Improving Speed & Power Through Olympic Weight Lifting

Typical athletic training usually includes individual training days that focus on improving strength, speed, stamina, or coordination. However, one training option that allows athletes to simultaneously target multiple fitness goals is olympic weightlifting.

Olympic weightlifting is both a competitive sport and a training regime that targets total body strength, speed, balance, coordination, cardiovascular health, body mechanics and mental fitness. The 2 olympic lifts are the clean and jerk, and the snatch.

The clean and jerk is a total body exercise performed in two explosive movements. The first thing you’ll notice about the clean and jerk is that it can't be done slowly. Even first timers must exhibit speed and power to complete the pulls, dips, catches and lifts. Pulls, dips, catches and lifts? That’s right…the clean and jerk has its own terminology.

1. Squat into your starting position

2. Pull to start your clean

3. Pull the bar past your knees and explode up as you extend your lower body

4. Pull yourself under the bar

5. Catch the bar and stand up

6. Dip and prepare to jerk the bar overhead

7. Jerk the bar overhead without allowing the bar to hinge you forward

8. Split catch the bar

9. Lift and finish

The clean and jerk stresses almost every muscle in your body, tests your concentration, gets your heart pumping, and the challenge will keep you coming back for more. It’s an incredible exercise for training and improving functional fitness.

Yes, the clean and jerk is awesome, but the snatch is considered the more technical movement.

As a single movement, the snatch combines pulling with your lower body and pressing with your upper body. Because of the speed required to move the bar off the floor and get underneath it, the snatch requires a massive output of power and the utilization of your total body strength.

Most people define strength and weight lifting by asking “how much” can you lift. The snatch challenges lifters with a different question. “How fast” can you lift it?

Besides the obvious strength and speed benefits to the snatch, this exercise is an amazing way to challenge and improve any athlete’s body mechanics.

Flexibility - these movements require significant flexibility in the hips, shoulders, and ankles to perform correctly. Regularly practicing the snatch, even with modest weight will improve your flexibility.

Range of motion - it's hard to think of another exercise that challenges range of motion in hips, knees, and shoulders like the snatch.

Proprioception - a fancy way to say the ability to perceive your body in space. Proprioception relies on feedback from your muscles, tendons, and joints to sense position, tension, and movement so you can adjust and improve your movements. Improving proprioception reduces your risk of injury and increases the efficiency of your body mechanics.

Mastering these highly technical movements is a worthy challenge. They will help improve your total body strength, power, speed, range of motion and mental fitness.