Speed Under the Bar

This video has been shared all over the weightlifting community lately:

It is Ilya Ilyin snatching 200kg off blocks during his London 2012 prep. After seeing this video, it’s no surprise that he took the Gold. The speed with which he gets under the bar is incredible.

To many beginners it seems like the strength and power necessary to get the bar high is the fundamental struggle of weightlifting. But some say getting back down quickly is even more important.

This is definitely something I struggle with. Not being a natural athlete, the rapid reversal of direction is difficult to master. My instinctual “solution” is to cut my second pull early, which obviously doesn’t help the situation.

So how can this be fixed? Actively pushing yourself down against the weight of the bar is the answer, though something I’ve yet to really figure out.

Searching around a bit, here are two videos with helpful suggestions:

Ankle Mobility

Ankle inflexibility can be a huge inhibitor for beginner weightlifters. It’s something I’m struggling to fix with one of my two cubicle monkey clients: a tall, lanky former D1 tennis player.

While the traditional bootstrap method of sticking a small weight under the back of the shoe to elevate the heel and increase ankle range-of-motion can work, it’s far from ideal, and merely treats the symptom, not the disease.

Here is my own favorite ankle mobility method:

However my client can’t get his hip below parallel, so this option doesn’t work.

Instead, I’ve turned to Kellly Starrett’s MobilityWOD for help. Specifically, his book: Becoming A Supple Leopard. In the chapter titled ‘Area 13: Ankle and Plantar Surface’, Kelly offers a couple ideas for restoring ankle mobility.

Ball Whack

Does your skin slide over your anklebones and tendons? If it doesn’t, you should immediately recognize that as a problem and work on restoring sliding surfaces to that tacked-down skin. To use the ball whack to restore sliding surfaces to the skin over the bony prominence and tendons of your foot, pin a ball on the inside and outside of your anklebone and around the areas of the heel cord and give it a firm whack. This momentarily stretches the skin, peeling it off the underlying surfaces.

Although you can do this mobilization on your own, it’s difficult to generate sufficient force. For this reason, I advocate employing the help of a Superfriend.

You can try this method on the inside ankle, heel cord, and outside ankle. Try multiple directions, until the skin starts to slide smoothly over the underlying surfaces.

Calf Mobility

One of the points Kelly constantly reinforces is to think upstream and downstream of the issue you’re dealing with. Tight ankles? Mobilize your calves!

Two calf options are:

calf smashes with a foam roller – even better with a friend

foot-against-the-wall calf stretch

That’s enough from Kelly’s book. I really recommend you buy the book and see for yourself how useful it is. It’s half-off on Amazon and it’s definitely the book I most frequently consult in my day to day training.

Back Angle Off the Floor

Spencer Arnold recently did a series of posts on preserving back angle off the floor. This is something I clearly struggle with.

As he writes:

One of my biggest struggles is not engaging my back muscles and keeping them tight throughout the entire movement.  I tend to tighten my back at the start and allow it to flex as the bar leaves the ground.

This is exactly the same problem I run into as well. Getting the back set is all well and good, but if you lose that angle from the moment you begin your first pull, it’s not doing you much good.

So what can we do to correct this problem?

Spencer lists five corrective exercises to try, including pauses at the knee, high pulls with tempo return, and some others.

I especially like the pauses because they reinforce the proper positioning while giving you time to make sure you’re in the right position. For desk jockey’s like me who aren’t as naturally athletic as more gifted lifters, really feeling those positions and being able to see how they look in a mirror at the pause is very helpful.

Additionally, the isometric hold and additional time under tension help build strength and hypertrophy, an added benefit for those of us who, as Jacob Tsypkin once put it, “figured out that you’re more likely to look like Klokov than lift like Klokov”.