Guide to Implementing and Troubleshooting the Hang Clean

Olympic lifts are one of the most polarizing topics in the sports performance world. You either love them or hate them. There isn't any middle ground. They aren’t something that one day you say, “Oh, I haven’t hang cleaned in a couple months. I think I’ll work it in today.” No chance! If you’re pro-Olympic lifting, you build your program around them. If not, you stay far, far away.

If you are anti-Olympic lifting, it should be for the right reasons. Don’t bash something because you haven’t tried it, or even worse, can’t teach it. You can’t deny the vast athletic benefits of Olympic lifts—rate of force development and power, full body strength, and coordination—that are essential for dominating your sport.

Below is an easy step-by-step guide with cues and ‘quick fixes’ to introduce and teach the hang clean. Give it a try. If you’re still against it, at least it won’t be because you don’t know how to do them or teach them.

Prerequisites

Before an athlete even thinks about a hang clean, there are a few things that must be achieved. For beginners, start a very basic program—goblet squats, push-ups, pull-ups, lunges, and sled drags/pushes. Get strong first. The hang clean takes a lot of intermuscular and intramuscular coordination and an appreciable amount of strength in the right places. Secondly, athletes must know how to land. You must be able to land safely and efficiently because the catch phase of Olympic lifting is essentially a weighted landing.  Lastly, you must be able to Romanian deadlift (start of movement) and front squat (finish the movement). Get strong in the Romanian deadlift—posteriorly—and sufficient in the qualities associated with front squatting—ankle mobility, hip mobility, core stability, lat flexibility, t-spine mobility, and wrist flexibility. To sum it up, get strong, learn to land, and get good at the Romanian deadlift and front squatting!

Begin with position

As Joe Kenn says, “Every basketball coach starts with the triple threat position, and every football coach starts with stance and starts. So why would the weight room be any different?” You can’t expect an athlete to walk in on the first day and know how to hang clean. You have to spend time on teaching the stances and positions.

Learning the hinge

We want to show and let the athlete feel what the initial starting position feels like. The majority of athletes are very quad dominant, which will make it difficult for them to push their hips back and load their hamstrings/glutes. The hips back position will be very awkward to many athletes. They will want to “squat” by pushing their knees forward and coming up on their toes. In this position, instead of their butts pushing backward, they enter into a posterior pelvic tilt and their butts curl under them. To get them to hinge correctly, two approaches have worked well for my athletes:

1. Shortstop position: Cue the athlete to put his hands on his knees. Now, without moving any part of the body, take the hands away from the knees.
2. The bow: Tell the athlete to bow. No one is going to squat to bow. He’ll push his butt back and crease at the hips. Just make sure he's pushing the hips back, not just bending at the waist.

Now that they know what a hinge feels like, we want them to be able to consistently repeat the movement. Here are a couple cues that work well to perform the movement in its entirety:

1. The first key is to stand tall and set the spine. Tell the athlete to stand up like Superman. This cues the athlete to stand tall with a big chest and arched back, taking a huge breath in, raising the chest/ribcage up, and arching the lumbar spine. Help him hold his arch by tapping/poking where you want him to contract. This will give him some kinesthetic sense of what to do.
2. In the hinge, you want minimal knee flexion. “Soft knees” will cue him to feel this minimal knee bend. First, have him flex his quads and lock the knees out as hard as possible. Then, tell him to release the knees and make them soft. After they're soft (very slight bend), tell him that he won't bend the knees anymore.
3. “Butt goes back, not down.” Put the athlete in front of a wall. Begin one step away from the wall. Get into position and have him push back the hips until his butt touches the wall. If his butt goes down or his knees come forward at all, he's relying on the quads to move. This is wrong. His knees actually should move slightly backward to allow the bar to travel down the legs in the hinge/Romanian deadlift. Butt back!

Breaking it down to build it up

The athlete now has a solid grasp on the hinge position. After this, we will begin to implement the basic hang clean progressions, working our way to a full hang clean. The easiest way to teach the hang clean is to break the lift down. I break it into four sub-parts: Romanian deadlift, jump shrug, high pull, and catch phase. We teach each phase of the lift (in that order) and proceed to the next step when the athlete has mastered the previous phase. I have no timeline for this. Some athletes will obviously learn quicker than others. I’ve had well-coordinated, strong athletes who work through the high pull in one day. On the other hand, I’ve had athletes remain fine tuning the jump shrug for months. Don’t rush this. Let them master it. Olympic lifting must be a long-term process. If you only have a short amount of time with an athlete, don’t even bother rushing the Olympic lifts. Stick to medicine ball throws and jumps for power development. With Olympic lifts, think long term!

Side note: With the four sub-parts, we will add load as the athlete learns the lifts. While we add weight, our goal isn't to have the heaviest high pull. Our goal is to learn the sub-parts so that we can implement the full hang clean. While breaking the lift down, don’t be afraid to load the sub-parts, but don’t lose sight of the goal!

The Romanian deadlift

The athlete should have a good idea of the Romanian deadlift because you took the time to teach the hinge position. Grab a PVC or barbell and continue to practice.

Issues/corrections

The bar drifts away from the body.

• The bar should stay tight to the body. If it doesn’t, excessive strain is placed on the lumbar spine. They should feel the bar scrape down their quads.

The athlete doesn't finish the hip extension.

• Some athletes will not bring their hips all the way through. An easy way to fix this is “balls to bar.” Tell them to bring their balls to the bar at the top of the lift. In the case of a female athlete, cue her to “finish tall.” This will be mentioned in the 'high pull' section of this article. This will cue the athletes to extend/snap their hips.

The athlete hyperextends at the top.

• “Balls to the bar” and “finish tall” may cause the athlete to overextend and lean back. To fix this, at the top of the lift, the athlete should imagine that he is in a standing plank position. Have the athlete pull the kneecaps up (flexing the quads), squeeze the butt, and brace the abs. This will ensure that he is in a strong and optimal finishing position.

The jump shrug

After learning the Romanian deadlift, we must now teach the athlete to explode out of that position.

Cue: “Just jump.”

Cue: “Pop your shoulders into your ears.”

Issues/corrections

The bar drifts away from the body.

• Keep the bar tight to the body. If an athlete is allowed to let the bar drift during the full execution of the lift, it will look more like a reverse curl than a hang clean. You can obviously hang clean more than reverse curl, so you're leaving weight on the platform. In order to fix this, I place the athlete a couple inches away from the power rack. If the bar hits the rack, we know the bar got too far away from the body.

The athlete has bent elbows.

• During the jump shrug, the elbows should stay rigid—not locked out but rigid. If they're “soft,” it's an energy leak resulting in lost power. After the initial jump pull, if the athlete keeps bending his elbows, he's pulling too much with the arms. Something that easily fixes this is rotating the elbows outward. To get a picture of this, think of screwing your palms into the ground before performing a push-up, so from the front, you can see the crooks of the elbows. This cue will ensure that the athlete is using hip extension instead of pulling with the arms.

The athlete jumps forward.

• Many times, the athlete will jump forward when you say, “just jump.” This isn’t very efficient. You want everything going straight up. The fastest way from A to B is a straight line. It’s also the most efficient. Tell the athlete to jump and try to touch the top of his head to the ceiling directly above him.
• I’ve also drawn a 24-inch by 24-inch box that the athlete must land in. This will give him instant visual feedback.

The high pull

After learning the jump shrug, the high pull should be an easy transition. The high pull is an extension of the jump shrug. It just allows the elbows to travel upward.

Cue: “Relax your arms and let the elbows travel upward.” The bar should just “float” upward from the jump shrug because the elbows naturally “soften.”

Issues/corrections

The athlete uses the arms to pull.

• Again, the bar should travel as a result of the triple extension, not the arms. It isn't an upright row. The bar should feel weightless at the top of a high pull. If the athlete is pulling with his arms, it won’t feel weightless. Tell him to relax the arms like they're ropes. Grab a rope and shake the end of it. It will freely move. This will give a visual cue for the athlete to relax the arms and use the hips to drive the bar up.

The athlete tries to drop to the bar.

• In the high pull, the bar only travels as triple extension dictates. When the weight begins to get heavy, the bar won't travel as high, so the athlete will try to correct this by dropping/squatting to the bar. Eric Klein, head strength coach of the University of Minnesota, cues his athletes to “finish tall.” This cue will prompt the athlete to fully extend and not drop to the bar. If he finishes tall and the bar only gets to navel height, great. It’s the height that the hip extension produced.

The catch

Disclaimer/rant: The catch is the reason why most coaches don’t Olympic lift. In actuality, it’s fairly easy to learn if you use easy to understand instructions, as is the case with anything. Catching and decelerating under load is one of the best things an athlete can do. It will improve performance in sport and keep them resistant to injury, especially non-contact injuries. With adequacy in the prerequisites—ankle/hip/wrist/t-spine mobility, core stability, and lat flexibility—you'll be good to go. If you don’t have wrist flexibility, of course your wrists are going to hurt from the catch. There’s risk with everything, especially if you aren't prepared or used bad teaching methods. Don’t use that as an excuse not to do it.

After the three sub-parts to achieve explosive triple extension, we must learn how to decelerate and finish the lift.

Cue: “Punch your elbows.” This cue will clean up the catch position fast! It will help them get the bar to rack position as well as help them time up their catch with their landing.

Issues/corrections

The athlete doesn't have any elbow drive.

• First, make sure their lat/wrist flexibility is good. If that isn’t the issue, it is probably technique. So literally stand in front of them and tell them to punch you in the face with both elbows. This will cue them to drive their elbows around the bar and into the rack position.Side note: With my athletes, I have them hold the rack position and drive their elbows up as high possible on the final repetition. The bar will roll to their fingertips and help “groove” the rack position while helping with t-spine mobility and wrist flexibility.

The athlete lands on the toes.

• See the landing prerequisites! With my athletes, I teach the “butt back” landing. This butt back landing will ensure that they land on the balls of their feet and “roll” to their heels. It's pretty tough to land up on the toes with a butt back position. So tell them to push their butt back. That should help them land on their heels.

The athlete lands too wide.

• This problem is mostly due to a lack of confidence. The athlete will kick his feet really wide because—in his mind—if he drops under the bar, he may not be coming back up. So he attempts to catch the bar as high as possible, with the feet kicked out. In order to fix this, I will decrease the athlete’s weight until he feels confident catching. Don’t put the athlete in a compromising position by going too heavy. Decrease the weight and have the athlete land in a good, solid (squat width) position.

Putting it all together

Complexes are a great way to practice the four stages of the hang clean. In the beginning of teaching, we use complexes as the primary lifts. As the athlete gains experience, we use the complexes as a warm up before hang cleans. It's an easy way to practice and get quality volume to work at the hang clean. Not only will this help groove the pattern of the lift, but it will put on some muscle mass for your athletes! Use this complex as a warm up or as a main lift.

• Romanian deadlift X 5
• Jump shrug X 5
• High pull X 5
• High catch hang clean  X 5
• Front squat X 5

Doesn’t sound that hard, right? The process doesn’t have to be difficult. Coaches make it difficult. Remember—we aren't trying to get our athletes to an Olympic level clean. We just want the enormous benefits of Olympic lifts while keeping our athletes safe. It doesn’t have to be perfect—just safe and effective. Use easy to understand cues and work at it. Don’t try to impress them with big, technical words. Athletes don’t care! It’ll take time, so think long term! Don’t expect to rush through the progressions and have your athletes hang cleaning the next day. It’ll be ugly and kids will get hurt. Have the patience to practice and get good at each step. It’ll be worth the wait.

Hang clean progression and common errors video: