No Tricks Needed to Avoid the Knees | Olympic Weightlifting
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- čas přidán 12. 11. 2023
- One of the oddities of weightlifting instruction to me is the focus on actively moving the knees back out of the way of the bar during the pull of the snatch and clean.
The premise of it assumes that the knees are these independent entities not attached to the rest of the body whose sole quest is disruption of the bar path, and therefore must be actively forced to submit to your will. This usually means pushing them too far back and leaning too far over the bar in the first pull, which then creates problems for the rest of the lift.
But here’s a closely-guarded technique secret: If you stand up, your knees go backward… they’re attached to your feet and hips.
In other words, as you stand from the starting position, your knees move backward as the bar rises and clear the path.
But! you spit tearily into your screen, my knees are special and stay in the way!
No, you’re just doing something wrong. Let’s take a look at the possibilities so you can fix the actual problem:
Don’t try to start with the bar way back-position it over the balls of the foot.
Don’t start with your shoulders behind the bar-position the shoulder joint above or very slightly in front of the bar.
Don’t start with your feet and knees forward-turn the toes out and push the knees out as far as the arms will allow, and keep them out that wide until the bar is past them.
Don’t bring your shoulders back too early-stay over the bar by keeping approximately the same back angle until the bar is past the knees.
Don’t push the bar back too much too soon and grind your shins and kneecaps off-just keep it as close to the legs as possible.
Finally, make sure you’re not shifting forward-stay balanced evenly over the whole foot as you pull.
If you have freakishly long legs, you’ll probably have to allow your back angle to shift more than a more evenly-proportioned lifter, but it won’t have to be dramatic unless you’re making some of the previous mistakes-don’t exaggerate the knee extension for no reason. Here are two 6’ 4” guys pulling from the floor with solid posture and zero knee obstruction.
And as a final note: if you’re pushing your knees back to try to create more hamstring tension, all you need to do is stay over the bar long enough-the tension will be there unless you start opening the hips too early.
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You're going to need to go into witness protection after revealing such closely guarded secrets.
You’re the best weightlifter/weightlifting coach/weightlifter comedian ever!
Made me chuckle! Always very informative!
Greg letting us know all the closely guarded secrets 🤗
as klokov said: NEEEEEEEEZ OUTTTTTT
I had to send my knees to the Gulag to get them out of the bar path.
Excellent video, as always! My problem is that pushing my knees as far out as the arms allow in the snatch starting position just feels very unnatural to me (feet pointing 20° outward and placed in hip-width)... I'm a bit scared of destroying my meniscus or something by ignoring it. Only when using a wider stance or pointing the feet ~40° outward I am able to touch my arms without this weird feeling. I'm 189 cm tall (6' 2'') and use maximum grip width. Any advice?
Unless you're actually feeling discomfort in the knees, it's not a concern - unlike in a squat, you're not getting any eccentric loading into an odd position, and you're starting well above a fully flexed knee angle.
'Scratch my shin' to bleed. Long leg novice tryig to learn.
What is the cause? What accessory can help? Please.
czcams.com/video/9nwEFCbGPHg/video.html
I’m 6’6” so obviously none of this applies to me and my special, extra-obstructive knees. Their quest to make me bad at weightlifting continues…
Don’t think like that just keep practicing and you’ll get it…. Had the same issue but I sat down with my coach and he went over and over it with me until it started to click!
Weight on the bar would make some difference though, no? Lasha has over 200kg on his bar, which puts a lot of weight in front of the combined center of gravity, which means more of his body weight can be behind it, and thus more upright shins. If he had an empty bar, he'd need to move more of his own body weight in front of that center of gravity, because there's not an extra 200kg on the bar doing it, which would presumably mean needing the knees to be further forwards, or something else to change.
First... not the same topic. The topic here is whether or not the knees need to be actively pushed back out of the way to allow the bar to pass them. That's an issue of positions, motion and proportions - weight is really only material if one or both of the first two are incorrect, because that will improperly position the combined CoM relative to the base.
In any case, you're saying a larger guy like Lasha can have more upright shins... but that's the opposite of what's happening here - he is NOT pushing his knees back unnecessarily, which would bring the shins closer to vertical.
And the position of the lifter needs to be such that the weight on the bar makes no dramatic difference.
Here's Lasha snatching 70kg - czcams.com/video/C8RVZKtxFLo/video.htmlfeature=shared&t=79
And snatching 222kg - czcams.com/video/C8RVZKtxFLo/video.htmlfeature=shared&t=438
Positions/motions are the same. He's not changing the way he pulls as the weights increase - either to allow knees to stay more forward or bring them back more.
Does anyone actually use this cue anymore? I feel this is old dinosaur news.its like some early 2010s mike burgener stuff. There has been plenty of material specifically from the chinese who have debunked this "push your knees back" crap. And furthermore to add to this, i can recall some of your earlier videos/teachings/own lifts where you encourage the lifters to pretty significantly pushe the knees back and keep pushing them back throughout, which we also know now is the WRONG way to do it. So which is it now? Frankly, no one should be thinking this cue at all.