Meanwhile in Ukraine …
Oleksiy Torokhtiy made a Snatch assistance exercise video.
I think this needs some translation. If you can help, please do so in the comments.
Translation:
I am often asked how to improve the Snatch. Today, I will show you one of my favorite exercises for this: the Drop Snatch.
First, we have to do simulation and warm-up. It is very important to do this to make sure you are not using your prime movers, but the small stabilization muscles. Many athletes neglect this and go for big weight right away and this is a mistake, in my opinion.
Polishing the fixation part of the snatch is very important, because some times the bar will follow a path that make it so that you have to fight it to stop it and be able to hold it above your head. In these cases, you have to make sure that the shoulder girdle, elbows and everything
else works together.
For this reason, one of my favorite exercises is the Push Press from behind the neck, followed by a Drop Snatch or
just a Snatch Grip Push Press.
When you have the bar overhead, you hold it in place by bringing together your shoulder blades and pushing the shoulders up. After that, you may
squat.
In the Squat, it is key to be in a comfortable position, where you are neither tilting forward or falling back. The Squat needs to be as deep as possible, this is where we catch the bar in the Snatch.
Knees out, hips back, chin up.
While doing this exercise you have to pick a good working weight and only peak once per month or once per two months, depending on the situation.
Position of the feet will be different for everyone. Some like to have the toes pointing outward a lot, some less. I like to have them just slightly out. When you squat down, the knees have to be pointing in the same direction as the toes.
A successful execution of this exercise should have the feeling of a spring compressing: squatting down slowly, we are compressing the spring, then we explode upwards transferring the force to the bar and stand with it!
Next, we use the oscillation of the bar to assist us. You have to catch the timing of the wave: when you Squat the bar starts oscillating and the plates are bouncing, when they are on their way up, you also stand and thus you lift it together with the inherent momentum.
To practice this, you can move the plates further out on the collar. By increasing the leverage of the plates, you are able to make the bar whip more without having to increase the actual mass.
Where should you get knowledge? A person who thirsts for knowledge, will find it no matter what. However, when training it is best done with the assistance of a coach.
Has he quit? Saw he posted on Instagram a 3 year PR Clean and Jerk, just 165 on the bar. Is the great Ukrainian out of weightlifting?
2012 he won an olymic gold medal. So I think he wasn’t training seriously since then.
I vaguely recall an interview with him saying he didn’t expect to win in 2012 and that realistically he thought 2016 was his chance. He felt he won gold too soon as getting gold at the Rio Olympics was his main motivation.
Couple of days ago there was this video from him
Translation from Sergiy:
This is his best C&J in three years and it felt much heavier than it looked. It also felt a lot heavier than it would before the Olympics. He is not sure what he is training for, but he likes it. Also, he mentions how Crossfit is good for weightlifting because more people know what snatch, clean, and jerk are. Some random guy in a barber shop asked him how to snatch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvLzaCW_E5I
he is from donzek region, where the ukrainian war took place the last months in which oleg’s father died. so maybe this was one of the reason he couldnt focus on lifting weights.
Translation:
I am often asked how
to improve the snatch. Today, I will show you one of my favourite
exercises for this: the drop snatch.
First, we have to do
simulation and warm-up. It is very important to do this to make sure
you are not using your prime movers, but the small stabilization
muscles. Many athletes neglect this and go for big weight right away
and this is a mistake, in my opinion.
Polishing the
fixation part of the snatch is very important, because some times the
bar will follow a path that make it so that you have to fight it to
stop it and be able to hold it above your head. In these cases, you
have to make sure that the shoulder girdle, elbows and everything
else works together. For this reason, one of my favourite exercises
is the push-press from behind the neck, followed by a drop snatch or
just a snatch-grip push-press.
When you have the
bar overhead, you hold it in place by bringing together your
shoulder-blades and pushing the shoulders up. After that, you may
squat. In the squat, it is key to be in a comfortable position, where
you are neither tilting forward or falling back. The squat needs to
be as deep as possible, this is where we catch the bar in the snatch.
Knees out, hips back, chin up.
While doing this
exercise you have to pick a good working weight and only peak once
per month or once per two months, depending on the situation.
Position of the feet
will be different for everyone. Some like to have the toes pointing
outward a lot, some less. I like to have them just slightly out. When
you squat down, the knees have to be pointing in the same direction
as the toes.
A successful
execution of this exercise should have the feeling of a spring
compressing: squatting down slowly, we are compressing the spring,
then we explode upwards transferring the force to the bar and stand
with it!
Next, we use the
oscillation of the bar to assist us. You have to catch the timing of
the wave: when you squat the bar starts oscillating and the plates
are bouncing, when they are on their way up, you also stand and thus
you lift it together with the inherent momentum. To practice this,
you can move the plates further out on the collar. By increasing the
leverage of the plates, you are able to make the bar whip more
without having to increase the actual mass.
Where should you get
knowledge? A person who thirsts for knowledge, will find it no matter
what. However, when training it is best done with the assistance of a
coach.
——————————————————————————
My notes: this translation is not word-for-word, but more of a summary of what he said in the video. I made a new paragraph for each “scene” in the video, so they are chronological.
Edit: I don’t know why the text is pressed together like that. It auto-formatted when I copied and pasted it from the Writer application. Sorry.
Thank you