Simplify It : A Story Of Teaching A Blonde Chick To/The Power Clean
(originally titled : “Simplify It : An Anecdote Of A Blonde Chick & Power Cleans”)
From the archives :
May 4, 2018, ~130-145pm
I was at the gym.
(Where else does one get gym anecdotes?)
On the way to grab the bumper plates for power cleans, psyched to be doing cleans again on a now healed twisted ankle, I told this blonde in passing that “if you’d have failed that squat I’d have made fun of you”, she’d had her right glute spasm on the bottom of a rep done outside the jungle gym, despite open racks available.
This got us to talking between our sets, her doing lunges and squats, me cleaning.
“It must be nice to be able to drop the weights” – her
“Yeah, yeah it is” – me
We were both on our rest periods again, and I’ll be honest I went heavier on cleans that day than intended as I was interacting with a nicely built if not particularly pretty, and sadly tattooed mid 20s blonde.
(Her being a slutty but her face & tats of likely Swedish descent, I had no real interest, but did find her attractive enough to be a performance enhancer.)
It was an interesting conversation.
At some point she said she’d like to learn the clean, but it seemed too complicated.
She’d had trainers in the recent past but was disappointed in them, feeling and rightly so that she wasn’t being trained well.
(She was in better shape than what they had her doing, athletic in build, not an out of shape chick that had never played sports. Notably everyone brought their complaints about that gym to me…and I wasn’t staff.)
I don’t remember if she tried to have them teach her to clean or not, either way she didn’t know how to.
(Of course this whole thing gets blown out of the water if the power cleaning was just her way of keeping confident sexy guy that she likes around. I realized this later, then shrugged it off.)
I looked at the clock, and though I was about to leave, being in no real hurry spur of the moment I offered to teach her the power clean.
“I can show you. Do you want the simple 10 minute instruction?”
I’d taught two males priorly. An athletic 18/19 year old who overcomplicated it before, and an athletic 17 year old who simply didn’t know it.
(Oddly both were about 5’8″-5’9″, 165lbs, with the chick 5’7″ or so all three with long arms, a leverage plus for the clean.)
This was opportunity to teach some lifting to a chick. “Why not? It’s simulated personal training” I realized.
Most of the internet makes the power clean out to be ridiculously complicated.
“Don’t even try to learn without a qualified coach!” – some weakling’s malarkey taken as lifting gospel
If the internet had it’s way no one would ever learn to clean, and almost all those old school lifters couldn’t possibly have been doing them.
Thankfully I’d taught myself via Jim Wendler and Bill Starr going “teach yourself!”. I’d wanted to do the movement, and one day realized this shit is overcomplicated, simplify it to good enough, and did so.
The Apocalypse Barbell advice to “jump & shrug” suddenly made sense.
I applied it.
Jump and shrug is exactly how I taught it.
The Steps :
•Ok, get in a deadlift position.
•Slowly lift the bar to about knee height.
•Jump hard/stomp!
•Shrug hard!
•Catch
“Like this?” A 24 year old blonde going through the shrug motion freehand is hysterical. I doubt most girls know that anatomically they too have trap muscles, that or it’s a figurative understanding… theoretically.
(I laugh at my own mental, written, even verbal commentary.)
I fix her shrug.
Her first catch is a bit ugly, I tell her how to improve it. Unlike me she had the requisite lanky limbed flexibility to get the position well upon instruction. She caught the bar great after a quick fix.
We got her from a starting weight of 35lbs using a slightly short 15lb bar up to 95, with a few very close failures at 100.
Naturally athletic, about 5’7, lanky limbs. She said she could’ve played D3 soccer, but chose to go to a different school (D1) closer to home, and after however many years of taking sports seriously preferred to party not train in college.
What I did wrong teaching her?
I should’ve had her on the Eleiko 45lb bar once we hit 65lbs (we hit? wasn’t I coaching? oh I got into it, psyched up that I was going to have this broad out cleaning the few chicks that did them at that gym on one go, off of…)
Simple instructions!
Let me say it again.
Simple instructions.
I was able to teach her (and the two guys prior) to clean where self, internet, and others had failed…
By making it simple.
If you want to string a client along, let them feel they’re doing it, while never progressing.
If you want a client to progress however, make it simple, and make sure it involves effort.
I’ll be honest. I see more hard work done by chicks in the gym than dudes.
That blonde? I had to tell her that she’d probably got as many good reps in that day as she’d get, that her explosive ability for the session was going down. She was visibly in some weird mental space having smoked 95 twice or thrice (we’d dropped down and worked back up, I controlled all the weight changes based first on what she told me she could squat and deadlift, and bar speed on the cleans), coming so so close to 100, 100 seemed to be a mental barrier, she had been an athlete, could tell she was tiring, yet was 50/50 on “can I keep going”. I simplified it for her telling her to stop.
(She was looking to be told, while not asking ← male-female dynamic wisdom right there.)
Another improvement : I should’ve had her smoke a few at 75 or so to have her leave on a high note, not on close failure roughly #8 at 100.
I did this right : I stressed that fresh she’d smoke by 100, that simply fatigue caught up in that particular session.
I expected her to get to 115 within a few days. 135+ was definitely within her reach (and with it also beating the muscular ass CrossFit/bodybuilding hybrid and possibly geared up chick at cleans while giving up size, and using power vs squat clean form…to win the gym)
Persistence & Tenacity