Muscle versus Power

We’ve been spending this week looking at the difference between a “muscle” motion and a “power” motion. The clean, snatch, and other related lifts can be dissected this way.
Today we worked the dumbbell snatch. So if you do the “muscle” version, it means you simply throw the dumbbell using your legs as the primary driver and the arm whips the weight up. If you do the “power” version, it means you did everything you did in the “muscle” version, but you don’t have to throw it quite as high because you also land underneath it (not in a squat, but anything shy of that.)
So why choose either of these two versions? Well, the “muscle” version is faster, so if you’re doing a CrossFit workout with 9 reps of a dumbbell snatch and you can do the motion without having to get under the weight, it makes sense to use the “muscle” version. If, however, the weight is too heavy and you find yourself starting to press the weight instead of throwing it, it makes more sense to do the “power” version.
Developmentally, it’s important to learn both motions, because they are both useful and they build on one another. Ideally, you’d learn the “muscle” version first, and then the “power” motion, but different folks have varying ease picking up one movement over the other.
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