Issue 071

January 2011

Paul McVeigh is a sports scientist and a professional fighter ranked as the number one bantamweight in Europe. He trains fighters out of The Griphouse gym in Glasgow, Scotland.

Olympic lifters are scary. I do not care how many titles you hold in combat sports: fighting someone who can throw 200kg over their head is terrifying. That’s rip-your-arm-off-and-beat-you-in-the-head-with-it strong. So what can we steal from these monstrous athletes’ training methods that will carry over into combat sports?

Olympic weightlifters are concerned with one thing: lifting a crap ton of weight in the ‘snatch’, plus the ‘clean and jerk’. These are two lifts that involve explosive ‘triple extension’ of the hips, knees and ankles. Imagine performing a vertical jump. You dip into a flexed position with your hips; knees and ankles bent. When you rise out of this position and into the air, that’s a triple extension. When you do it with a barbell, you are Olympic lifting.

Olympic weightlifters develop explosive strength, total body coordination and improved neuromuscular efficiency. For the MMA athlete this corresponds to harder strikes, faster application of techniques and the ability to throw your foes at (and I mean ‘at’, not ‘to’) the ground with a lot more venom. 

Olympic lifting considerations

Before you go loading up a barbell and attempt to throw twice your body weight over your head, we have some issues to discuss. Weightlifting is an uber-complex sport that takes countless hours to master. Those of us training in MMA probably don’t have the time, energy level or injury-free bodies necessary to develop the skill to perform the Olympic versions of the ‘snatch’ or ‘clean’ to a high level – or even at all.

Fortunately a lot of the benefit derived from the snatch and clean can be found in slightly modified versions of an Olympic lift. These variations will help MMA fighters to gain the benefits of Olympic lifting if they take into consideration the important factors below.

Consideration 1: Pull from the ‘hang’ position

We very rarely perform Olympic lifts from the floor. MMA athletes tend to have very flexible lower backs and mangled hips that can cause technique problems when deadlifting. Watching a good guard player attempt to deadlift is like watching a Saw movie for me. The Olympic lifts add a velocity component to the problem making it a little risky for some athletes. So pull from the ‘hang’ position, i.e. with the barbell off the ground.

Consideration 2: Narrow grip snatches

The wide grip snatch used by Olympic lifters allows more weight to be shifted along a shorter ‘bar path’. Unfortunately it requires a degree of shoulder flexibility that’s often lacking in MMA athletes. The narrow grip hang snatch gives us the explosive triple extension we are looking for without tearing your shoulders to pieces. 

Consideration 3: Wrists and hands

As someone who’s endured a few broken hands over the years I’d like to suggest that the clean grip is not for everyone. If it’s a mere flexibility issue, suck it up: do some stretching and get under the bar. If you have an ongoing issue you may be better off sticking with the snatch variations, jump shrug and high pulls.

Consideration 4: Bar speed

Anytime someone’s given a barbell it’s tempting to load it up. With the Olympic lift variations the technique and speed of the bar is the most important factor to develop initially. Keep it light but challenging and emphasize exploding out of the hang position.

Pro Tip

I feel that all the meat of these lifts is in the explosive triple extension. The most common triple extension exercises we use include ‘hang clean’, ‘narrow grip’, ‘hang snatch’, ‘dumbbell snatch’, ‘high pull’ and ‘jump shrug’.

Coaching the Olympic Lifts

Trying to teach a novice the hang clean would be similar to teaching a jiu-jitsu newbie an inverted De La Riva guard. Both would end in frustration, embarrassment and a strop. Obviously there’s no substitute for hands-on individual coaching (at Griphouse we have a teaching progression for these lifts that’s simple and proven to be effective) and if you have the opportunity to find this type of coaching you should definitely check it out. You’ll have learned a skill that will stay with you forever.

Next time: Photos and coaching cues for the individual lifts