5 mistakes to avoid when doing a Clean and Press

The majority of us are taught or teach ourselves to accentuate the positives and eliminate the negatives in life. Here’s a “What if” for ya! If we eliminate ALL negatives, then there will only be positives left! Anyway, it’s important for us to sometimes focus on what not to do, on what to avoid, in order to reduce or avoid the negatives…

This informative article then, is to help you with the proper technique of a clean and press. However, it does not tell you how or what do you do. Alternatively it offers advice on 5 things you must avoid if you really want to the proper technique of a clean and press.

O.K. then, here’s the 5 things you should avoid:

1. Swinging your bar forward on the first phase of the movement There are particular reasons to refrain from doing this. The main one is you are using mainly biceps to do the movement instead of muscles of your posterior chain (whole back), including shoulders. You are also more likely not to bend your knees at all to go under your bar and just lean back instead, adding pressure to your lower back (ouch).. As an alternative of that, you should maybe plan to lift your bar/weight in a straight line upwards, as if you were performing the exercise facing a wall with no space to swing your bar/weight forward.

2. Lifting shoulders towards ears. The reasoning behind this is that you are probably overusing the top of your trapezius (muscle which has a portion at the back of your neck) to lift the bar.. Alternatively, you could potentially simplify things and just think about lifting your elbows at shoulder level and push your shoulders down, don’t think about your bar, just elbows. Let the forearm, hands and bar just follow your elbows as if they are just hanging there..

3. Lifting your bar above elbows in the first phase of the movement. This is certainly a matter of using your biceps more than your posterior chain again. Alternatively you should strive to lift your elbows and just keep your bar, forearm and hands just ‘hanging’.

4. Lifting your bar straight over your head. Why this may be an error is you are more likely to lean back and excessively arch your lower back, adding pressure on your lumber and increasing the risk of lower back pain and injury. Alternatively you really want to just push the bar slightly forward. Again, bar should go from the initial position (in front of your thigh) to the top on a straight line..

5. Not using enough weight during the clean and press. It will always be a temptation to do this but with not enough weight it is really difficult to keep a proper technique, specially if you still learning the movement.. Instead, you should invariably keep in mind that you are working with a big muscle group, it is a compound movement which requires muscles from the back of your neck, arms, shoulders, whole back, glutes, hamstrings, calves… You need big weights to challenge the whole group and not be able to perform it using just your biceps, shoulders and triceps.

If you carefully avoid these 5 common errors and accept the suggestions offered for alternatives instead, your chances of success as well as your results achieved are going to be significantly better than they otherwise would.

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