In the first two sections of our special weightlifting compilation we talked about the snatch or snatch and clean or loaded , explaining how to perform these movements with a good technique to prevent injuries and giving some advice for its execution.

Today we are going to talk about the third of the great weightlifting movements: the jerk or jerk , which could well be considered as the second part of another of the movements that we have seen as the clean . In fact, in most of the places where you find references about these movements you can find it named as clean and jerk .

What is jerk or clean?

Basically, the jerk or sent n is to move from a position where we have the bar resting on the front of our shoulders to the final position of a military press , but with some nuance: when performing the vertical push, we will adopt a stride position while performing this push and, from the low position, we will have to stand up keeping the bar above our heads .

If you want to know the differences between the push press and the push jerk , do not miss the article by our colleague Gabriela Gottau .

Musculature involved in the exercise

We have already mentioned it in the two previous articles, but the weightlifting movements are extremely complete exercises that allow us to work practically all our muscles actively, since in one way or another they intervene in the development of the movement. On the contrary, to protect the musculature , our technique must be perfect .

In this exercise (or part of the movement if we understand it as part of the clean and jerk), shoulders and quadriceps will be responsible for generating the necessary power to lift the bar and the core will be the main responsible for providing stability to our body in order to avoid injuries. But again, it will work practically all our muscles in one way or another.

Exercise technique and tips

In this exercise it is very important to have good joint mobility in the glenohumeral joint, since it will be one of the central points of the exercise. For this, the previous work through exercises that favor shoulder mobility such as halo or release work with Lacrosse balls can be alternatives to improve the range of mobility of our shoulders and then facilitate the main work of strength .

Another point on which we must pay our full attention is, as in all weightlifting movements, on our back : when performing the vertical push and descending our bodies to adopt the stride posture, we can fall into the error of leaning our back forward (with the risk of the bar escaping and falling on our head) or arching backwards, so that the bar could pull us backwards and cause injuries in the lower part of the body. back and shoulders

It should be noted that the stride position is not going to be complete , because if we were to descend as in a normal stride, we could find it difficult to stand without being moved by the bar.

Our knees is another point that can suffer some other blow, especially when descending to perform the stride because if we go down too fast we can hit with the knee of the back leg on the ground and this would cause a chain reaction that can take us , at least, to release the bar and not achieve the lifting.

If we had to summarize the most important points for a good technique in the jerk (or clean and jerk), they would be the following:

• Shoulders : very, very important a good work of warming and previous mobility to avoid injuries.
• Back : it is vital for our health to keep the back as neutral as possible and avoid bowing or bowing during movement .
• Feet : the position of our feet is going to be another critical point, since it is going to suppose that we have good support or not during the whole movement , and starting from a bad support in weightlifting movements means a high risk of injury.