The rack and dip positions are absolutely essential in increasing the likelihood that your jerk will be successful, but there are lots of factors to think about. Here are a few.

Rack position

Elbow height: It is best to keep the elbows as high as possible so that the forearms are parallel with the floor.

Elbow direction: Generally, it is advisable to have the elbows pointing forwards, but some lifters find.

Grip width: You can experiment with how wide your grip is, but recognize the correlation between elbow height and grip width. Some people find that when their hands are wide, their elbows drop. A simple fix for them is to move their hands in a bit narrower and often this means their elbows will go up. A person who doesn’t have enough flexibility will notice that too wide a grip will prevent them from being able to get their elbows up.

Torso and glutes: It’s very important to maintain a vertical position. Your lats and core should be engaged. But even if the lats and core are engaged, you may still notice some lordosis in your back when you stand in what you consider a straight position. If you squeeze your glutes very slightly, it will cause your pelvis to tilt to neutral and you will have a much more vertical position. Don’t squeeze your glutes too much, though, because doing so will prevent you from being able to bend your knees for the dip!

Where the weight should be felt: The weight should be loaded through the center of your body, so this means not on your toes and not entirely on your heels. There is a bit of confusion about the cue ‘weight on your heels.’ It does not mean that the weight should be on your heels. Rather it is used because the majority of people feel the weight too much on their toes, so psychologically thinking of ‘heels’ for them means they shift to a more midpoint position. The key is more that the weight should be over the middle of your body and your feet, not too far forward and not too far back. If the weight is directly centered, you’re in a very strong position.

Dip position

Elbow position: The elbows ought to be in the same position as they were in before the dip. Some lifters make the mistake of letting their elbows drop on the dip. This will usually cause the bar and the body to tilt forwards, which is exactly what you don’t want! Your elbows should remain high and facing forwards or slightly out to the sides, whichever works best for you.

Torso/glutes: A common mistake that lifters make, especially when we are just starting out learning Olympic lifting, is not dipping straight down. So many lifters (myself included!) have or had real difficulty learning how to dip straight. There is a tendency for people to dip forwards. If you’ve done what I mentioned above which is to engage your glutes slightly, this will help ensure a nice straight position when dipping. Without engaging your glutes, there will be lordosis in the back and you will dip backwards, your torso will tilt forwards and the bar will be forwards.

Drills to practice the jerk positions

Front squats: Use the same rack position for your front squat that you use for your jerk. Use front squats as a fantastic strength building tool but probably more significantly is their carryover to the Olympic lifts. A properly executed front squat will help you learn to maintain a vertical torso, a high elbow position and engaged and active lats.

Dipping against a wall: Sometimes, no matter how many times you think about “dipping straight,” you’ll still find yourself going forward! One of the problems is that a person lacks the body awareness of what dipping straight down actually feels like. The drill that fixed this problem for me was standing against a wall without a bar, demonstrating my rack position and then dipping down keeping my glutes touching the wall. Using a wall develops proprioception, which is how we perceive the movement and position of our body. If your glutes remain in contact with the wall, that is exactly what ‘straight’ feels like.
Power jerk or push press: These exercises are really good at building strength and power in the upper body and they carryover very nicely to the jerk. Most importantly of all, they really teach you which way is up! There is less margin for error for not having a vertical torso in these exercises.

Bottom Line

I’m a real advocate for keeping training simple and using the most minimal number of exercises and number of derivate exercises as possible. Olympic lifting is hugely complicated already! I have seen great improvements over my lifting journey from using really only the ‘main’ exercises and limiting the derivative exercises.

The two drills I recommend for learning how to have a good rack and dip position for the jerk – the front squat and the power jerk or push press – are very core, staple movements that are probably used by the majority of weightlifters anyway. The only other drill I have advised is to dip against a wall – a very simple trick that can be used as a warm up to develop body awareness of what ‘dipping straight down’ actually feels like.

The overall goal is to ensure you can get yourself in an optimal position for you that will allow a comfortable rack position, an upright torso, and active/engaged lats. With some experimentation with elbows, grip width, torso and glutes, and with regular front squatting and power jerking, you’ll get there in no time.