The Jerk: Landing Positions

We’ve covered the three landing positions for both the snatch and the clean in past articles, and not surprisingly, there are also three landing positions for the jerk. Again, each has its own advantages, so let’s briefly cover them:

Jonny performs a power jerk..

Power Jerk
Landing Position: Partial squat
Advantage: The power jerk is the simplest to learn as your feet do not travel far from their original position. Your feet don’t move very much as they barely leave the ground and then immediately land in a squat-width stance. You receive the bar overhead with your hips and legs in a partial-depth squat position. Due to its simplicity, the power jerk often serves as an intermediate step on the way to learning either the squat jerk or the split jerk.

Note: If your feet never leave the ground during this movement, many coaches will call this a push jerk to distinguish it from a power jerk (but some coaches use the terms interchangeably).

Jonny performs a squat jerk.

Squat Jerk
Landing Position: Squat (i.e., full-depth squat)
Advantage: Of the three landing positions, the squat jerk allows lifters to drop the farthest under the bar, which means the bar doesn’t have to be lifted as high before locking it out overhead. With this in mind, there is great potential with the squat jerk, but this potential is tempered by two drawbacks - first, the lifter needs excellent flexibility to achieve what is essentially a narrow-grip overhead squat position in the receiving position for this jerk, and second, the lifter has relatively little stability from front-to-back due to the lack of a split (see the split jerk below), so the squat jerk is extremely unforgiving of jerks that are slightly forward or backward.

Jonny performs a split jerk.

Split Jerk
Landing Position: Split stance
Advantage: The split jerk allows the lifter to drop further under the bar than the power jerk without requiring the ability to drop into the squat jerk position, and due to the front-to-back split, the split jerk is more stable. For this reason, the split jerk is - by far - the most commonly executed jerk in training and competition.