Meanwhile at Norwood Weightlifting …
Vasiliy Polovnikov does 200kg Muscle Cleans (clean without hip contact) + Push Press with 200kg.
You don’t see this variation too often, do you? Maybe someone from Norwood can ask him about it (when he uses it / why).
Reader Sieg commented:
I call this variations of both snatch and clean “muscle squat” variations. I saw German athletes doing stuff like this in the gym, mostly with snatch, where train… The exercise is done in order to activate the proper and full-force pull pattern with upper body throught the whole lift. I saw some people who just stopped using their upper body properly with time (I had the problem too), for them the exercise is pure gold.
And Yasha Kahn wrote in to say that:
I’m not sure if this is the right name for the exercise either.
In Russian the term for muscle clean (or muscle snatch) is prat’azhka where the hip doesn’t touch the bar. There are 2 variations – one with catching it at the bottom, the other is without re-bending of the knee.
When doing a full clean or snatch, the hip may be used so much that the rest of the pull is ignored or under-performed (long first pull, traps, shoulders, arms).
The purpose of this exercise is to fully engage everything that is supposed to be working in the clean/snatch. Then when everything which is supposed to be working does, and the hip explosion is added back in – the lifter will use everything as needed in the clean or snatch.
Vasiliy Polovnikov 200kg Muscle Clean + Push Press is a post by Gregor from All Things Gym.