Clean

How to do it

1. Set a loaded barbell on the floor over the middle of your feet, stance about hip-width.
2. Take an overhand grip just outside your legs, hips lower than in a deadlift, chest up, back flat.
3. Push the floor away and lift the bar, keeping it close to your legs and the torso angle steady.
4. As the bar passes the thighs, drive the hips forward hard and extend the legs.
5. Pull yourself under the bar, dropping into a squat and driving the elbows through.
6. Catch it on the front of your shoulders with the elbows high, then stand up out of the squat.

Common mistakes

• Pulling with the arms early. The bar rises because the legs and hips extended; the arms guide it and then pull you under. If the shoulders are lifting, the hips did not.
• Letting the hips shoot up first off the floor. The torso angle holds through the first half — hips rising while the bar stays put means the back is about to do the lift on its own.
• Catching with the elbows down. Elbows high makes a shelf of the front of the shoulders; elbows dropped puts the bar on the wrists and it rolls forward.
• Learning it from a floor pull. The catch and the receiving squat are positions, and they are normally built from the hang and from blocks before the full lift is attempted.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Hamstrings

Secondary

• Calves
• Forearm Flexors
• Forearm Extensors
• Glutes
• Spinal Erectors
• Quads
• Shoulders
• Traps