Starting Strength

efficient.
    These examples represent the extreme variations in starting errors, and define a gradient that will be observed throughout people of differing anthropometry, skill, and talent. Most starting position errors will lie somewhere along this continuum. It is very difficult for the lifter himself to detect the subtle variations in starting position by feel. Even elite weightlifters experience “form creep,” in which a good starting position erodes into a bad one over several workouts. The use of a video camera (if one is available), so you can see the relevant angles, or the eyes of an experienced coach are extremely helpful for holding your clean technique together.
     
    These next comments are possibly the most important to understand in the whole discussion of the pull from the floor. Remember from the last part of the teaching method that the bar accelerates from the bottom to the top, getting faster as it gets higher. This means that the bar starts off the floor slow and gets faster as it comes up. The entire purpose of the lower half of the pull, the deadlift part, is to deliver the bar into the jumping position so that it can be accelerated. It is far more important for the pull from the floor to be correct than for it to be fast , especially at first. Remember this: the bar must be pulled correctly at the bottom and fast at the top. Pull the bar slowly and correctly off the floor, then fast and close at the top. The off-the-floor errors mentioned above usually occur when you get in a hurry and either rush through your start position or get impatient and jerk the bar off the floor. If you jerk the bar off the floor, you jerk yourself out of position. If you’re out of position, you can’t hit the jump. So squeeze the bar off the floor. The bar always leaves the floor more slowly than it moves up the shins and past the knees.
    Any position error that is caused by being in a hurry off the floor will be magnified on the way up, as described earlier. Since the movement is so fast, there is no time to correct the error. But if the bar comes off the floor slowly, your proprioceptive skills – your ability to sense your position in space – have time to make the small corrections that might be needed to put the bar back in the right place before it begins moving so fast that a correction is impossible. Control of the bar position is the whole point of coming off the floor slowly, so that you can enter the jumping position correctly every time.
    Jerking the bar off the floor is a common problem for people not using this method of learning the power clean. From the starting position, many people bend their elbows a little and then jerk the slack out of their arms in an attempt to get the bar moving rapidly as it leaves the floor. This jerk is often accompanied by a passive knee extension and a shift to a horizontal back angle. This error must be identified and dealt with the first time it happens. Pay close attention to the sounds you hear as you start the pull: if the plates and bar rattle, you have jerked it. Several things work to fix this. Think about “squeezing” the bar off the floor. Or think about “long straight arms.” Or just “slow off the floor.”

    Figure 6-26. Preparing to squeeze the bar off of the floor (A) versus preparing to jerk the bar off of the floor (B). The bent elbows and incorrect back angle ruin the pulling mechanics, and the jerk that follows as the slack comes out of the elbows worsens the situation (C).

    Make sure that your eyes are looking forward enough and not straight down, since eyes-down is often associated with hips-up. The correct eye gaze direction – 12–15 feet ahead on the floor – makes a correct floor pull much easier. Your perception of back angle is affected by the positional feedback you get from the stationary reference point you are staring at on the floor ahead of you. This eye-gaze point on the floor gives you real-time “telemetry” info that makes balancing much easier. Many poorly positioned starts have been corrected quickly and easily by a cue about the eyes.
    Through the middle
     
    The part of the pull that encompasses the transition from the basic floor pull – essentially a deadlift – into the actual clean part of the power clean has the potential to cause the most form problems. Errors that start on the floor get magnified in this range, and there is plenty of potential here to start brand new ones. Let’s examine some general