Clean and Press

[Stefan Olsson]

While reading TB I last night I saw one of the clusters having CnP in it. Few years back I was reading up on Doug Hepburn and got reminded by his monsterous CnP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs8svOg9c9o from 1954.

Does anyone here do it? Its one hell of a lift. Bringing the bar from the ground to racked position and over head takes care of the strenght portion as well as your lungs!

[grouchyjarhead]

I personally like to clean all of my presses, but I only clean it once to get it in the right position (doing cleans every reps is something I used to do, but I feel it's more of a risk > reward thing now). I got inspired after reading this article from the 70s Big blog and have noticed the benefits.

http://70sbig.com/blog/2011/12/clean-your-press/

The benefits listed:
-Lift more weight.
-Practice the clean.
-Get effective clean work in.
-It's cool.
-It's functional.
-It will help you not be fat.
-You'll get stronger and bigger.

[recursiveBeginner]

Hey guys,

I saw this post a while back and decided to give it a go - it's a lot of fun. I've been cleaning before each set of presses like Grouchy.

So here is a question: how do you guys transition from the front rack position after cleaning, to the bottom position of the press?

After cleaning, the bar is on my delts, in my fingertips. Elbows are right up. However, at the bottom of the press, the bar needs to be in the hands, elbows down and tucked, lats flared etc.

How do you get from A to B?

I tried tracking down some vids of the movement to see what techniques were used back in the day. Seems that there was a lot of variation, but two approaches emerge:
1. Clean the bar straight into the bottom of the press rather than front rack: https://youtu.be/g9ubAQfYcWQ?t=24s
2. Clean it into front rack, stand up, and then adjust the grip / 'ride the bounce' before pressing: https://youtu.be/Nx1ytBh6kgU?t=5m54s

I can't quite nail either of these. The first one is fine if the weight is light enough to just power clean, because you can almost curl it into place. But I can't front squat with elbows down like that (I notice Doug Hepburn gets around this by catching the bar in a split stance). The second just feels very clunky and jars my wrists. Probably overthinking this, but interested in your thoughts!

My temporary solution is to just clean and jerk, which puts the bar in my hands nicely, then lower it and do my presses. So each set is 1 x C&J + the presses. The extra explosive movement before the set is a lot of fun, (and as an aside it's sent my punching power through the roof), but it does take some juice out of the tank before the presses so I'm not sure how sustainable it is.

[spemma]

when i used to oly lift a lot of guys would do a variation of 2 where they stood up with the clean and then did a second mini bounce to get their hands under. so instead of doing it as one movement, it was 2 movements. probably inefficient, but for this purpose i think it would be fine.

the second mini bounce would be as if you were taking a free throw. just a little dip and up on the toes, and then rack your hands under. doesn't give you the big momentum from riding it all the way up.

edit - here's a vid that shows more of your #2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkaNPCqh4lc

[recursiveBeginner]

Super useful, thanks. I don't actually adjust my hands before jerking (that sounded weird) - I find if I just launch the bar from the rack position it all sort of works itself out - so I've never really tried this.

Thanks again, will give it a go!