Common Notes
Some Olympic weightlifting movements will be prefaced by “muscle” (rarely), “power”, or “squat” (ex: “power snatch” or “squat clean”). This refers to how much you can drop your body to catch the bar after the initial pull off the ground.
With a muscle movement, you can’t drop at all to catch the bar – you have to pull the bar all the way up. You can only do this with relatively light weights. This would never be programmed in an actual workout. You might do it with a unweighted bar as a warm-up.
With a power movement, you can drop to catch the bar, but not to parallel – anything above parallel is fine. Power movements tend to be very efficient. They’re fast, take less energy, and enable you to drop a bit to catch heavier weights when your pull stalls out at the top.
With a squat movement, you have to drop below parallel to catch the bar. Squat movements are harder, because you’re moving the bar further (they can be a huge cardio drain), but with heavier weights, this is the only way to get under the bar because you can’t pull it very far. With lighter weights, squat movements are just used to make it harder and give you a better workout. You’ll generally dread them.
Several movements in CrossFit require you to “clear your hips,” which is another way of saying, “stand up straight.” If you’re standing normally, draw a line from your shoulder joint to your ankle joint. This line is the “frontal plane.” To clear your hips, thrust them forward until your hip joint crosses this imaginary line – it has to “clear” (or at least touch), the frontal plane. This means you can’t remain half bent-over. If you ever hear “clear your hips,” just replace it with “stand up straight” and you’ll be fine. (Yes, this will slow you way down, and when you’re trying to go fast, you’ll cheat. A good rule of thumb is that your head should be up and you should be looking at the wall in front of you. If you’re still looking at the ground, then you’re probably cheating.)
Olympic lifts can also be “from the hang” (ex: “hang power snatch”), which means the bar doesn’t start on the floor, it starts at your hips with you standing straight up. You normally then lower the bar down to your knees, and pull from there (but you don’t have to; if the weight is light enough, you can just pull from your hips).