Stikki:
I heard Radcliffe (U of O) speak last February and he briefly addressed this. He said their football team will normally lift Friday night for a Saturday afternoon game, since the Rose bowl was early evening they lifted that morning. He gave an example of doing snatches and said the goal was very much to stimulate the nervous system. From the sounds of it he has experimented over the years finding the right level of stimulus. That said, what Radcliffe presented and what this actually looks like in person remains to be seen. I do remember thinking after he said all this you better be Johnny on the spot or you’ll blow everything as NumberTwo said.
Another thing, it’s interesting Radcliffe’s name has now come into this discussion that started as general strength. His programming is largely based on general strength (body weight, med ball, hurdle mobility, etc). This was the main focus of his talk, that athletes coming into college are lacking a lot of basic athleticism that kids 15-20 years ago all had. One example he used is kids don’t grow up climbing trees anymore and even the playground equipment of today is too safe to let kids be kids. Basically every sport he programs for starts with really basic stuff, as they progress he’ll then add in Olympic and general lifts always choosing execution (e.g. full depth squats, overhead squats) over amount of weight used. He said it’s a big hit to kids egos who were big lifters in high school. The general strength exercises are always present and pull double duty as warmup.
Interesting guy, he’s also collected a ton of data over the past 25 years at Oregon. I wouldn’t trust him to speak about sprint mechanics though.
While snatches will certainly stimulate the nervous system given the proper dose, his application is misdirected due to reasons I and Number Two already elucidated.