Football and Strength Training Part II: The Power Clean

The power clean has been considered the ultimate lift for the football athlete. It is a full body exercise that requires speed, explosion, and strength. It has been said that the best athletes can power clean a lot. I agree with some of this. However, the power clean is not as important as many believe. In my opinion it is not even necessary for building great football players. I believe this because of some fundamental problems I have with the power clean as a training tool.

Elements of the Power Clean

Let’s begin by analyzing what it takes to be “good” at the power clean.

1. Great Form
2. Explosion
3. Quickness
4. Strength in the hips and legs

First and foremost is great form. With a lot of practice, an athlete can develop the proper muscle memory to pull the bar up, explode underneath it and catch it in a good front squat position. The people that excel at the clean do a great job of getting underneath the bar and catching it in a solid position. Second, is explosion. An athlete must be explosive in order to get a good amount of weight moving off the floor. Third, is quickness. Once an athlete explodes the bar off the floor, he needs to be quick at getting underneath the bar. Finally, the athlete needs to have good strength in the hips and legs to push the bar to a finished position.

From what I have seen, athletes, regardless of size can excel at the power clean if they possess these 4 attributes. In short, a good solid athlete that develops proper technique will be able to excel at it. Many argue that there is a good correlation between teams with players that have good power cleans and a team's winning percentage. However, I believe that the correlation is founded on the fact that the team has good athletes. Athletes with good form can power clean, period! The power clean can serve as a good assessment of athleticism, especially at the higher levels. However, the proposition that the power clean can be at the core of football training in the weight room, is not valid.

Problems with the Clean

First, consider what it takes to implement the clean properly into football weight programs. Much time must be dedicated to developing proper form. This can take a great deal of time, especially for lesser athletes. Flexibility, explosion, quickness, and flexibility must all be fine-tuned to allow this to happen. Getting these things to sync up is a challenge. The major requirement here is the close monitoring and training by a coach whom is knowledgeable about the lift. Finding a steady group of coaches whom are well schooled at the clean is a difficult thing to do. For the most part, strength and conditioning coordinators that want to implement the clean into their program properly must spend a good deal of time training the coaching staff to monitor and correct the athletes properly. Probably the biggest flaw with the power clean is the resources and time a team must commit to it. Time is always against us, and the more time we have to dedicate to something means less time to work other things.

Second, the claim that through the power clean an athlete can become significantly better is suspect. Again, consider the 4 qualities I discussed at the beginning. I have already discussed the problems with developing form. Next, consider the development of explosion, which is developed by moving a reasonable weight faster. This can be done with your own body weight, resistance bands, or free weights. Beginning athletes don’t have the coordination down to properly move the bar off the floor with a reasonable weight. So the weights they begin working with don’t really push their bodies to exert the force needed on the field. I am not saying the power clean does not help an athlete become more explosive, but the amount of explosion developed is not optimal given the time it requires. Third, consider the development of quickness. Even if an athlete has the coordination to clean properly, can cleaning weights through repetition make an athlete quicker? I don’t think it can to the extent many believe. Finally, how much does the clean to do to develop strength in the hips and legs? A good power clean for a person weighing 140 pounds is 250lbs. A good squat for the same person is 400lbs. If a person is working out on a 5x5 plan with 75% of the 1-Rep max, then the bar should be loaded with approximately 190lbs for the clean and 300lbs for the squat. Which weight load would be more developmental for the hips and legs? Obviously the squat weight. The full workout for the clean would tax the body with 4,750lbs of weight, while the squat workout would tax the body with 7,500lbs of weight. When the body is stressed by heavier weight it is forced to get stronger. That is why as an athlete's workout loads must increase in order for their max to increase. The clean does not put enough pressure on the body to develop strength in the hips and legs to the highest levels.

As football coaches, what do we want our athletes to get out of the weight room? In general, we want their bodies to get stronger, more explosive, and less susceptible to injury. A strength coach can put together a workout plan that accomplishes these goals much more effectively than a program built around the power clean. For developing strength in the hips and legs, the box squat is very effective and takes a fraction of the time to teach compared to then clean. An added bonus from the box squats is the heavy stress it puts on the glutes and hamstrings. Most high school athletes are underdeveloped in this area. Another bonus from box squats is the development of explosion. As athletes begin to get stronger in the box squat, they begin to move weight faster. Also, explosion can be developed through plyo-metrics and weight exercises like box jumps with dumbbells. Quickness that translates to football performance can be better developed through various agility drills that most coaches employ during off-season.

Another goal that coaches have in mind from weight training is the ability to hit and drive (or tackle) opposing players more effectively. If you consider what it takes to hit and drive another person back you will see that it involves the uncoiling of the hips from the “football position.” This uncoiling is directed at the opposing player. To put it clearly, the power from the hips is exerted forward. In the power clean the little hip push that is used, is pushed near vertical. This is not the ideal angle for hit and drive. Again, box squats and machines like Hammer Strength’s Ground Based Jammer can work this motion much more effectively.

Conclusion

Even if you plan to use power cleans as a secondary lift, do you plan to teach the proper technique? Do you have the time to? Are the benefits worth the costs? Can the goals of a weight training program be accomplished without the power clean? To last question I believe yes.

I know the clean is a good test of athleticism and requires great skill to preform at the highest levels. I just don't think it is necessary for developing strength and power in football players.

I know many coaches might disagree with this, I have debated with many about this. I have just watched players work their tails off at the power clean and achieve minimal gains. Their development as athletes can be better done with other means. The time it takes to develop the power clean is not worth their minimal reward. Even the deadlift (another lift that takes a minimal time to learn) can produce good gains in the explosion and strength areas. If I decide to write about strength training some more, I will discuss the deadlift in more depth and the benefits it can have for the football player.

Football and Weight Training Part I- The Squat

All of us coaches are concerned with how to make our athletes stronger and faster. In general, we are always trying to figure out how to produce a better athlete. There are multiple philosophies on how to develop strength through the weight room. Weight Lifting as a stand alone practice comes in two major forms: Power-Lifting and Olympic Style Lifting. Which one is better for football? Some coaches veer one way or the other and some people try to incorporate both. Many people believe the squat is the #1 lift for football training. I agree with this. The key to getting the most out of your squats is how your use it for training, and the technique you emphasize.

The biggest pet peeve I have for coaches in the weight room, is jumping in to squats right away without any attention to proper technique. I have seen coaches from other sports come into the weight room and bark and yell at their athletes because they aren't going low enough. For the most part if you have an athlete whom can't get down below parallel, then you have an athlete with poor technique and/or with weak hamstrings. The average athlete is quad dominant. Meaning they quads are considerably stronger than their hamstrings. When these athlete begins squatting, they usually push their knees forward past their toes when they begin descending. This is wrong, because the next thing that happens is they stick their butt out and bend over at the waist in an attempt to get lower. When they finally begin ascending their knees come in closer to one another and they finish the lift looking awkward. The athletes that try to lift like this will have a hard time getting parallel. In a final attempt to get parallel, the lifter will probably have their heels come off the floor to maintain balance (prevent themselves from falling.)

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Why do lifters instinctively try to squat in this manner. They do this because they are trying to keep to the pressure of the lift on their quads. The most important muscles to develop in the squat is the hamstrings, flexors, and glutes. These muscles are the power muscles that influence speed and explosion.

In reality regular squats are not even necessary for the development of power and speed from the hamstrings and glutes. Many World record holding power lifters with insane squats don't even practice for competition with regular squats.




They use box squats. Box squats are excellent for developing strength in the hamstrings and glutes, and even for the overall development of speed and power. I have used a simplified version for beginning athletes (girls and boys). Typically 10 to 8 sets of 2 reps are sufficient tfor the core lift of a lower-body workout. I will usually have them do this for a month on lower body days before I even introduce regular squats. After a month the hamstrings should be strong enough to squat with proper form. The video from renown power lifting guru Louie Simmons demonstrates the technique of box squats.



The key is to sit back far enough that the knees are almost behind (if not behind) your feet. This makes the lift almost like a "leg curl". This is the exact opposite motion that the typical beginning lifter instinctively tries to do. It helps to get the lifter put their feet very wide too. This really hammers the hamstrings, glutes, hip-flexers, and groin.

From an article by Louie Simmons he says:

"The second reason is equally important. It is generally accepted that you should keep your shins perpendicular to the floor when squatting. With box squatting, you can go past this point (that is, an imaginary line drawn from your ankle to your knee will point toward your body), which places all the stress on the major squatting muscles- hips, glutes, lower back, and hamstrings. This is a tremendous advantage.
Thirdly, you don't have to ask anyone if you were parallel. Once you establish a below parallel height, all of your squats will be just that -below parallel. I have seen it over and over. As the weights get heavier, the squats get higher. This can't happen with box squats."

The big argument against this for football players is that football is not played with your feet wide. This seems logical, however, The football position is built on the field not the weight room. The weight room is for building the muscles that allow players to be explosive. Box squats, if done properly, allow your players to be more explosive. 40 times go down, verticals go up, and overall power shows a dramatic improvement.

Here is an example of how Box squats can even serve as an indicator strength and power. I worked with two athletes, one was a linemen the other was a running back. The linemen was very strong, but slow. He had squatted 715 lbs in a power lifting meet. Despite his strength he would struggle to properly box squat 225 2 times from a 12 inch box. On the other hand, the running back which was very explosive and squatted 480 lbs in power lifting meet had no trouble taking 225 off the same 12 inch box. I even put a foam box that stood a mere 6 inches from the ground to test the running back. The back took 225 from from the 6 inch box 3 times no problem. The linemen could not even sit on the box, he would fall over (WITH NO WEIGHT!). Flexibility played a role here. The point of the example was that the back had more explosive power than then linemen did, despite the apparent difference in strength (715 vs 480).

If you are looking for ways to develop explosive power in your players, try looking at some of the articles by Louie Simmons from west-side barbell. I read some of these a few years ago and implemented them into my weight lifting routines. I have seen nothing but good results from them. If anything, as a coach you can use them to teach the proper technique of the squat. I don't want to go to deep into proper technique, if you look at the articles by Simmons, you will get a great idea about what proper technique is.

In the next article I will discuss the role of the power clean. Here is a prelude: (I will probably be stoned to death by most coaches for what I will say.) I believe they do not need be a big part of the lifting routine of high school athletes.