I’ve regularly seen beginner weightlifters and CrossFitters supplementing pulls and/or deadlifts into their program, which is brilliant! I often ask these particular athletes the reason for doing the pull they had chosen. A few replies are very common: “I want to get stronger” or “I want to get faster,” along with the occasional “I saw it on Facebook.” I won’t justify the last one, but the first two replies are great. It’s telling me these particular athletes want to get better at the Olympic lifts. The only problem is most of these athletes don’t understand the true purposes behind certain pulls and when to program them and unintentionally may be hindering their chances at improving their lifts or at least as quickly as they could. There are lots of different variants of pulls that all have different purposes and therefore should only be performed if you suffer a certain technical flaw, certain lack of strength, or are in a certain period in your training program before competition. With any luck this article will give beginners an understanding of what pull you will need as an athlete and when you need to program it.

Commonly used pulls and their purposes

Let’s give an overview of some of the extremely basic pulls you can find in most weightlifting or GPP programs and more importantly the main reasons they are used for beginner athletes.

Regular pull: Can be used for the snatch and clean. It’s arguably the most common pulling accessory for most athletes and is commonly used throughout the entire duration of the program dependant on percentages and reps used.

Variants: Can be done from blocks for athletes seeking more positional strength and awareness. Can also be done from a riser for athletes seeking more leg strength in the first pull or more strength in the start position, because of the longer travel distance the pull from riser can also help athletes who tend to finish too early.

Ideal for: Most athletes with a high level of proficiency of the technical lifts.

High pull: Can be used for the snatch and clean. This particular pull is frowned upon by some coaches and loved by others. The argument is that it can promote an early arm pull in some athletes or the mechanics are too different to that of the regular snatch and clean that it may promote bad habits in the 3rd pull and subsequently receiving the bar. I believe this exercise is completely underrated; it’s a great pull to help promote use of the arms in the 3rd pull for a faster turnover. It can help promote a straighter bar path and also because of the lighter percentages used for this exercise it can also help promote a lot more speed throughout the pull, in particular in the extension.

Variants: Can be done from blocks or hang for athletes seeking more positional strength and awareness. Can also be done from a riser for athletes seeking more leg strength in the first pull or more strength in the start position, because of the longer travel distance the pull from riser can also help athletes who tend to finish too early.

Ideal for: Athletes who typically need a more aggressive finish, athletes who can’t keep the bar close following the finish, athletes who are slow in the third pull and receiving the bar and athletes who generally have a slow pull.

Segmented pulls: Can be used for the snatch and clean. This pull is brilliant for new athletes that really need to focus on positional awareness and strength in those positions. I use this pull regularly with beginner athletes learning the lifts at a very light load, making them adjust at each pause ensuring they are in the perfect position for their particular lever lengths. This is a pull you want to avoid doing too often or in the weeks prior to competition, reason being it can promote a subconscious pause when going heavier at the positions they pause at in training.

Variants: Pauses and the positions in which the athlete pauses will vary by what the coach believes the athlete needs. Typically the athlete will pause in their weakest position for a period of two to five seconds. Multiple pauses can also be made, a common combination is pause at the knee then a pause at the power position.

Ideal for: Athletes who need more positional strength and/or awareness, athletes who need more consistency in their pull and beginner athletes learning/understanding the lifts and all the positions they need to achieve.

Lift-offs: Can be used for the snatch and clean. The lift-off is typically considered a deadlift, simply because it is basically a deadlift to the knee position. A great exercise to help promote a strong and effective first pull for athletes that lack the leg strength to initiate the first pull properly.

Variants: Some coaches encourage a pause at knee position for athletes that lack the strength to hold an ideal knee position. Can also be performed from a riser to help strengthen the start position.

Ideal for: Athletes who pull slow of the floor, athletes that don’t use their legs to push from the floor, athletes needing more positional strength in the knee position and athletes that are hamstring dominant in their first pull (hips rise early)

Shrugs: Can be used for snatch and clean. The shrug is arguably one of the most effective ways to strengthen the extension of the lifts and give athletes a better understanding of how to finish correctly.

Variants: Shrugs can be performed prior or post to performing a regular lift or pull from the ground to help overload the power position and finish. Other alternatives are from pins or blocks set at the correct power position height for the athlete, this method can give athletes more time to find their ideal position and higher loads can be used because there is no need to deadlift it from the floor.

Ideal for: Athletes who lack explosiveness in the finish, athletes who finish primarily with their posterior chain (banging the bar away with their hips), athletes who need more positional awareness and strength in the power position and athletes who finish too early in the pull.

Deadlifts: Can be used for snatch and clean. The deadlift is a solid strength builder and has countless variants. It’s used often in the vast majority of today’s weightlifting programs and has some serious benefits dependant on which variant you do. Great in every regards for building positional and leg strength but because of its heavy nature it can slow your first pull down considerably if done too often. Therefore, I only tend to program this exercise in the starting weeks of the program to help build a solid strength base prior to moving onto the faster exercises.

Variants: Can be performed from risers or blocks. With pauses or without. But an important aspect to consider is some coaches believe that a typical weightlifting style deadlift stops at the power position. They believe extending any further tends to create a habit of finishing primarily with the hips when transitioning back to the competition lifts. The other option is what some coaches call a deadlift pull. It’s a typical standard pull, although done with a much higher percentage: closer to percentages used in the deadlift. The heavier weight subsequently slows the pull down considerably but the athlete will still attempt to finish explosively with the legs.

Ideal for: Athletes who need more positional strength, athletes who need more leg strength in the pull, athletes that are hamstring dominant in their first pull (hips rise early) and can help for athletes that finish too early.

As a weightlifter, what pulls do I need and when?

Now you have an understanding of the basic purpose of the everyday pulls. Trust me when I say it can get far more in-depth than that. I’ll try my best to keep it simple, though, so the beginner weightlifter can get more of an idea of when to program these particular pulls. Technique assessment plays a big part in choosing which pull is the best for each individual athlete. This would help spot particular flaws that the athlete may have and make a much more educated exercise choice. Seeing as this option isn’t available for me, I’m going to take a more generalized approach and let you choose the exercises for your own technical flaws.
As a weightlifting athlete, it’s all about the competition and how we peak for it. Generally when programming you will pick a particular competition and count back from it in order to generate your program blocks and subsequently which exercises are in each particular block.

Typically weightlifting programs have 3 blocks: a conditioning/ strength foundation block, with higher rep strength exercises and higher rep competition lifts, a strength block focusing on using the adaptations gained in the first block, still working heavily on strength now with more of a focus on the technical lifts, and finally a peaking block where the athlete will begin to peak for competition with heavy doubles and singles of the strength and competition lifts.

Each of these blocks will determine which pulls you choose for your particular weaknesses and how heavy you program them. The nature of weightlifting programs are in a manner that we typically want to choose exercises that address technical flaws and build strength in more ideal positions towards the start of our program and then slowly taper these exercises in the traditional lifts/ strength exercises towards the end of the program closer to competition.

Pulls that seriously address technical flaws and strength deficits are usually in the manner of heavy/slow lifts or lifts with pauses throughout the pull. Due to the nature of these exercises, we must be careful programming them closer to competition as they can build subconscious habits of pulling slow and you guessed it… pausing. That being the case, programming exercises becomes a much simpler task. You simply want to choose the slower, heavier lifts with pauses or without (lifts offs, paused pulls, deadlifts etc.) towards the start of your program that address your technical and strength flaws and then slowly taper these lifts into more traditional exercises (regular pulls, pulls from blocks/hang, shrugs etc.) in the middle of your program and finally into the faster exercises closer related to the competition lifts prior to competition (regular pulls, high pulls etc.) This is, of course, only one method among many that can be used for programming. In my opinion, it’s a safe, logical and subsequently easy method to program, especially for the beginner lifters and coaches.

As a CrossFitter, what pulls do I need and when?

If you’re a CrossFit athlete that competes in weightlifting competitions I suggest you take the advice of the above section. If you’re a CrossFitter that simply wants to improve your lifts because they’re holding your WODs back then try implementing the approach below in your training.

All of you guys and girls spend most of your training moving fast, so it’s not often you will need to program the faster pulls (there are exceptions, as you’ll see). Now in the case of the competition lifts there are generally three types of CrossFit athletes, categorizing it this way will give you a better understanding of which pulls will improve your lifts the most, yes there are plenty more types of athletes and problems but this is all aimed at helping out the athletes in the early stages of perfecting their technique.

The “Grin ‘n ripper” – You love moving fast, you want that clean so damn bad you just pull the shit out of it to get it up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you keep trying until you get it. I love these athletes, always have a lot of determination and are fortunately very easy to help when improving their lifts. These athletes generally need more time building awareness in the positions throughout the pull and following the awareness strength and more importantly for a CrossFitter, consistency in the positions throughout the pull. So my recommendation to you is to focus on segmented pulls – bar only. Spend some time in the positions (start, knee and power) with a watchful eye making sure you’re in the right spots. Once you have the ability to consistently hit the perfect position every time, crank up the weight and start over. I’d program these at least once a week for the snatch and once a week for the clean on top of your regular programming, albeit beforehand when you are fresh, primed and ready to focus. A couple other pointers to help your efforts would be to avoid cleans and snatches in your WODs for a period of time until your positions are completely dialled in, something else that will help is to study and replicate. Watch the videos on Catalyst Athletics’ exercise library, study, practice and replicate them to the best of your ability.

The “Good when fresh” – You have pretty decent positions when you can take your time, but in the last minutes of your WOD or when trying to move fast, they tend to go out the window. You hit your lifts more than 80 percent of the time when heavy, but still have bad habits that may be preventing PRs: For this, there is generally an easy fix. You need more strength. Yep, I said it. You need more strength so you can keep beautiful, sexy, consistent positions throughout your whole entire WOD. For that you need the heavier pulls, with pausing or without focusing on the particular section you have the hardest time keeping consistent with. Pulls from blocks work well for these athletes, it gives them time to replicate a good position every time and subsequently build strength there. If you want to keep it simple then hit heavy lift-offs, heavy segmented pulls, and heavy shrugs. Once a week of each should be sufficient, program them into the strength sections and take your time. An important note to consider, though, when I say heavy I mean heavy without bad positions. Sure, you may still be able to complete the pull, but if you shoot the bar away from you because you can’t finish with your legs or stay over the bar long enough, then you are just simply being counterproductive. My biggest tip would be to leave your ego in the gym bag, take some weight off and focus more on perfect positions and consistency.

The “Always Power Cleaner” - These are the athletes that will always choose the power version of everything, whether its mobility restrictions, confidence restrictions, the power clean, snatch, and jerk are your go to programming choices: These athletes of course need to spend time developing their squat, mobility, and confidence getting under the bar. But always choosing the power version creates some bad habits in your pull, too, especially if you like to power heavy! Two bad habits in particular are very common: Banging the bar up with your hips creating a loopy inefficient bar path instead of punching hard with the quads is one bad habit, and the other is a slow pull, in particular second pull. These two faults I see regularly with this kind of athlete simply because a heavy power clean normally looks nothing like the smooth pull of a normal clean. The power clean and snatch should be used with far lighter loads working on speed in the second pull and speed in the third pull. The percentages this athlete uses when going for max attempts normally far surpasses the percentages were speed is involved and subsequently creates an incorrect and slow pull. These athletes need to spend time correcting their second pull and building some more efficient explosiveness in the second pull. I’d recommend regular shrugs in particular, and on occasion high pulls working on the correct power position and correct explosive extension followed by the arms doing their thing. In the meantime, work that squat, build some confidence in getting under that bar and make it your friend, not your enemy!

Bottom line

Long story short: program for your weaknesses; find the pull that helps iron out the bad points in your lifts whether that be speed or strength, and use it appropriately. For weightlifters, this means choosing the correct percentages and exercises in the correct time in your program prior to competition. For CrossFitters, this means choosing the right pull for your bad points and hitting that sucker once or twice a week before your WODs. Everyone reading this can benefit from some extra study, since study for any athlete can be extremely beneficial for improving technique. Check out Catalyst Athletics exercise library, study the purposes, programming options, and techniques of all the different pulls and work with your coach to find the one that suits you best in your current stage of your weightlifting career.