Ryan Asks: What can I do to improve on keeping my chest up and ass down on the snatch pull as the weight gets heavier? I find myself bouncing the bar a little too hard off the hips and I now have a bump that hurts. I would appreciate any tips. Thank you.

Greg Says: There are two parts to this—first, knowing you need to maintain a more upright posture, and second, being physically capable of maintaining an upright posture. You obviously have the first part down, so we’ll focus on the second.

Except in cases of lifters with very short legs (the same who are strong squatters), the natural tendency of the body as it’s lifting a weight from the floor is to raise the hips faster than the chest. This is the knee joint opening to a larger angle at which its mechanical disadvantage is reduced to a point at which it can then actually move the load. The more closed the knee joint is, the harder it is for it to extend under load, so the body will shift itself into a position at which the angles of the involved joints allow the load to be moved the most easily. The solution to this, as we’ve decided we want to lift in an upright posture rather than just let our bodies do whatever they want, is to strengthen the legs until they’re able to move the load in the position we want. In short, if you can’t maintain an upright posture when pulling from the floor, it’s due to inadequate leg strength.

To fix the problem, you need to strengthen your squats (in an upright posture) and train all of your pulling exercises in the proper posture. This may mean temporarily reducing the loading in some exercises until you can build your strength back up properly.


Patrick Asks: First I must apologize for my English, I’m French-Canadian, that also means that I’m sorry. Seriously, I know that doing squats at the beginning of training is to get it to increase, but wouldn't it slow my snatch or movements that [require] speed? Thanks for your time and I did follow one of your training and it helped a lot. Also follow your team on YouTube, great stuff.

Greg Says: If there is a significant volume of squatting at relatively difficult weights, squatting at the beginning of a workout will reduce the speed of subsequent exercises to some extent. However, if we’re squatting first in a workout, it’s for good reason—usually because that lifter’s squat is far too low and we need to do everything possible to increase it. Nothing emphasizes a lift more than performing it first in a workout when you’re the freshest both physically and mentally.

Will it make snatches feel more difficult and possibly limit how much you can snatch afterward? Yes. Does it matter? No, because again, this is a period of time in which we care most about improvements in the squat. As the time to test the snatch approaches, the squats will be moved back into their place in the traditional order of the workout.

Training the snatch, clean and jerk after squatting will also improve those lifts over the long term. If you begin those exercises already fatigued to some extent, the body will be forced to draw upon more motor units that may otherwise have been left unused, training better motor unit recruitment for the lift. It also forces the lifter to be more aggressive and mentally tougher.

Marc Asks: I am a crossfitter who just completed Kara's 9 weeks of heaven to increase my Olympic lifts as I see crossfit moving more in that direction. I did not have the increases I thought I would have, albeit I did have increases. I cut down on running and wods but did do some benching and basic lifting, pull ups, hspu, muscle ups, met cons etc. I ate more carbs and dirty calories during these 9 weeks as well. My question is, what do I follow this 9-week program with? I want to keep focus on oly lifting but I also don't want my CF specific skills to diminish. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Greg Says: First, you had less than stellar results from the program because technically you didn’t actually do the program—that program doesn’t include any metCons, handstand push-up-ing, benching and basic lifting, or any of the other work you added on top of an already extremely high-volume program. To be honest, I’m somewhat surprised you made any improvements at all and it suggest to me that had you actually followed the program, you would likely have had some pretty big gains.

Second, for me to tell you what program to do next, I would need 1) more information about what your strengths and weaknesses are in the context of weightlifting and 2) what you’re actually going to do in addition to that program.

You need to really determine your priorities and make some decisions. Think longer term rather than day to day or week to week with regard to CrossFit—if you commit to a weightlifting program for 9-12 weeks, some of your top end CrossFit abilities will diminish somewhat. However, they’ll come back quickly and easily, and you’ll have a much better foundation of strength and weightlifting ability to support them. This doesn’t mean you have to abandon all CrossFit-related training for the duration of a cycle—but it does mean you have to be smart about what you do and make sure you’re not just shooting yourself in the foot by trying to do everything at once at 100%, thereby making little or no progress in anything at all.

So—determine what you need to work on with regard to weightlifting. Is it strength? Is it specific technique points in certain lifts? Is it mobility? Once you know that, you can choose a program from our site that best addresses those things. Then choose the elements of CrossFit that are either most important to you, or that are your weak points, and incorporate those into the program in a way that doesn’t disrupt it. Throwing in a 5-minute metCon a couple days each week after your weightlifting work should be fine. Start getting to 10+ minutes, and that’s much different. Make sure those workouts are comprised of elements you really need to work on, not just the stuff you like, and as much as possible, pay attention to how those workouts will affect the weightlifting training that follows. For example, if you have your big squat day on Wednesday, don’t do a metCon on Tuesday with 50,000 thrusters.

How much CrossFit you can manage on top of a weightlifting program will depend on a lot of things, including what that weightlifting program is like. I would suggest sticking to something simpler and lower volume than that Kara cycle like this one, this one, or this one. Ultimately you’ll have to experiment to see what you can do, but start on the conservative side and work up from there.