Teaching the Olympic Lifts

The picture to the left is an example of the workout sheet that each athlete is given each week. It has their workouts and specific weight ranges for each day at practice, and they spend time cycling through various stations, like Olympic Lifting, Agility, Speed Drills, Balance Drills, Basic Weights, etc. I found this to be a very efficient way of determining who needs to do what, instead of wasting practice time assigning how much weight each individual athlete needs to do each day. It also allows athletes to see their progress, and individualize the workouts based on each athlete's skill level and strength.

My main job at practice was to stay in the weight room all morning (which, by the way, was hotter than Hades), and teach the Clean and Jerk and the Snatch to small groups of football players as they cycled through. The skill levels of the athletes ranged from "never saw a bar in my life and don't have a clue what you are talking about" to the slightly more proficient "I am an upperclassman and have done this two or three times, but mainly just mess around," and finally to the epitome of frustration "freshman whose middle school coach taught him completely wrong technique and is also not open to learning the correct methods".

Needless to say, there were a few long mornings, and shocked looks when the nice-looking quiet girl coach had a "come to Jesus" talk with the team. :)

Anyways, like I was saying, my job was to teach the Clean and Jerk and Snatch. The most common errors that occur when kids start to learn these moves are the following:

Problems with the Snatch:
-Athlete does not fully open their hips in the second pull, therefore lacks the explosion needed to get the bar overhead.
-Athlete fails to shrug explosively in the second pull, and has the same problem, or the bar gets overhead, but is too far in front of them, so they can't lock it out.
-Athlete does not have "active shoulders" when they catch the bar overhead, so they fail to lock it out, and can't complete the lift.
-Athlete rounds his/her back when pulling the bar off the ground during the second pull, and can injure his/her back this way. (Common when the athlete is trying to do more weight than they are capable of)

Problems with the Clean and Jerk:
-Same general technique problems as the snatch in the first and second pulls.
-Athlete fails to catch the bar in the clean with his/her elbows up, therefore dropping the bar in front of them.
-Athlete fails to keep their body weight on their heels, therefore, not maintaining enough balance to complete the lift.
-Athlete fails to lock the weight out overhead with their arms behind their ears, therefore the bar is too far in front of their center of balance to complete the lift.
-Athlete fails to re-bend their knees when locking out the weight, and lacks the strength to press the weight, so they can't complete the lift.