There’s an old adage in Olympic weightlifting that says, “the jerk can be a jerk.” In Olympic weightlifting, for most, the jerk is the most frustrating part of the three lifts. You literally have to move the same amount of weight that you front squatted to above your head. It takes more power to move the bar from your shoulders above your head with that amount of weight than it does for any other movement. On top of that, you have the least amount of time to complete the movement before the bar comes back down on top of your head. The jerks takes finesse, precision, and an extreme amount of practice.
On day one of this camp Eric and I noticed immediately that the largest weakness in the group was the jerk. While we were able to point out small technical errors in both the snatches and cleans, there was no small, common technical error in the jerk. The group as a whole did almost everything wrong that could possibly be done wrong for the jerk. That is not to say that everyone in the room was terrible at the jerk but as a collective group they covered the gamut in what you could do wrong in the jerk.
Yesterday we spent the majority of our time working on those problems. What you will see in the video below is a lot of the exercises, auxiliary movements, and tricks we used to help fix some of the common errors in the jerk. Be sure to check that video out as some of those exercises may benefit you.
The most common errors we see in the jerk in our seminars are: midline failure in the dip, driving the bar out away from the center of gravity, driving the center of gravity backwards away from the bar, and poor footwork in the landing for the split. These are the common errors as well as some smaller less common errors that we saw all weekend. This video shows both the drills we used to fix some of those errors and the end result.
Texas Outlaw Camp Day 3: The Jerk
This camp has been a productive one to say the least. What 25 eager athletes, it made Eric and my job extremely fun. As I said on day one, they came in with a quickness and aggression that is hard to teach but easy to use as a coach. I am certain these athletes will take what they learned back to their gyms and see multiple PR lifts in their future.
