A Couple of Questions About the Clean/Press

[Being_the_Don]

Hey Guys,

When you're doing clean/press, when do you take a breath and then exhale? I've found that I'm holding my breath all the way through the clean and don't take a breath until after I've pressed the weight overhead.

Also, how long are you holding the weight after you've pressed it overhead? I was doing clean/presses today, I won't say much about how well I did until I post up my journal this weekend, but I want to get the most out of the exercise. Haha!! The muscles running behind my right shoulder blade up through the right side of my neck are a little kinked. That doesn't usually happen. But then I got in a lot of upper body workout during recreation activities during the holiday yesterday.

 

[Kerpal]

I don't do clean & press but I do clean & jerk. I do the Valsalva maneuver at the beginning, exhale once I've racked the bar on the front of the shoulders, and then do another Valsalva maneuver before the jerk.

 

[Being_the_Don]

I don't do clean & press but I do clean & jerk. I do the Valsalva maneuver at the beginning, exhale once I've racked the bar on the front of the shoulders, and then do another Valsalva maneuver before the jerk.

Thanks, Kerpal, I looked Valsalva maneuver up on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valsalva_maneuver

So you're exhaling three times? Seems like it puts a lot of work on the cardiac muscle at least that's what I got from the wikipedia article. How long have you been using the Valsalva maneuver?

 

[Kerpal]

No, I inhale once before I start, then I clean the weight, exhale, inhale, jerk, and don't exhale again until after I've dropped it. I've been using it for about 2 years. It is the way your body is designed to work when pushing/pulling a heavy object.

 

[Fuglydude]

I don't do clean and press. I just do powercleans, and will throw in the occasional split jerk. I have bad rotator cuffs and have to use a fair bit of discretion when performing overhead movements.

Anyways, olympic lifts are all about explosive movement. They're basically controlled explosions. The amount of power you generate for olympic lifts will greatly exceed most other lifts, except for maybe heavy plyometric work.

For the powerclean I always exhale forcefully right when I explode up with the weight. This is also the case with the split jerk: forceful exhalation during the explosive part of the lift.