8 Unusual Olympic LIfting Cues That Get Results

Olympic lifting is one of the most significant-stage, ability-primarily based, athletic things to do one can carry out. No other fashion of lifting calls for the identical stage of coordination, focus, and depth than a heavy clean up and jerk or snatch.

 

Olympic lifts require coaching cues to build good motor patterns

 

 

I’ve been exceptionally fortunate in my coaching career to have been introduced up by some accurate masters in the game. About two months into my coaching career, I attended the NSCA’s Sport Unique Teaching Meeting in Anaheim in January of 2000 and listened to Mike Burgener instruct the lifts.

 

I was mesmerized by him and fell in love with each phrase coming out of his mouth (and his special ability of killing all of us in two shorter hrs with a PVC pipe). I quickly sought him out, and he opened his house and his infinite know-how to me. I invested the following a few years paying visits and assisting him at USAW certs.

 

Not only does Mike have decades of wisdom to share, but the cueing he takes advantage of can by some means get a place complete of novices on the identical web site. Which is highly effective. The subsequent are cues you might or might not have listened to when training Olympic lifting. Lots of of them I have made out of requirement. They are my go-to cues for nearly absolutely everyone, and I’ve had incredible success with each individual of them.

 

Cue #1: Ice Water in Your Veins

Olympic lifting is as a great deal psychological as it is bodily. Everyone who has designed proficiency at the Olympic lifts will agree that max tries can be exceptionally tense and invoke important levels of dread.

 

Hence, a lot of lifters want to get into a lather prior to going right after a heavy endeavor. This ordinarily requires screaming and yelling, jumping all-around, and trying to use aggressiveness to gas the tries.

 

I’ve got some negative news for people of you who do this. Realistically, you want to do the exact opposite. Enjoy significant-stage weightlifters prepare. They all have an emotionless technique to the bar. They have mastered a thousand-mile stare.

 

More than-excitability disrupts the stream of the motor method. I convey to my athletes they require to have no psychological relationship to the endeavor. As soon as you have properly completed the raise, go berserk, but not a second quicker.

 

Ice water in your veins.

 

Cue #two: Dedicate to Capturing the Elbows

This cue is pure gold if you are doing the job with a lifter who is not getting their elbows all-around the complete length when they capture. I see it fifty periods a day. Lifters require to make a official final decision that no issue what, they are going to shoot the elbows the complete length as rapid as they can.

 

 

In some tries, you will see lifters do the exact opposite. They’ve nearly resigned by themselves to the fact that they cannot get the bodyweight, and the arms by no means engage. If this is the situation with one of your athletes, you have to encourage them that the elbows are non-negotiable.

 

The elbows require to be automatic and they require to end with tempo. So pull your athletes apart and encourage them that even prior to they touch the bar, they require to make a deal with by themselves that hell or significant water, they are going to shoot the elbows. It will work.

 

Dedicate to capturing the elbows.

 

Cue #three: Knuckles Down

The emotion of dropping grip sales opportunities to a guaranteed unsuccessful endeavor, particularly for youthful lifters. Challenges with grip are some of the initially mistakes coaches come upon with someone who’s beginning out. This is with or with no utilizing a hook.

 

In my practical experience with the 1000’s of lifters I’ve worked with, nearly absolutely everyone will naturally have their wrists in slight extension when they grip the bar. If you seem at the area of the bar in the hand when the wrists are in any stage of extension, the force of the bar moves to the fingertips.

 

Imagine of performing a fingertip pull up. It’s ten periods more challenging than a complete grip pull up. If you really don’t have your knuckles down, you use the fingertip pull up grip to pull hundreds of kilos off of the ground. Knuckles down does a few vital issues:

 

• Because you have to now set your wrist into slight flexion, the bar rests in the meat of the fingers rather of the fingertips. So out the gate, you are in a stronger position by advantage of a surer grip.
• Employing a hook grip (like most skilled lifters do) moves a huge portion of the force off the thumb.
• The intention of driving your knuckles straight down keeps the elbows straight for lengthier.

 

Knuckles down.

 

Remaining: Accurate, knuckles down Correct: Incorrect. knuckles out.

 

Cue #four: Drive the Ground Away on the 1st Pull

The initially pull can be tricky for youthful lifters for the reason that they want to obvious their knees for the bar route. If we really don’t instruct that piece appropriately, novice lifters will either grind the shins with the bar or drive the knees again with no lifting the hips up. Even while we go by way of a entire part encouraging these athletes conceptualize the require to obvious the knees, in a lot of instances it still gets muddy.

 

Thinking about driving the flooring absent whilst standing up with the bar organizes not only muscular coordination that fits the undertaking, but also clears the knees from the bar. Lifters conclude up in a terrific position and are equipped to changeover correctly.

 

Drive the ground absent on the initially pull.

 

Cue #five: Shrug By yourself Down

It took me various years to finally instruct the third pull. I discovered that the moment you convey to your athletes to pull by themselves below the bar, they inevitably begin to pull with their arms throughout the 2nd pull. And as Mentor B says, “When the elbow bends, the power finishes.”

 

Right until this cue arrived together, I had come to the conclusion that if I was only going to be doing the job with inexperienced persons to intermediates, I was not going to instruct the third pull. In the previous days, we would instruct the little ones that the shrug was the final-ditch endeavor to get vertical raise on the bar.

 

Now, even while we comprehend that the shrug can help convey the bar up a smidge larger and buys us a portion of a 2nd far more time to get down, we instruct the shrug is the stage wherever the fall to capture commences.

 

If you have a lifter who is willing and equipped to snap their shrug – as they should really be – you most likely will have an athlete who is willing and equipped to fall into their capture rapid. Acquire-win.

 

Shrug your self down.

 

Cue #6: Toss Your Bridge to the Corner

I examined Baguazhang for a good deal of years and was an offensive lineman for thirteen years. The “bridge” (or what we have come to refer to as the again bridge bar) is this imaginary bar that handles the rear of the athlete from shoulder to shoulder.

 

When you are trying to achieve a leverage edge in a tight room towards an opponent, you have a significant edge if you can manipulate their bridge by pushing and pulling to achieve command of their upper physique. Wrestlers, linemen, and BJJ fighters will know what I’m talking about, even if our terminology differs.

 

Know the bridge, throw the bridge to achieve a improved hip extension

 

To get a lifter to end their hips, we make clear the bridge and then instruct them to throw their bridge to the corner of the place wherever the wall and roof fulfill. As an FYI, the platforms in my facility are up towards the wall, close to the corner of the place.

 

You could use a light fixture or a little something like that if your set up is considerably unique. If this bridge notion does not resonate with you, the base of the neck is a little something we all can comprehend. Either way, for a effective capture, we want the hips to end and achieve complete extension into slight hyperextension to supply the bar.

 

Toss your bridge to the corner.

 

Cue #7: Catch Like a Mountain

How a lot of periods have you caught a clean up, only to be buckled by the bodyweight after you and the bar fulfill? It occurs a good deal, particularly with novice lifters. They commit all their electrical power pulling, so they soften at the base of the capture and fold up.

 

I convey to lifters who have this problem that they require to be a mountain at the base. Total stress all through the physique will enable their construction to tolerate the load. The visual of a mountain offers them the feel of a little something massive and sound. Most novices think they are getting a strategy hiccup when in truth, they just require to think sturdy. I get practically ideal benefits from this cue.

 

Catch like a mountain.

 

Cue #eight: Truly feel Your Obliques in the Squat

This one struck me various months back when I was trying to create bigger degrees of stress in my vertical urgent. I’ve had various again injuries in the previous, so a great deal of the tinkering, I do with methods arrives from the require to make construction and steadiness for my again. The far more you compress the identical-facet oblique to make a column of steadiness, the stronger the overall movement feels.

 

On the ascent from the base of the squat, most of us have to chase our centre and power by way of a really deep ass-to-grass squat. Then you get to this stage, feel for your obliques. Attract your awareness to your obliques and lock them down, producing a pillar of construction for your midline. When you choose your awareness to your obliques, there is a stage of an increased emotion of steadiness as you stand up.

 

Truly feel your obliques in the squat.

 

We all have some quirky cues to get what we require out of our athletes. These are just a couple of mine.

 

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