Starting Strength

you’re jumping as high as you can, high enough that you have to fully extend the knees and hips to do it. A good jump will leave the toes pointed at the floor, not because you performed a calf-raise as a part of the explosion but because the explosive extension carried you up onto your toes. This knee and hip extension is what makes the bar touch your belly, so make sure the touch occurs. Don’t worry about the elbows the first few times – just jump high with straight elbows.
    When your jump with straight elbows is working, jump and catch the bar in the rack position. Keep the bar close to your chest on the way up, and let the elbows bend after the jump to facilitate this. If you bend your elbows before the jump, you will dilute the power being transmitted down the arms to the bar (remember towing the car with a chain vs. a spring?), and the tight biceps will slow down the rotation that must occur to rack the bar. If you try to keep the elbows straight after the jump, the bar will swing away forward into a loop. So you must eventually bend your elbows, along with your wrists, but not until after you jump. If you just think about catching the bar in the rack position, your elbows and wrists will perform in the correct order.

    Figure 6-57. The jump and the rack.

    The elbows snap from internal rotation to external rotation as the elbows and wrists unlock after the jump and then relock in the rack. This unlocking after the jump permits the bar to fly up past the chest and face, staying close to vertical over the mid-foot. The unlocking of the two joints allows the arms to behave like the links in a chain that connects the shoulders to the bar. The jump provides the power that elevates the bar and propels it up with enough momentum to carry it through the unpowered part of the pull to the rack position. The arms merely connect the back to the bar to transmit this power; they generate none of their own.
    The final part of the snatch is the drop that straightens out the wrists and elbows at the top. As you feel yourself rise to your toes as a consequence of the jump, and the bar flies up past your chest and face, drop under the bar. This drop is a bending of the knees and hips again, perhaps back to the same position from which you jumped. This time they just unlock, to permit you to catch the bar with straight elbows in a cushioned position. It is the drop that finally straightens the elbows and wrists as your hips and back move down – not your muscles pulling the bar up into this final position (an assistance exercise, by the way, known as a “muscle snatch”).
    The drop provides the final snap that permits the external rotation of the arms into the rack position, and the speed of the last 10% of the snatch depends on your commitment to drop under the bar and catch it with straight arms. The movement should be fast enough to cause the bar to audibly rattle as you rack it – make it slam into position as you drop. To make the movement quick and sharp, you might want to think about “stabbing” your hands up into the bar as you drop. Practice this a few times, and then set the bar down to rest your hands.
     

    Figure 6-58. The 3 teaching positions: hang, jump, rack.

    Remember to lower the bar by unlocking your wrists first and catching the bar as it falls past your chest. You do not un-press a snatch any more than you use a press to raise the bar into the rack position. If you have pressed it into position, then the wrists have extended before the elbows, the jump was not the force that carried the bar up, the drop has not explosively rotated and straightened the elbows and wrists, and the movement has been very slow. Many people have been allowed to raise the bar the final few inches with the wrists already turned over, and their mental picture of the movement is consequently quite incorrect. And it won’t matter how fast you can do it wrong – if you lose the last piece of jumping explosion by trying to turn the bar over early to press it with a snatch grip, you lose the power from the last part of the jump and you lose the speed from the drop. Unlocking the wrists first to lower the bar from the beginning stops this problem before it starts.
     
    Once you’re catching the bar in the rack position with a drop and a snap of the elbows and wrists, you’re doing the basic snatch movement. The next part will again involve getting the bar from the floor up to the jumping position, and again the deadlift is