Lock It Before You Land It: Stop Pressing Out Your Jerks and Snatches

In both the jerk and the snatch, the elbows must finish straightening before the lifter finishes all downward movement. In the 2020 IWF rulebook, the following are defined as incorrect movements in both the jerk and snatch:

2.5.1.4 Finishing with a press-out, defined as: continuing the extension of the arms after the athlete has reached the lowest point of his / her position in the squat or split for both the Snatch and the Jerk.

2.5.1.5 Bending and extending the elbows during the recovery (This is not technically called a press-out, but it is often included in the press-out discussion.)

To put it simply, by the time you stop moving downward, your elbows need to be locked, and they need to stay locked until you’ve completed the recovery. If you struggle with either of these issues, i.e., receiving the bar with locked elbows or keeping them locked once you’ve received the bar, then read on, compadre.

While soft elbows can be the result of inadequate strength, poor shoulder flexibility, or incorrect positioning (this is common when the bar is received forward of the shoulder joint), they are often simply the result of bad timing or a poor sense of what locked out elbows feel like when in an overhead position.

With this in mind, try this cue when jerking or snatching: “Lock it before you land it.” In other words, you are going to try to lock the bar out overhead with completely straight elbows before your feet land back on the platform. Lock it before you land it.

Is this what actually happens? Absolutely not. In a correctly executed jerk or snatch, the elbows will lock out after the feet have landed (although the two events happen in such quick succession that it may look simultaneous at times). The “lock it before you land it” cue is an overcue - an attempt to fix a problem by exaggerating the correction - and it often works quite well.

So, the next time you’re about to jerk or snatch, tell yourself that you’re going to completely straighten your elbows (and keep them that way) while your feet are still up in the air.

Lock it before you land it. Give it a try.