Clean Pull

How to do it

1. Set a loaded barbell on the floor over the middle of your feet.
2. Take a clean-width overhand grip, back flat, hips lower than in a deadlift.
3. Lift the bar keeping it close to your legs, holding the torso angle through the knees.
4. As the bar passes the thighs, drive the hips forward and extend the legs and ankles explosively.
5. Finish tall with the shoulders shrugging and the bar rising against the body.
6. Lower it back to the floor without trying to catch it — the pull is the whole movement.

Common mistakes

• Bending the elbows at the top. The pull finishes with straight arms and a shrug; a bent elbow turns it into a partial clean and hides whether the hips actually finished.
• Letting the hips rise before the bar. The torso angle is held through the first half, and hips shooting up is the most common fault this exercise exists to expose.
• Loading it far beyond what you can clean. More weight is the point, and past a certain load the extension stops happening at all — which trains a slow deadlift with a clean grip.
• Letting the bar drift forward. Close to the legs the whole way; a bar out in front cannot be accelerated upward by the hips.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Quads

Secondary

• Forearm Flexors
• Forearm Extensors
• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Spinal Erectors
• Traps