Hang Clean Below the Knees

How to do it

1. Stand holding a barbell at arm's length with an overhand grip just outside your hips.
2. Push your hips back and bend the knees until the bar is below your kneecaps, back flat and chest up.
3. Hold that position briefly — the pause is what distinguishes it from a clean from the floor.
4. Drive the hips forward and extend the legs, letting the bar accelerate up your thighs.
5. Pull yourself under it and catch it on the front of your shoulders with the elbows high.
6. Stand up, then lower it back below the knees under control.

Common mistakes

• Letting the bar drift away from the legs on the way down. Below the knee, a bar that swings forward has to be pulled back in before it can be pulled up, and that is where the back takes the load.
• Rounding the back to get the bar low. The starting height is set by where the flat back ends, not by where the knee is.
• Treating it as the same lift as a hang clean from mid-thigh. Starting lower means a longer pull with less speed already in the bar — it is deliberately harder, which is what it is for.
• Bouncing out of the bottom. The point of starting low is to build the first part of the pull from a dead position, and a rebound removes exactly that.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Quads

Secondary

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