Richard Asks: Should you curl your wrists in before you start your pull from the platform?

Greg Says: Like most things in weightlifting coaches and athletes disagree on this one. Honestly, I’ve been surprised to hear it taught by a couple coaches I wouldn’t have expected to believe in it, but most of us have odd artifacts of the way we learned like that still ingrained past the point of consideration.
 
The short answer is no—I don’t think you should curl/flex the wrists intentionally in the pull. They should be flexed in the third pull, but this is a natural phenomenon if you’re performing that part of the lift correctly, i.e. actively and aggressively pulling yourself down against the bar and trying to maintain proximity. It’s not something you should need to be conscious of, and if it is, it’s because you’re failing to properly execute another far more fundamental, critical element of the movement.

The rationale coaches use when teaching this is that it keeps the bar closer, which of course is important. But this is such an odd and relatively ineffective method of maintaining proximity, and has potential drawbacks that make even less worthwhile.
 
In the first and second pulls, where this intentional flexing is the question, bar-body proximity is maintained through proper pulling posture and balance, i.e. not being too far over the bar, and using the back and shoulders to actively push the bar back toward the body to prevent it from ever moving away in the first place. This is relying on muscles and structure much better suited to control such big forces, and this motion has an enormous potential range—really 180 degrees although of course we’re only talking about a few of them, and a matter of a couple inches.
 
Flexing the wrists, on the other hand, can only move a bar a couple inches back at maximal end range, and is relying on relatively small muscles that struggle to move this much weight, especially to that end range where we would need them to. Because of this, we’re likely to lose an increasing degree of this ability as weights increase, whereas using the back, shoulders and posture is far more sustainable to maximal efforts.
 
The need to flex the wrists to keep the bar close is also a really clear indication that a lifter is failing to do what should be done in the pull, which is maintaining proper posture and using these big muscles to keep the bar close to the body.
 
Finally, a flexed wrist is similar to a bent elbow in the second pull in that it creates a weak point for potential force loss in the final acceleration. If we lose any of that flexion because the arms aren’t strong enough to resist the explosive force, that’s force that’s being lost to wrist extension and consequently not being transferred to the bar to lift it faster and higher.
 
Let the wrists remain naturally in the position your proper grip puts them in and focus on the far more important aspects of proper lift execution.