improvements are not uncommon in 8-12 weeks. We have even had athletes put 80 lbs on their best hang clean in 12 weeks, from 260 lbs to 341 lbs!

The hang clean start position should be just above the knee with hips back and knees only slightly bent.  From there the motion is as simple as pushing the hips forward, if the athlete’s hips drop then they are doing this incorrectly.  In fact a great teaching tool is to immediately take the bar out of the athletes hands and tell them to jump as high as they can without the bar.  Film this motion from the side and almost invariably you can see them getting in the perfect start position as they push their chest down and forward, with their hips back. They will then explosively extend the knees hips and ankles to reach triple extension.   Show them this and immediately the connection will be made.

We take this simple point and reinforce it almost every session that we hang clean.  The results are absolutely there, so don’t keep cleaning from the floor and instead move to the hang position. You will love what you find.

Please comment and tell me where you are doing your cleans….

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