To clean or not to clean

Are the olympic lifts useful for non-strength athletes?

TL;DR: Yes, absolutely. Should you use them? Maybe not.

And, sorry for the cheesy title.

Spend enough time on the strength and conditioning internet, and you will see every opinion on the Olympic lifts. For some reason, the lifts are regarded with an almost deity-like mystique to some coaches, and yet some other coaches despise them. For a long time, I was team “Olympic lifts fix everything.” Then, as my knowledge and experience expanded, I shifted almost to “well, you don’t really even need them.” Now that I find myself somewhere back in the middle, I feel this is an interesting topic to shed some light on from an unbiased perspective.

Defining the strength athlete

As I said above, this article will focus on the non-strength athlete. For the sake of the scope of this article, the non-strength athlete will simply be defined as an athlete whose competition result is NOT directly tied to 1 repetition maximum in a barbell lift. So, I am not including weightlifters or powerlifters when laying out the forthcoming rationale. Athletes that compete in track and field, football players, lacrosse players or participants in any other court-or-field-based sport certainly need to be strong. However, since their competition result is not directly tied to a 1 repetition maximum lift, it should not be the only metric us coaches chase.

The case for the Olympic lifts

Quick pet peeve: The sport of testing a 1 repetition maximum Snatch and 1 repetition maximum Clean & Jerk against peers in a given weight class is weightlifting. No one competes in “the oly lifts”, and it is not generic weight or strength training. Maybe I’m just a stickler for nomenclature, but I think having the industry all on the same page regarding terminology would ease a lot of confusion around the sport. Using the Olympic lifts for sports performance is not the same as being a weightlifter.

Anyway, the Snatch, Clean, and Jerk are some of the most explosive movements you can perform in a weight room. They are ballistic in nature, allow for utilization of the scientific principle of overload, and they are easy to track progress in. Lift one kilo more than last week? You are 1 kilo more explosive and stronger than last week, easy as that. Obviously, technique, hormones and the like play a factor, but that is beyond the scope of this article. Those points listed are the most common reasons I see for inclusion of the Olympic lifts, and they are all true and great points.

Additionally, an argument I see commonly is the building of kinesthetic awareness.

Unlike a speed deadlift or squat focused on moving weight fast, you must move weight fast and also get under it in a clean. You must be precisely aware of where your body is, where the bar is, and how they operate as a system.

Speaking of getting under the bar, a reason I often see for the inclusion of the Olympic lifts is the benefit they provide for an athlete’s ability to absorb force.

Think of a power clean: you have to:

Get the bar to a good second pull position,

Pull the bar, imparting as much vertical force as you can, then,

Change directions, catch and stabilize that same weight which is now moving down because of gravity,

All in fractions of a second.

In a snatch, this occurs even faster, with less time to get under and stabilize the bar in an overhead position. This ability to absorb force has shown to translate well to change of direction ability, as well as the ability to absorb contact from another athlete.

Sounds incredibly useful, right?

We haven’t even gotten into the benefits that other variations of the lifts bring. In a hang clean, you get a stretch of the posterior chain, once again requiring a forceful change in direction around the knee, and this time you need to get under the bar in a full squat. This helps with mobility at the ankle and hip, strengthening the posterior chain, ability to change direction, and the rate of force development of the athlete. All highly desirable qualities for athletes, in one lift!

The case against them

Here’s the cautionary tale to slow you down from throwing the Olympic lifts into every day of your next program; they’re really hard to do well.

As a USAW level 2 coach with a large amount of experience both coaching the lifts and competing, I am confident in my ability to get an athlete moving in a safe and effective way. If an athlete walks in my doors wanting to get stronger and faster, we will most likely clean and eventually snatch & jerk. This process, however, occurs over a long period of time with a trained eye watching every step of the way.

For online clients, I exhibit much more caution in prescribing Olympic lifts, as I am not there to provide immediate feedback or prevent them from hurting themselves. A poorly executed clean is not the desired training effect I am seeking, and once I see it on video, the damage has already been done.

Here is what I concluded in my time away from the Olympic lifts: they are incredibly useful, but not completely necessary. Things like trap bar jumps, clean pulls, med ball throws, or even speed squats or deadlifts, or certain variations of jumps, are fine proxies for the stimulus that the Olympic lifts provide, and in some circumstances, provide a better alternative.

So what the heck am I supposed to do?

Here is the ever-frustrating truth in our field: the answer is it depends. Most of my athletes perform some variation of the clean and some variation of the jerk, and a few of them can snatch well, so we include it in the programming. As in most cases, the answer is the common-sense one. I believe in the Olympic lifts and their benefits, but I am not going to force them on an athlete who cannot do them properly or who cannot do them in a way that garners the adaptation we are seeking. In truth, the body only knows stress. A speed squat and a clean equated for volume and intensity are not going to be so vastly different from each other that it’s not worth replacing the clean if the coach decides it’s appropriate.

Coaches should not fear the Olympic lifts, but they aren’t a miracle pill for athletes either. Do yourself a favor and find a coach who knows how to elicit adaptations in a variety of ways. If your coach is adamant that you perform only the Olympic lifts, or you have a coach that vehemently detests them, both are most likely trying to force you into a mold to cover a gap in their own knowledge they may not even realize they have. Find a good coach who can tailor programs to you and your goals, not the other way around.

If you’re looking to make that switch take a look at our custom programming here, or schedule an in-person assessment here to get the coaching you deserve that will ELEV8 your game to the next level!