Tag: lockout

Internal Rotation in the Lockout

As I start to teach classes to beginners in the olympic lifts, it is becoming very clear to me that different cues work differently for different people.

I’m a surgeon.  When I heard somebody explain the position of the arms when locked out overhead as, “internally rotating your humerus” that resonated with me.  I understood just fine.

I have said this to several other people who looked at me like I look at my husband when he tries to explain to me why my horizontal picture won’t orient correctly on this website.  That is to say, slightly slack jawed and very blankly.

What seems to resonate with many people is “push your head through”.  Now this I never really got.  That sounds like some sort of weird turtle thing.  But recently it clicked that this is the same as internal rotation of your humerus.

Right now you’re saying, no it’s not.  But think about it – if with a barbell in hand overhead, you rotate your humeral head internally, that is, your rotate your armpits down and your elbows back and up…. what happens?

Your head moves forward as your scapulae (shoulder blades) retract back and you lock that bar into a solid position slightly behind the frontal plane of your face, over or even a bit behind your ears like Charis Chan is in the picture above.

Try this.  With a PVC pipe held in a snatch grip overhead, try externally rotating your humerus, i.e., rotate your elbows down toward the floor and rotate your armpits forward.  Then have someone push on the pvc.

Next, still holding the PVC overhead in a snatch grip, internally rotate your humerus, i.e., rotate your elbows back and your armpits down toward the floor.  Have someone push on the pvc again.  See how much more solid it feels in this position?

To see Russian olympic gold medalist Alexsey Torokhtiy display this principle amazingly clearly, go watch this video posted by Diane Fu to her Instagram account.  You’ll never do Sots presses the same way again, I guarantee it!

So this is what putting your head through really means- getting the bar in a secure position with the humerus internal rotated, scapulae back and traps shrugged.  But I still think it makes you look like a turtle.

Building A Better Lockout

I forget precisely who it was, but I believe it was Coach Dan Bell who made a very important observation at the American Open in 2013.  He said that many people had fairly horrific form, but that what he noticed was that the crossfitters could often overcome that poor form with good overhead strength.

I noticed the same thing, from a slightly different angle.  At the Open you could almost tell the Crossfit trained women by the muscularity of their upper bodies.  American women weightlifters don’t always look like strength athletes.  You wouldn’t pick them out of a line-up as 100+kg jerkers.  But the Crossfit women generally do look more like they lift.

While they may have been nice to look at, that wasn’t the biggest perk of those boulder shoulders.  It was crucial because they could save lifts overhead that got a little ahead or a little behind because their entire trunk and shoulder girdle were very solid.

Which brings me to what I’m calling project Stronger Lockout.  I think my core strength is good (both anterior and posterior) but I continually try to improve it with back extension work and other core specific exercises.  So it’s pretty good at transmitting the force produced by my legs to the bar.

My shoulder girdle on the other hand (and I include some of the musculature of  my back in this as well) is, like many women’s, fairly weak especially relative to my lower body.  So I’m now on a mission to rectify this situation.  I’m building a better lockout not by practicing only jerks, presses in the sagittal plane  and triceps press downs.

I’m trying to build shoulder and trunk strength in many different planes and from many different angles.  Eventually I’ll go back to focusing specifically on the jerk but only after I’ve made improvements in overall strength and stability.  No more building pyramids on a base of sand.  I want that base to be built out of bedrock.

Lots of “ninja work” as Nick Horton likes to call it.  Pull-ups, push-ups, one armed presses across the body as well as above the head.  And maybe the granddaddy of them all, the handstand.

I’ve published a few videos of the various exercises I’m doing previously if you’re curious to see what kind of work I’ve been doing.