Starting Strength

should be in the stance used for a flat-footed vertical jump, for the same reason. We are going to rapidly transfer force to the floor, and this stance, heels 8–12 inches apart, is the best for this purpose. Toes will be pointed out for the same reasons they were in the deadlift: femur and torso clearance and the involvement of more adductor and external rotator muscle mass. Some very tall individuals with wide hips and shoulders will need a stance wider than this, but not many and not much wider. If wider hips seem to make a much wider stance necessary, try using a wider toe angle first to see if it produces the needed accommodation. Too wide a stance dilutes the ability to jump, as is easily demonstrated by vertical jumps with different stance widths.
     

    Figure 6-19. The stance and grip for the power clean.

    The bar will be in position right over the middle of the foot, as in the deadlift. All major standing barbell exercises depend on this position for balance and for force transfer to the floor. Lining up the stance with the bar forward over the ball of the foot creates a situation that will have to be corrected after the bar leaves the floor, because the bar wants to ride the vertical line over the mid-foot. If the bar doesn’t leave the ground from this position, you will have to expend some energy to get it back there, or the bar will be forward of the balance point all the way up. And if it is forward on the way up, you will need a backward pull at the top to get the bar onto your shoulders. Most lifters who chronically pull with a backward curve in the bottom of the bar path cause this to occur by using a stance that is too far from the bar, or by dropping their hips and thus pushing the knees, shins, and bar forward. If the most efficient bar path is a straight vertical line, using a start position that enables this to happen close to the body makes for the most efficient pull. Keep the bar close and don’t drop your hips.
    The hook grip is recommended for power cleans as soon as the movement is comfortable, as noted earlier. When using it, start with the warm-up sets and use it all the way up to the work sets to desensitize your thumbs to the pressure. Very heavy deadlifts – 800+ pounds – have been pulled with a hook grip, so power clean loads will not be a problem. Athletic tape may help if the discomfort is distracting or if many accumulated workouts tear up the skin of the thumbs.
    People with longer forearms might need to use a wider grip because the proportions produced by a long forearm and a short humerus make a high elbow position impossible with a closer grip. The bar must rest on the shoulders in the rack position so that heavy weights can be used; if the forearms are too long, the bar will rest in the hands because the elbows cannot come up enough to let the bar down onto the deltoids ( Figure 6-20 ). The only way to functionally alter these proportions is to widen the grip spacing to create a “shorter” forearm, in the same way that the snatch grip or the sumo stance shortens the functional length of their relevant segments. Some people with exceptionally weird proportions may find the clean impossible to rack. If this is the case, a lifetime of stretching will not make the clean any more possible, and these people might need to learn the power snatch as a replacement explosive exercise.
    Off the floor
     

    Figure 6-20. Long forearms may make the clean very hard to rack without a wide grip. People with very long forearms might not be able to use the exercise.

    We have discussed the mechanics of the pull off the floor in great detail in the Deadlift section of this book. All of that material necessarily applies to the power clean because the relationship of the human musculoskeletal system with the barbell as it comes off the floor does not vary with the subsequent height of the pull . The vast majority of the Olympic weightlifting literature that deals with the clean and the snatch advises that the bar be pulled from the floor from a position forward of the mid-foot, and advises that the resulting backward or horizontal bar path off the floor is not only efficient but also desirable. This reasoning is an example of phenomenology , “a theory which expresses mathematically the results of observed phenomena without paying detailed attention to their fundamental significance” ( Concise Dictionary of Physics , Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1978, p. 248). We are not really interested