Power cleans too risky?

[Cradler]

Lately, I've really fallen in love with the power clean. I never did them as much before, but I've started doing them and absolutely loving them. Only problem - I don't have bumpers at my house, which is where I work out, and in the rare case I do them somewhere else, that place almost never has bumpers either. I tried just 'unwinding' my arms over them after a rep to set the bar back down, but the next day my shoulders were on fire and not in a good way. Is there a way to do power cleans w/o bumpers that doesn't tear up your shoulders something nasty? I can't think of an efficient way to do it that doesn't involve putting a big old hole in the floor.

[EricT]

Probably come a time where you will have to have bumber plates. Even with those you will still probably need floor protection too, depending on your floor.

I've done powercleans, high pulls, and things like that and I do high pulls a lot now. Generally I haven't seen any need to have to drop the weight. And since it is very light compared to deads so I can put it down safely. I'm not training to become super strong at those but for right now I suspect you may have failed to keep your shoulders back and "locked" while you were unwinding the weight. Course you may be a beast and clean a bunch more than me . Regardless, no, bumber plates will prob be a necessity. I know they are expensive as shit. You don't have to get them all at once as you can intersperce with with smaller metal plates but depending on how much you lift you will need enough disperse the weight. Regardless, you're looking at mucho bucks. It's not as bad as dropping the bar from overhead but you also need to wonder how well your bar can hold up..even with the bumber plates.

[Cradler]

Yeah, I hopefully won't have to spring for the bumper plates too soon... I'm going to college next fall so I'll get to use theirs. What do you mean about locking your shoulders out, though? I'm clearly not nearly as much of a beast as you man

[thonaker]

Would it be cheaper to buy thick rubber mats, instead of buying several bumper plates?

Troy

[king6678]

whats the reasoning for doing power cleans isntead of other excercises?

[Cradler]

King - Cleans build explosiveness like very few other exercises. They are basically a full-body workout, but as they're with lighter weight (relative to, say, deads) you can get a lot more speed and power into them. They're tremendously helpful with sports, too - as a wrestler I'm using them to build explosion for shots/standups, etc.

(That said you don't SKIP other movements for power cleans. I still squat, deadlift, bench press, MP, all of it - I just do power cleans on some days additionally.)

[EricT]

Cradler I missed your question before.

What do you mean about locking your shoulders out, though?

What I mean is simply keeping the shoulders tight and back...so that the traps and rhomboids are contracted and the scapula are somewhat retracted. Basically not letting the weight pull you shoulders out of the socket . If you do a pullup at the bottom you can easily tell the difference between tight and soft shoulders.

Another thing is that you have to absorb the weight as it drops. You let the hips come back and the torso forward. The idea is that the shoulders are not bearing the whole brunt of it and you are decelerating the bar not just letting it stop.

I take it you've gotten used to pc's but what I suggest is trying hang cleans for a while. What this will allow you to do is when dropping the weight you basically immediately go into position for the next rep so that you are decelerating it like I said and then dipping the bar down for the next explosion. This way you're not putting the bar down in between and you can just concentrate on that aspect of it.

Then later you can apply that to power cleans but you would just continue the weight to the floor. Hang cleans are good in their own right.

I've seen men and women alike training this way so you can certainly do it. It's only during the maximal stuff that you would need to drop the bar and even then it can be a controlled drop. But you're going to have this problem whether at home or in commercial gyms, lol, since they don't usually allow you to throw iron around and most don't have bumper plates or anything like that. Modern gyms are to fluffy.

[Cradler]

I'll try both of those - the shoulder thing and the hang cleans. Your point about decelerating the bar makes a lot of sense now I think on it. Your comment about modern gyms makes even more sense

PCs/HCs are a big part of my workouts so this is key for me... thanks a lot Eric, you always have really helpful info man.