Starting Strength

105 just will not rack . Finishing the pull collates all the factors involved in the pull, and causes them all to come together at the right time to contribute to racking the weight. The slow movements rely on absolute strength – the simple ability to generate force in the correct position – at their limit capacity, while the quick lifts utilize the ability to apply maximum power at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place. These are two distinct skills, producing different types of training stress, and resulting in two different types of adaptation. Recognizing this difference between the slow lifts and the explosive lifts is fundamental to your understanding of barbell training.
    After the rack
     
    After the clean is racked and recovered, the bar must be dropped safely, without destroying you or your equipment. The method used here will depend on the equipment. If a platform and bumper plates are available, as they should be, the bar can be dropped from the rack position in a controlled manner. Care should be taken to prevent the bar from bouncing away from where it is dropped; you do this by keeping the bar level on the way down. While the bar is dropping, your hands should not leave it until just before it gets to the floor. Bars that are released at the top and allowed to free-fall are much more likely to bounce unevenly than bars that are tended to as they drop. Free-falling bars are also much more likely to get bent by the “whip” that occurs as the bar contacts the floor unevenly and the shear force of the deceleration propagates down the length of the shaft. Even an expensive bar can be warped this way.

    Figure 6-47. Bumper plates are designed to make the explosive lifts safer for the lifter and easier on the bar and platform; they absorb the shock of the drop so that the bar can be lowered by dropping rather than through the use of an eccentric effort, as was necessary before the invention of the equipment. But bumper plates must be used correctly so that the bounce can be controlled. As a general rule, don’t let go of the bar until it is just above the floor.

    If bumper plates are not available, the task becomes harder. The bar must be released from the rack and caught at the hang, and then lowered to the floor, to prevent damage to the barbell and the floor. This is actually the way all cleans and snatches were dropped before bumper plates were widely available, so it can be done, believe it or not. But it can be tricky, since it really hurts to actually drop the bar right on the thighs. You have to release the bar but retain enough grip on it to be able to slow it down before it hits your thighs. It is decelerated with the traps, using a movement that is the opposite of the shrug used during the jump. The bar needs to stop here under control before being lowered on down to the floor. And if metal plates are used, it would be prudent to use rubber mats to protect the floor. But really, get some bumper plates. They are important enough to consider necessary.
    The Power Snatch
     
    Although it has the reputation for great technical complexity and for being difficult to both learn and coach, the power snatch is not any more complicated than the power clean. The power snatch also is a jump with the barbell in the hands and a catch in the rack position. It’s just that the rack position is overhead in the hands, in balance directly above the shoulder joints, instead of on the shoulders. The power snatch also obeys the laws of balance, force transfer, and leverage. It has a longer range of motion than the power clean, and a longer distance to travel after the force stops being applied to the bar, so it has to be done with both lighter weight and more speed through the jump. But it can often be done by people who cannot rack a clean for various reasons, and the lighter weights used make it a viable option for some training programs. Don’t be afraid of the power snatch – it’s just not that big a deal to learn, and it is useful enough that all lifters should know how to do it.
    The most noticeable feature of the power snatch is the grip – it is wide, sometimes, for some tall, long-armed people, as wide as the bar permits. This would be a sleeve-to-sleeve grip. The width is needed to reduce the bar path’s distance; just as in a clean, the application of force to the bar stops after the jump, and since the bar has to fly up under the momentum imparted to it before the loss of foot