Training Plan - Week 9

What You'll Need
Barbell, Plates (preferably bumper plates - you know, those plates that bounce on the wooden Olympic platforms when doing Olympic lifts), Olympic Platform (optional).

Why You Should Be Doing This Exercise
Explosiveness, endurance, grit, and strength. You'll need all four when throwing two of our favorite total body movements together. Yes, power cleans are fantastic on their own. Yes, split jerks are a great body strength exercise. What happens when you mix them? Sheer magic, that's what.

Start
Get your feet nice and wide (although don't go doing a split on us). While standing over the bar that you’re going to dominate, squat down. Now, with your arms and your back straight, place your fingers over it (the bar) with your hands about shoulder width apart. It’s time to become a better athlete.

Middle
If you haven't guessed here, there are two parts to this epic. The clean, and the jerk. Let's walk through one, which will lead us to the other.

The Clean: From the squat and flat back position, push your hips and knees forward, all while bringing the bar upwards. The bar should be close to your body, until it reaches your thighs. Once it does (and again, this should happen quickly and fluidly), jump up, shrug your shoulders and bring the barbell to shoulder level. The key here is to quickly and nimbly move your body underneath the bar, and in doing so, rotate your elbows so that the bar is now closer to your body than they are. All of this should result in you catching the bar on your shoulders. Now, like the circle of life, you should, having caught the bar on your shoulders, return to a squat position with it there. Now do a squat and stand upwards.

Jerk: So, you just did the clean part, and you’re thinking about quitting. "I’m good, I’m covered," you say to yourself. But you came here on a mission, and you’ll leave here with it completed. That bar that’s on your shoulders? Push that sucker up, and while doing so, bend your knees and then send one foot forward and other backwards, scissor kick style. Think of it as striking a lunge position, with the front shin perpendicular to the floor, and the back shin parallel to the floor. At this point, the bar should be over your head with your arms extended. Now bring your feet next to one another while keeping the bar overhead.

Finish
It would be really nice if you're using rubber plates, and are on an Olympic platform, because it would allow you to drop that bar like a hot potato. But you may not be, so if you're dealing with slightly less cool gear, just bend your knees and lower the bar to your lower thigh. Either way, congratulations. That was a heck of a ride you just went on.

Key Don'ts
There are a fair number of traps in this exercise. Do not jerk the weight from the floor; arise steadily then accelerate. The clean-and-jerk is a multi-movement lift. In the clean portion of the performance, the barbell is lifted from floor to shoulders. In the jerk half, the barbell is driven from shoulders to arms length overhead. The lift is complete when feet are in line and bar is under control. Got it?, as that was our Cliff Notes version.