At the Sarasota Parabellum camp today I made the comparison that the jerk, clean, and snatch were wildly different movements from a perspective of how lifters approach them. I stated that the snatch felt very much how a gymnast approaches a stunt routine. There’s finesse, control, yet uncontrolled aggression. The clean is much more like how a UFC fighter would approach a fight. Psyched up. Violent but calculated and uncompromising. The jerk, because it has the smallest room for error is much more like ballet in my opinion. There’s a true element of connectedness, fluidity, and elegance to the jerk. You have to be one with oscillation of the weight on the bar. It requires some serious skill to perform the jerk to perfection. Check out Pocket Hercules or Illya Illyin if you don’t believe me.
Today we addressed the jerk specifically. Here’s a video of some of the lifts we saw today.