Olympic Lifting & Athletic Performance

In a previous blog post “Olympic Lifting, is it right for you?” I discussed the background of the Snatch and Clean and Jerk and their benefits too. These include:

• They boost work capacity
• They are whole-body compound movements
• They require high levels of motor unit recruitment
• They improve posture and range of motion
• and many more!

But how can we apply these to the athletic population? In athletics, the more a training program replicates sports performance, the better prepared an athlete will be. Olympic lifts use the same natural movements as running, jumping, diving, tackling, and throwing. As with all programming additions and implementations, an athlete should be assessed prior to engaging in these high-skill movement patterns. That way a coach can identify which derivatives of the lifts would work best for that athlete and sport. Here are some examples that you may see Olympic Lifting programmed in sport-specific training.

• Power in place of squat variations
• Presses in place of Jerks
• Hang positions in place of from the floor.
• Cleans in place of Snatches or vice versa

In strength,
Brandon Bailey
M.S. CSCS USAW