Starting Strength

and begins the process of convincing you that the power clean is really a jump. You will have to reset your stance before each rep, because after the jump, your feet will land in what is essentially a squat stance.

    Figure 6-7. The difference in pulling stance (A), from which the clean begins, and the racking stance (B), essentially the same as the squat stance, the stable position the feet will reflexively seek after breaking contact with the ground.

    Now that you have the correct stance and an empty bar of the right weight, you will learn the hang position, the rack position, and the jumping position, in that order.
    Learning the hang, rack, and jumping positions
     
    First, the position at the top of the pull, with the bar in the hands at arms’ length and with straight elbows, straight knees, and chest up, is referred to as the hang position ( Figure 6-8 ). Get into the hang position by taking the EMPTY bar off the floor with a correct grip and deadlifting it. The correct grip for most people will be about 2–3 inches wider on each side than the grip they use for the deadlift. The power-clean grip is wide enough to let the lifter’s elbows freely rotate up into the rack position, to be described shortly, and will obviously vary with shoulder width. Later, we will learn the hook grip, but for now, a normal thumbs-around, or double-overhand , grip will be fine. Your eyes will be looking at a spot on the floor about 12–15 feet in front of you, just as in the deadlift.

    Figure 6-8. The hang position. Note the straight elbows, internally rotated, and that the lifter’s chest is up, eyes are looking slightly down, and feet are in the pulling stance.

    In the hang position, your arms will be internally rotated, placed in that position with the same motion used to pronate the grip. This movement is used in the hang position to start the process of learning to keep the elbows straight, one of the most important, and apparently one of the hardest, things to learn about the clean. Get in the habit early of snapping the elbows into this position every time to begin the process of the clean.

    Figure 6-9. In the hang position, your reminder for straight elbows will be rotating them internally. Make sure they stay in this position anytime the bar hangs in the hands.

    The next step is to get the bar onto the shoulders. From the hang position, with the correct-width grip, get the bar up onto your shoulders, any way you want to right now. It should sit right on top of the frontal deltoids (the meaty part of the front of the shoulders), well away from the sternum and collarbones. This position is referred to as the rack position ( Figure 6-10 ).

    Figure 6-10. The rack position, with chest up and elbows pointed forward.

The key to this position is the elbows: they must be up very high, pointed straight forward, with the humerus as nearly parallel to the floor as possible. Some people will have trouble getting into this position due to flexibility problems. A grip width adjustment usually fixes this, especially if the forearms are longer than the upper arms. Widen the grip a little at a time until the position is better. If your elbows are up high enough, the bar will clear the bony parts and sit comfortably on the bellies of the deltoid muscles. The bar should not be sitting in the hands, and the hands are not supporting any of the weight. The weight is resting on your shoulders, and your hands are trapping it in position between your arms and shoulders, just like they do in the squat. This position is secure and pain-free to the extent that you will never in your entire life clean a weight that will be too heavy to hold like this. It is imperative that you understand that this is where the bar goes and not anywhere else – not sitting on your chest, and not just carried in your hands. You must not stop with your elbows pointing at the floor ( Figure 6-11 ).

    Figure 6-11. The incorrect elbow position places the elbows directly under the bar and places the weight of the bar on the arms and wrists instead of on the shoulders.

    Figure 6-12. The cure for incorrect elbow position. To fix the problem of lifting your elbows after an incorrect rack, you can lift them (or have them lifted) repeatedly enough that initially catching the bar in the correct position becomes reflexive.

    Lower the bar by dropping it down the chest and catching it at the hang position. This means that you do not reverse-upright-row or reverse-curl