Now that we’ve helped you create that better front rack...

A video posted by Diane Fu (@dianefu) on



Now that we’ve helped you create that better front rack (see Monday’s post), time to put it to use! Lester Ho (@lesterhokw) is here today to talk about the transition from the clean to the jerk.

Transitions are tricky because it requires the athlete to move from one shape to another. This repositioning often causes some quality of the lift to get lost resulting in diminishing performance.

Don’t get caught with, as my friend Kendrick Farris (@kendrickjfarris) likes to call it, “Ricky Bobby hands” by learning how to transition well from one movement to the next.

Clean-Jerk Grip Transition.

Typically for beginners, its normally taught that the grip used in the clean should be maintained at the same width for the jerk.

However for some, due to mobility issues within the upper limb or shoulder gridle, a narrow grip adopted in the clean is hard to translate through to the jerk, especially when finishing overhead.

For some of the top athletes, this is done with ease as the bar remains on the collarbone and the hands are shifted out to a wider width for the jerk. Biomechanically in the jerk, the distance the bar has to travel is less and becomes more efficient.

For the normal person or someone with poor shoulder mobility like myself, this transition needs to occur as I recover from the clean. Giving it a little more of a push at the top of the recovery to “hover” the bar momentarily to allow me to widen my grip.

With that, I found that that gives more space for my shoulders to move and also maintain a more stable lockout, rather than hyperextending the torso and maintaining a narrower grip for the jerk.

This is to be done with caution and with lighter weights to be accurate with the transition rather than going heavy and probably resulting in too much torque through the shoulder.

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