The Snatch: anatomy of a lift
In which I try to explain the Snatch, an Olympic lift, in the hope that one day I will be able to properly perform it.
One of the things that seems to surprise people about weightlifting is its technicality. By that I mean: each lift can be broken down into a succession of small parts. The key – as far as I can tell, as a novice – is to master each of these parts and then put them together in one, ideally seamless, movement.
While it looks, to the outsider, like a lifter is merely swinging a preposterously heavy weight above their head, there are actually a set of fine-tuned technical skills being put into play, in order for a weight that large to move so quickly and so high.
The strength bit of weightlifting is quite possibly the easy part. Whilst some people are definitely more adept at building and maintaining strength than others, most people can increase their strength with a bit of work. Applying the techniques to employ that strength is altogether different.
While I knew this, on some level, when I started weightlifting, I didn’t know it. Despite my claims to intellectuality, I often don’t learn something deeply until I’ve experienced it.
When I had Dash, for example, I knew I would have to get up when he cried to be fed. But when I got him home from the hospital and he cried in the morning I was shocked.
NO ONE TOLD ME I WOULD HAVE TO GET UP ON SOMEONE ELSE’S SCHEDULE.
Of course no one had told me, but no one HAD to tell me. I knew it, but I didn’t understand what it meant: how it would feel in my body when it happened, and then, how it would affect my mind.
Despite this lesson, and many others in the 21 intervening years, I still marvel at my capacity to not realise or not know things, even when I can intellectually acknowledge them. Obtaining a PhD has been useless in this regard. Aside from now knowing what it actually feels like to do a PhD. (Pro tip: not great).
So back to lifting. The snatch is the more difficult – and as coach Ricky might say, sexy – of the two Olympic lifts. It involves lifting a barbell, laden with weight, above your head in one movement. When done properly it is breathtaking. It’s not the weight bit that takes your breath away, it’s the speed. The lift needs to be fast, otherwise it would not work. As Ricky says, only speed will save you.
But not too fast.
Let me - a novice with no right to call myself a weightlifter yet (that takes five years of training) - explain.
Firstly, you need to position yourself in relation to the bar. Feet underneath with the bar roughly along the line of your mid foot. The bar against your shins. Feet apart at a distance that is comfortable. (Although some lifters, including the wonderful Alex, use a “frog stance”.) Toes slightly out but not too much. Heels solid on the ground.
Grip the bar in the wide position, as opposed to the narrower clean and jerk position, using a “hook grip”. Bend your knees and squat as much as you can handle. You want to be over the bar, but not too much. Your bum should be down, your back straight, head up.
Can you see already? It’s all a matter of degrees. Small tweaks that can change the experience of your lift, and the result. It is also, particularly at my age, determining what your body can handle, and adjusting accordingly.
I hold the bar too tightly and pull too quickly. When I started lifting, I would hang on for dear life, ready to pull it as hard as I could. I soon developed tennis elbow, to the point when I could barely pick up a cup of tea. All the tension was in my arms because I wanted desperately to do it right. (And, whisper it, I still resist using a hook grip. I have little hands ok?) I confused technique with sheer grunt.
Relax your arms, Ricky would say, over and over. It’s ok, you don’t need to hang on so tight. I couldn’t help but see this tendency as a metaphor for my perfectionist traits. I.Am.Going.To.Get.This.Right. Every time I lift, I still must consciously relax my arms, to the point where I don’t grip tight until the last second. If I’m not hanging on, maybe my brain won’t realise I’m about to try to lift something.
Because that’s what this is about. I’m thinking about what I need to do. My brain is getting in the way before I even get the bar off the ground.
Ok, so now you’ve got yourself ready to lift. Now you push with your legs. Don’t pull with your arms. This is the slow bit of the lift (Remember I said you don’t want to be too fast?) Ricky told me yesterday to slow down when I start the lift. I was trying to do it all at speed because if I can get it done faster, that’s better isn’t it? This is same kind of mentality that sees me use the biggest element on the stove because if it’s hotter it will cook faster and this must be good, right? And during my aborted piano career as a child, I would play pieces as fast as I could, because she who gets to the end first, wins.
Drive your legs. In short: stand up. Keep the bar close to your body though, don’t swing it out in preparation for the big heave you think is needed to get the thing above your head. Oh no, don’t do that. Focus on what’s happening now, and now only.
As the bar comes up, so do your feet. You stand on your toes, or jump, and your ankles, knees and hips are all extended. The famous “triple extension”. All going well, the bar should be close to your body and your hips should move through and make contact with it forcibly. The bar should make a noise. But you don’t want to hit it so hard as to knock it noticeably off its line.
It’s always a matter of enough; not too little, not too much.
Now is when it’s ok to pull with your arms, keeping your elbows high. Pull them towards the roof. You don’t want to lean back, in preparation for something “heavy”. Stay close to the bar. If you lean back, your pull is dead, says Ricky. DYING.
Now, this is where I usually lose my s**t.
I get to this point and realise I’m lifting something and oh my god I have to get this thing above my head and I am 50 years old and I can’t bend or I’ll break and what are we going to have for dinner and did I really say that and I will never be able to snatch 50kg when I can’t even snatch this and maybe I should just give up and I can’t believe they’re going to vote Trump in again and why can everyone else do this and I can’t and is my shirt coming up and can you see my belly and I just can’t with this today.
Ahem.
Needless to say, my brain is suddenly a cacophony of thought and the bar stalls. When I come to, my elbows are stuck and I’m trying to lift the thing with little T-Rex forearms.
The thing is, I don’t have to lift the bar that high. I am supposed to jump under it before it gets that high.
No one, not even Lasha, can lift a heavy bar that high and catch it. You’re not supposed to. This is where technique is most critical.
There is this magic moment in the snatch: the moment of weightlessness. It’s when the lifter is no longer lifting the bar and it’s just hanging there in the air. The lifter moves themselves around the bar and under it so they can catch it. Of course, they’ve still got to stand up, but that is easier (obviously, as snatch technique would not have developed thus) than lifting it above your head.
I don’t know what this moment of weightlessness feels like, yet. I am still too busy trying to stop my brain from galloping away like a freaking brumby when the bar reaches my hips. I’m still having deep discussions with myself while there about what it means to ignore pain and how much I want to lift, because if I really want it, I’m going to have to accept that my knees will hurt as I try to get low enough to catch the bar, and they will hurt even more when I get home.
But the pain will stop.
If all goes to plan, and you get the bar high enough, but not too high, and you pull yourself under it, you then need to catch it overhead, in that same wide grip with which you started because remember, you haven’t let go this whole time.
It’s been less than a second since you started this lift, but years have passed.
You catch it, you keep your shoulders strong and your elbows straight. You push against the bar, keep pushing against it, until the white lights come on and the judges say you can put it down on the floor.
Earlier this week, I heard Danica say to Ricky: “Some weeks you are very strong, and some weeks you are very weak. The barbell always stays the same”.
It’s up to you to move yourself around it.
Loved the description of your internal monologue, and how long it seems but is not. I read a story years ago. Someone was dreaming a long sequence of events, and only realised upon waking, that it all happened between the time a cork left a bottle and until it hit the floor,
I’d be interested to know how much articulating these few seconds helps you bring it all together. Very much enjoyed this sport talk. 😉