The pull is nearly identical to the snatch, but the bar is instead racked on the front delts (front squat) before the lifter stands up and presses the bar straight overhead, in what’s called the jerk.īoth of these lifts consist of three pulls. The clean begins with a narrower grip on the bar (just outside the knees). On the other hand, the clean focuses on strength. The movement is finished with the lifter standing upright. Deadlifting the bar into a powerful upward trajectory-driving through the hips-the lifter comes underneath the bar into an overhead squat. Using a load that’s about 70% of the one used for the clean, the snatch has the lifter grasp the barbell with a wider grip (about the distance of the elbows when the arms are raised laterally). Yet they’re also highly technical, requiring years of training to master the complex movement patterns. Not to mention the lower body strength required, both lifts also take a substantial amount of shoulder mobility, core strength, and stability in order to keep control of the bar. Both the snatch and the clean require the lifter to explode with energy in the triple extension of their ankles, knees, and hips-powering a barbell from the ground to an overhead position. The Olympic lifts are beasts when it comes to explosiveness. In fact, this movement has much more in common with the Olympic lifts than the upright row. Doing wonders for your structural and postural health, the high pull is a compound exercise worthy of a place in anyone’s workout routine. It utilizes basically your entire body, extending the muscles in your hips, knees, and spine. While both work your shoulders to an extent (the high pull placing much less of a focus here), the upright row places an almost exclusive focus on the delts.

The similarities pretty much end there however. With an overhand grip, this position has your shoulders flared out and your arms at least parallel to the floor. Both movements have you raising a barbell (or other weight) up in front of you, very close to your body. The “peak” of a high pull looks much like the upright row. However, there is a way to get most of these benefits without having to delve too much into the technicalities. This technical complexity causes many people to avoid them in the gym, losing out on all the benefits that they can provide. They’re revered for their conditioning almost as much as they’re avoided for their technical complexity. The snatch, power clean, and clean & jerk are the three Olympic lifts. What many people miss is the usefulness of Olympic lifts in enhancing power, the rate of development, athleticism, and general performance in, and out, of the gym. Not even counting the many varieties of the deadlift, there are still hundreds of ways to activate next-level power. The deadlift, for example, is a bread-and-butter movement that any serious gym-rat will have in their training regime. Fortunately, weightlifters have a lot of options when it comes to training explosiveness. Power helps us in functional fitness, overall health, strong postures, and sports-so it’s no surprise that many focus on it when it comes to setting their fitness goals. This type of power highlights the strength and the time that it takes your body to release all that pent-up energy. Not raw strength that gives you your 1RM, and not hypertrophy which gives you mass. When it comes to weightlifting, this essentially comes down to explosiveness. Power is defined as the amount of energy transferred per unit of time.

High pulls