Having some trouble with my cleans. I know it would be hard to help me without seeing me perform the cleans, but if you know of any good sites i could go to or books I could get to help. Or you if you know of some good drills to help with my technique. BAsically I can get the weight up to chest level but I am not getting under it any suggestion will be helpfull. What are people’s opinions on hang cleans vs. power cleans?
Most of the time when teaching cleans, I get beginners to start with the hang version. If you put a bit of weight on the bar, then they have trouble just “reverse curling” it up and have to actually explode.
As far as getting under it, I assume you mean racking the bar on your chest? Or do you mean dropping under the weight in a full squat as in an olympic clean?
If the former, I have two suggestions. The first is to get used to the position of holding the bar on your delts/uppr chest. The best way to do this is to put a bit of weight on the bar while it is in a power rack, then step up to the rack and get the bar in the right position and un-rack it. This will help you get the feel for the proper finish position. You should feel like the bar is being held up by your chesk and shoulder, not your hands. You should be able to release your grip, but keep your fingers on the bar! Keep your elbows up high. If you try to hold the bar up with your hands, you will quickly kill your wrists once the weights start to get heavier.
The second tip is once you have finished the second pull, think about snapping your elbows under the bar and raising them as high as you can.
Hope this answers your question.
xlr8
hang cleans vs power cleans:
these are not necessarily a different thing. Do you mean by power that the lift starts from the floor? I would say the hang is a better place to start the lift 90% of the time as an athlete as it requires more explosion.
With young highschool athletes we do the following progression:
Jumps with a bar- The athlete takes the bar from a hang and bends until the bar is at the top of the knees (keeping their arms straight) they explode out of the hips and jump straight up.
Jumps with a shrug- Same as last movement except they jump with the bar and at the highest point they violently shrug the bar.
We then add front squats into our routine to teach the position of racking the bar and then we add hang cleans and power pulls.
Hopes this helps.
Thats two great links thrower -
lol what I’ve been taught as the power clean by the gym instructor is actually a high - pull
and the jerk taught me the jerk as a snatch too.
Anyway now I know - at least I’ve been doing them explosively
I never found any good websites. I have a 500 pg. book and 3 hour video on olympic weightlifting, ask Vincente get it from his brother for you. As for your problem, you’re likely negecting the shrug/ rack phase of the clean. You can not float under the bar you have to explode down after full extension. Try this, put 95 lbs on the bar stand there and just using your traps and arms explode up and then down under the bar. In essence it is a clean without using your legs or back. Try it with just 95lbs. This is a very effective execise, be careful, don’t hurt nobody. Vincentes Bro.
Try doing power cleans from the mid thigh. Lower the bar to mid thigh - just a dip of 2-3 inches. Chest high and open, shoulders in front of the bar, knees slightly bent, leaning forward and then snap the bar up using your hips and shrug.
The bar should float up to your shoulders without any arm pull and then you just dip slightly to rack it, while snapping the elbows forward.
That’s how I improved my powerclean form a lot. You really have to snap hard and fast to get the bar up, you can’t get lazy like in powercleans from the floor.
I also find doing powercleans from a lower hang position, like from just above the knee, makes me tend to muscle the weight up. Although I still tend not to shrug as much as I should, mostly hip power for me 
Still no substitue for a real oly lifting coach.
cljackson04, according to vincente I clean some what like you do, but no where near the same amount of weight. Vincente did show me video that has here and it helped. He now is working with me to get better at it…
i do my cleans liek cool does, from mid thigh. i focus on 2 things, bar speed and explosive movement. i cleaned up my tech after checking out that allstar link from when cool posted it the first time a few months back and it really helped a load. a good idea, i also got from cool, is video taping your tech and watching it later, or if you camera is like mine, watching it right there between sets.