Gripping the Bar

CrossFit Journal (Video)

Active shoulders, weight over the base of the feet and, yes, the hook grip.

In this snippet from an Olympic Weightlifting Trainer Course, Mike Burgener first talks about keeping the shoulders externally rotated to keep the bar in a strong position overhead.

“If that bar’s up here over your head and you’re shrugging your shoulders … where does the bar go? It goes forward automatically because it becomes an internal rotation,” he says.

The next point he makes is about keeping the bar over the base of support—the feet— while “showing the armpits.”

And, finally, the hook grip.

“The grip will always be—and there is no debate about this either, by the way—when you’re snatching and when you’re cleaning, the grip will always be a hook grip,” Burgener says. “When the weight’s over my head or if I’m pressing, I don’t have to use a hook grip.”

11min 42sec

HD file size: 278 MB
SD wmv file size: 176 MB
SD mov file size: 62 MB

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Additional reading: Oly Optimization by Chad Vaughn, published Nov. 18, 2011.