Elbow Speed

Yesterday I mentioned that keeping your elbows up during a thruster will make your life easier by preserving your posture and allowing you to use your legs more than your back. So we already have one reason to have an awesome rack position (that’s when your elbows are pointing straight ahead and your triceps are parallel with the floor).

Today we will get a second reason to have an astounding rack position, this time in the context of the power clean. If you slam the elbows up fast when you power clean, you will save your shoulders. Quick elbows means you don’t have to push the bar into rack position with arm strength; It means that you rode the powerful tide of your opening hips, slammed your elbows up and you are DONE with the movement.

Saving the arms was particularly important in today’s workout because it was a couplet of cleans and push ups. If you got lazy with your elbow speed and had to push the bar up into the rack then the push-ups became harder than they needed to be.

Elbows up… and fast.

Want to see the workout and the whiteboard? Go here.