Starting Strength

calf muscles do contract and produce force, but the momentum of the knee and hip extension is what actually carries you up onto your toes at the top of the pull. Some coaches have had success with adding some calf raises into the program, and this may work by making the lifter aware of this component of the finished position. A cue like “Toes!” may be a useful reminder to finish the pull by making you aware of the completed finished position. But an active attempt to perform a hard plantar flexion will not add much to most lifter’s clean.
     
    As noted before, power production stops when the feet break contact with the floor, and this occurs as the process of catching the bar in the rack position begins. As soon as the feet move out of the pulling stance, you have stopped pushing the floor. If you hadn’t, your feet could not move. The full extension of the knees and hips is the last piece of the act of pulling the bar, and after this final position is attained, the process is over. Even if heavy weights could be rowed by the arms after the pull – and they can’t – the result of the drop in pulling force would result in a drop in bar speed. The reality is that the upward momentum of the bar quite rapidly approaches zero, at which point the bar will begin falling. You have to catch it in the rack position before this happens, so you’d better hurry. The faster your feet move from the stance used for pulling into the stance used for catching, the less time the bar has to decelerate.

    Figure 6-42. The transition between the pull and the rack happens very quickly. Immediately after the final acceleration is imparted to the bar, the direction of the body’s movement changes from up to down as the rack position is assumed. The instant that force stops being applied to the bar and gravity ceases to be overcome by the pull, the weight decelerates, goes to zero upward velocity, and starts back down, and the rack must occur before the bar falls too far. Some downward bar movement is inevitable, but it must be minimized before the acceleration of gravity results in high downward momentum that will be more difficult to control.

    It is natural to move the feet from the pulling-stance width to a position approximately equal to the width used in the squat. This will happen naturally without your having to think about it, like several other things we’ve discussed. It is an artifact of having jumped, of the feet having actually left the ground and landed. The feet move laterally outward a little so that the knees and hips can absorb the shock of the landing. This lateral movement is reflexive and useful. Jumping forward is not. Usually caused by a bar path error, jumping forward wastes time and energy that could more efficiently be used to make the bar travel up. Jumping to an excessive width is also unproductive; excessive width takes excessive time to cover, which means that time better spent finishing the pull was used to perform the excessive lateral split.
    The rack position
     
    After the elbows rotate up and jam into position, pointing forward, the bar is said to be in the rack position, or “racked.” The upward rotation of the elbows causes the deltoids to come into a contracted position that raises them higher than the chest, permitting the bar to sit comfortably clear of the sternum. At this point, most lifters will have relaxed the grip somewhat, and some will have released the hook grip. It is okay to release the hook, or even to let the last two fingers drop off the bar if it facilitates a good rack position. It is not okay to completely let go of the bar, although this does occur with some very inflexible lifters. The most important factor in the rack position is the elbow position and its effect on the deltoids, making a place for the bar to sit.
    This is actually the position of the bar for a correct front squat. The correct rack position is the one that allows the most weight to be supported on the deltoids. In the correct position, the bar sits on the contracted deltoid muscle bellies. The delts hold the elbows up high, keeping the weight off the sternum. The rib cage is held up by tension in the upper back musculature, the shoulders are elevated by the traps, and the entire trunk is held rigid in isometric contraction and further supported by the Valsalva maneuver. In this position, you can easily support as much weight as you can clean.
    When you rack the bar, the best position for the