Olympic Lifts

Full cleans can get complicated, but Bill Starr simplifies the movement into a power clean and a front squat. Get comfortable with the movements, then start refining the clean by adding speed and power.

Full cleans are one of the very best exercises for any strength athlete.

They are beneficial because they involve so many of the large muscles of the body in a dynamic fashion. When performed correctly, full… Continue Reading

After working his athletes through the clean and the first parts of the jerk, Coach Burgener completes the progression with the full split jerk.

Starting with the bar on the shoulders behind the head, the athletes work on a good dip with a vertical torso before jumping and landing in the receiving position with the bar locked out overhead. The next step is to start with the bar in the rack… Continue Reading

In Part 1, Coach Mike Burgener taught a group of athletes the grip and receiving position for the clean. In Part 2, he showed them how to put speed on the bar as they clean it to the rack position. Part 3 finds the CrossFit Olympic-lifting expert teaching the split jerk.

A good split jerk looks like a quarter lunge, where the back heel is off the deck with the weight in… Continue Reading

In Part 1 of this series, Coach Mike Burgener taught a group of athletes the grip and receiving position for the clean. In Part 2, Coach B shows them how to put speed on the bar as they clean it to the rack position.

Drilling from the high hang position, Burgener has the athletes clean the bar, with one trainee getting holy hell for forgetting to use the hook grip. Under threat of burpees, the athlete takes… Continue Reading

You have one hour to teach the clean and jerk to six athletes of varying ability: how do you do it?

Tony Budding of CrossFit HQ threw the challenge at Olympic lifting expert Mike Burgener, who wasn’t phased at all.

“I’m sure we can get it done,” Coach B says. “It’s not going to be that hard.”

Coach Burgener starts with the basics. To establish a good rack position, he ensures proper grip width and has the athletes… Continue Reading

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line—which is also often the quickest route to a missed snatch.

In snatching, you don’t want a perfectly vertical bar path but rather a line that curves in toward you slightly.

“The path of the bar is where?” Coach Mike Burgener asks. “It’s back. That’s the key. You don’t want that path to be straight. You don’t want it to go around. You want it to be back.”

With light… Continue Reading

“You don’t drop under the bar! You don’t fall under the bar! You pull yourself under the bar hard and fast!”

During a snatch workout with Jason Khalipa and Jocelyn Forest, Coach Mike Burgener gets loud and aggressive with the 2008 Games champ, demanding that he forget about strength to focus on speed.

Burgener notices Khalipa isn’t finishing his pulls and is slow to snap underneath the bar. The athlete from CrossFit Santa Clara is strong as an ox, but he… Continue Reading

Bill Starr believes finishing the pull is the only way to succeed in Olympic lifting once the plates start adding up.

This article is for any athlete who’s trying to improve numbers on any type of dynamic pulling exercise. These include not only the Olympic lifts but also shrugs, power cleans and snatches, and snatch-grip high pulls.

Every exercise is made up of a start, middle and finish. While all… Continue Reading