First time ever snatching, thoughts?

In my experience coaching, this is what you should be doing:

Full Snatching (Squat Snatch) as best you flexibility allows. If you have to do a Power Snatch, then ride it down into an OHS. If your OHS is not very deep, that is okay, it will come with practice. This and pulls from the ground should basically be all that is done for about 2-3 weeks. Pulls should be very slow off the ground, and after extension you return to Power Position.

Once that is done, you can throw in a muscle snatch or something once a week or so. If you're doing it as a warm-up, stick to only the PVC pipe.

The are two main reasons for this:

  1. A complete beginner you have very little clue (for any complete beginner, not jut you) what a full snatch should feel like, or what cues like "keeping it close" really mean. It is difficult to grasp these concepts when you're doing these other movements.

  2. Perhaps the biggest issue, since you are self-coached, the likelihood of you properly executing the muscle snatch, right now, is pretty low. The likelihood you can learn how to use the muscle snatch to carry over into your full snatch is quite low. It is very easy to have a muscle snatch turn into excessive arm pulling, hips rising fast, i.e. bad positions for a beginner.

It helps to have a base of just Snatching, and Clean & Jerking before you add other movements, so you know how these other movements will properly help. Especially the notion of getting under a bar; one of the muscle crucial, significant differences between weightlifting and all other weight lifting.

This is my opinion, and only applies for a complete beginner. If, in a perfect world, you practiced the muscle snatch, and it turned into a technically beautiful Muscle Snatch, I think your full Snatch would have very little carry-over at this time.

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