Snatch Progressions

When I’ve been teaching the snatch I’ve always been starting from the top down. In my opinion, the further the bar descends from the hips the greater the chances are for error to occur.

From the top:

1. Grab a PVC pipe and place it in your hips and reach the bar as far as you can with your hands and stand up. This will be a quick and easy way to see where your hands should be placed on the bar.
2. Next, roll your shoulders up and back creating a very tight squeeze in your shoulders and stick your chest out. This is probably the most over looked and important position to any Oly movement. I’ll explain why in the next couple of steps.
3. Squeeze your butt, quads and screw your feet into the ground.
4. Pick out one object either directly in front of you or slightly downward but 6-9 feet out. This will help keep your eyes focused on one specific spot.

Executing the high hang dip:

5. From the above position, think about the hinge and touch we’ve been doing for several weeks. Hinge straight down with your knees driving outward in the direction of your toes and your hips dropping directly over your heals.
6. While hinging down, it’s incredibly important to maintain the upright posture with your upper body. Imagine yourself up against a wall and your scratching your back against it.
7. Still in the bottom of your hinge (only a 3-4 inches down), Keep the bar in your hip crease. Do NOT allow the bar to slide down your thighs.

Executing the high hang dip and drive:

8. From the above position, think about jumping straight up. It’s very important that you allow your hips to do a lot of the work and your arms are just there to guide the bar upward.
9. Once your hips have reached the triple extension position, allow your shoulders to shrug up and then your elbows to be pulled straight up.
10. In this upward drive, keep your knuckles pointed straight down the ground. This is a fairly quick cue that works for several athletes preventing them from reverse curling the bar.

Executing the catch:

11. From the above position, as soon as the bar ascends past the top of your head, think about pushing your head and chest through the bar path. This will keep the bars upward path in one straight line once caught.
12. Simultaneously to step 11, as your head and chest move forward, your hips will drop back to counter balance the body’s center of gravity.
13. As soon as the bar reaches its maximum altitude in the pull, quickly flip the wrist so that the bar lands smoothly in your hands.

14. From the above position, stand straight up by simply pushing your hips forward.

So why is this position important?

When doing the snatch correctly from either a hang or from the ground, you will always pull the back into this position before it goes overhead. This is why I always pound this position into my athletes first. If you look at any competitive weight lifter they will always pull into this position before dropping down.

So why is it incredibly important to maintain your shoulders up and back at the start of this position?

Think about all the times you’ve lost your snatch forward. What may have gone wrong? A lot of times when the bar is lost forward, when you hit triple extension with your hips, sometimes your shoulders are still forward and it pushes the bar out in front of you. Maybe when you caught the bar you ended up jumping a whole foot length forward.  This will also allow people to quit the bar swing that I always see when starting people out.

Other quick notes:

There are a couple other key points that go into this but I just wanted to touch up on some of the top ones.

Any oly lift is all to do with timing. I often tell people it’s a patient rush to do things correctly. It also requires hundreds if not thousands of reps of practice to become descent at it, so don’t get frustrated and quit too soon.

Next time you snatch, mimic these positions and hopefully you’ll notice the bar path moving a lot more vertical!