Early in my career as a weightlifter I was working out with five or six guys one afternoon and we decided to write up a clean complex on the board and see who could get the highest percentage of their one rep max clean on that complex. The loser had to buy lunch for the winner. The complex we created was a clean from the hip plus a clean from below the knee plus a clean from the floor. The only rules were that the bar could not sit on the ground for more than two seconds before being cleaned on the final rep. I remember at the time my best clean was 137 kg and that PR was pretty recent. As we started getting moving I realized very quickly there were a couple ways to cheat the complex in order to gain myself a free lunch. First if I pick the bar up and get the first clean with bent arms I could get away with a bad bar track by slamming my hips hard into the bar. The second rep from the hanging had to be done (for me at least) using the momentum of the body going down then immediately coming right back up. What I also found is that if I bounced the bar off the ground on my third rep it gave me a little momentum through my weakest position, which was the floor, and allowed me to make it back to my knee with relative ease. I ended up winning the complex that day cleaning 132 kg in the complex. None of them were pretty, none of my actual work for the day helped me, and I probably got worse from that training day. I did however get a free lunch.
The final phase of the blog series we started on Olympic lifting complexes centers around the clean. We've all seen the videos and the Instagram's of really heavy really sexy looking clean complexes. However, the real question is whether or not these "sexy complexes" are actually beneficial to anything more than the amount of followers on your Instagram. In the following blog I am going to address three specific problem areas revolving around clean complexes. How do you create an affective clean complex that attacks weaknesses and does more than just entertain those who watch it? Secondly, in the world of weightlifting what are some specific movements or positions you should avoid when creating a clean complex? Lastly, when is the best time to implement complexes for the clean and what are some standard parameters for implementation of them into your programming?
Complexes, as we mentioned before, have the natural tendency to become mainly focused on the competitive nature of an athlete and not on attacking weaknesses. What I mean by that is often times athletes will create a really cool looking complex and post it on the board and have their entire training group see who can hit the most amount of weight. While this is fine and does have some benefit, it often is more beneficial for one athlete rather then each of the athletes specifically. Just as with snatch complexes, your weaknesses must be considered when writing a complex for the clean. If you are incredibly weak and slow off the floor then you should be doing complex work with a pause 1 inch off the floor or multiple low hang cleans from way below the knee. If you struggle staying over the bar after the bar crosses the knee then maybe it's to your benefit to do complex work with pauses just above the knee or multiple reps from just above the knee. Whatever your weakness, it's important to address that specific weakness in the complex in a appropriate manner. Just because you are really good at the hang clean doesn't mean that it's in your best interest to add a hang clean into a complex. Furthermore, just because you can hang clean a lot of weight the wrong way doesn't mean that it's OK to chase a big weight in the hang even if that means it's done improperly. More often than not the creation of complexes revolves around what is going to give the lifter the greatest ability to lift the greatest amount of weight. This is often to their detriment. I will use me as an example. I tend to be very good at any clean movement from above the knee to the power position. However I often will pull myself out of position in the movement from the knee to the hip. If I'm not pulling from the floor I can overcome this technical inefficiency and actually clean more weight than I would have from the floor. This reality points out two things for me. I am a weak in maintaining good positioning after the bar crosses my knee. However, I am able to lift heavier weights because of leverage and speed even in a bad position. Therefore, if I'm writing a clean complex for myself I'm going to force myself to do two or three second pause is in those weak positions that I am unable to maintain. I'm not going to allow myself to rapid fire hang cleans knowing that each of those cleans will be out of position. A good complex for me would be clean for the floor with a pause at the knee followed by another hang clean with a two second pause at the top of the knee. This is going to force strength in weak positions and also prevent me from simply using leverage, momentum, and speed to move the weight. In your creation of clean complexes make sure you take the same considerations into account. Don't just pick the positions that allow you to lift the most weight and don't just avoid weaknesses by allowing momentum or other strengths to compensate. Put yourself in a weak position, hammer away at those weaknesses, don't get so focused on the amount of weight on the bar that you lose the effectiveness of the complex.
Picking parts and pieces to put into your complex can be the hardest part of creating it. In the world of Instagram and YouTube we see so many different complexes and so many different movements that we can often get lost in the effectiveness of each of these movements. It's important to consider that some parts and pieces you see in complexes on the internet are not good for the purpose of weightlifting. Especially with the rise of CrossFit and Grid, some of the movements that are practiced to help their sport will not help your technical efficiency and overall gain if you're trying to move forward in the sport of weightlifting. There are three specific movements that are widely used in training programs today that I think should be avoided. The first one is touch and go reps. I understand that these reps and these movements have their place inside other sports however there is no place for a touch and go rep in the clean in the sport of weightlifting. This is especially true if you are new to the sport and are still refining and perfecting technical errors. Bouncing the bar off your quads or off the floor or propelling yourself down into a bad position for the sake of rep count and time will not help technical efficiency for a young or even intermediate lifter. In fact, I would venture to say that it does not help anybody in technical growth. Avoid multiple reps in the clean done in a repetitive nature especially if you are getting momentum from bouncing the bar off the ground.The second position to avoid in creating a complex comes with a disclaimer. The "hip clean" has been used successfully by some rare athletes in the sport. Note the word rare. They are the exception to the rule and their success does not negate the fact that the early are bend and the hip clean has been largely unsuccessful for many other athletes. The problem with social media and the internet is that we only see the hip cleaners who are successful and never see the hundreds and hundreds of athletes trying to do that movement and failing every day. With that in mind, I would avoid complexes that encourage the early bend of the arm to get the bar higher on the hip. This tendency especially comes out in complexes like the three position clean where the lifter is asked to do a clean from the power position. Often the athlete will lean backwards behind the bar, bend the arms just a tad early, and use the horizontal propulsion of the hip to move the bar into place. With athletes like Rich Froning, Donnie Shankle, and some international athletes doing this with some success, the weight lifting world that large doesn't realize that they are the exception. Putting these types of movements into a complex for an athlete who is not the exception (which is 97% of the weightlifting world) is only going to be detrimental to their growth. Not that cleans from a higher position than the knee are ultimately bad, they should just probably be done from blocks at middle of the quad (Likely a power clean depending on squat depth and segment length) to ensure a proper power position rather than allowing for the variation and degradation of technique when done from a hanging position. The last thing to avoid when creating a clean complex comes with a bit of understanding of the point of the complex. Anytime an athlete is adding an isometric pause into the complex it is for the purpose of strength. Isometric holds are one of the greatest ways to increase the strength of the activated muscles in weak positions. The downside to an isometric hold is that you are ultimately hoping to strengthen the weak area which means you're not going to be able to lift as much weight. I often times see athletes go to max effort weights on complexes with three or five second pause in the complex. They are pausing at a weak position but also trying to push that complex to a max effort level. This creates all kinds of problems. The first problem is that when the weight on the bar reaches beyond the strength of the weak area, other strong areas will begin to compensate to make up for the lack of strength in the weak area. When this happens the point of a complex has gone out the window. The point of an isometric hold us to make the weak area strong not make the strong areas around the weak area activate and get stronger to cover up for the weak area. The second thing you often see when pushing a complex with an isometric hold to a max effort level is a breakdown in technique. When the weak areas being worked are no longer strong enough to support the load on the bar then something has got to give. Typically it's the weak area. For instance if you have a week low back and you are doing hang cleans with a five second hold at the knee, it is unwise to push that complex to max effort loads. The obvious reason for this is because your low back will begin to round and be compromised thus missing the entire point of the exercise. Ego can often destroy the outcome of a well written complex. Remember the point of the complex and don't push the weight past the ability of your body to maintain technical efficiency, even if you think you can overcome the inefficiency and make the lift.
Clean complexes can be beneficial to a program. They do have their place within the training cycle and are largely effective when put in specific places with in a progression. Some of this goes without saying but you obviously want to create higher rep clean complexes that will be done at lower percentage of max earlier in the cycle. Leave the heavy complexes for the middle to late part of the cycle. All of that being said my advice is to avoid clean (and snatch) complexes inside a three-week window of competition. Three weeks out from competition the focus should not be on technical growth that comes from completing complexes but should be focused on preparing the body and the central nervous system for a high-intensity load at maximal weights in competition. This is best done in lifting from the floor as would be done in competition. Completing the standard lifts for 17–21 days in a row is sufficient time to get the body to adapt to the intensity required to reach a new max effort weight and also allow your body and mind to implement some of the technical fixes you have made through complex work. Complexes are fun and can't be extremely useful for training but it is important they fit in a rep scheme and loading for the program you’re completing. Just because you think you can complete a three rep max hang clean at 92% of your best clean doesn't mean that you should write it into a workout in week 2 of a 16 week cycle. Be wise, follow traditional strength and conditioning periodization rules, and make sure that your complexes ultimately fit the goal of your programming.
Complexes can be fun and beneficial. However, it is important to not let their sexiness outweigh their usefulness.