Power cleans are a dynamic compound exercise that targets multiple muscle groups, including the posterior chain, shoulders, core, and more. It's a technical and explosive movement requiring a combination of strength, speed, and coordination that build functional strength in the entire body.
This dynamic and explosive movement requires you to lift a loaded barbell from the ground to your shoulders in one swift and explosive motion and will get your heart pumping while building muscles and burning fat. While a perfectly executed power clean is awe-inspiring, it will bring you a whole lot more than bragging rights.
By training your body to generate force quickly, power cleans develop your explosiveness and overall power. This translates to improved athletic performance in sports that require fast and powerful movements, such as sprinting, jumping, and even throwing.
One issue with Olympic lifts such as the power clean, hang clean, clean and jerk, and even kettlebell and dumbbell power cleans is that they take a lot of time and skill to master.
Like all free weight exercises, power cleans should be executed with proper form to avoid injuries. Furthermore, the incorrect technique could lead to inefficient repetitions, thereby causing unnecessary risk and over-tiredness.
Here’s how to do a proper power clean to ensure your entire body benefits:
The number of power clean reps you do will depend on your training program and goals, which could include technique improvement, increasing power output, or bolstering strength.
Literally all your muscles—the power clean is a compound exercise, meaning it activates multiple muscle groups.
Power cleans stimulate the major muscle groups in your upper body, lower body, and posterior chain, such as your:
As you progress through the full range of motion, specific muscles are heavily recruited in the different phases, as detailed below.
Your forearms and hands contain around fifty different muscles. Together, these muscles create the dexterity, strength, and endurance your hands need to effectively play their role in power cleans.
In addition to wrist flexors, you have more flexion muscles in your forearm, and their tendons don’t stop at the base of your hand. Instead, they extend all the way to your fingers.
Some end at the middle finger bones, while others run all the way to your fingertips.
These muscles can also flex your wrist, but maybe more importantly, they are powerful gripping muscles, which are crucial for the successful execution of power cleans.
The hamstrings are located at the back of your thighs. They are muscle groups comprising the semimembranosus, semitendinosus, and biceps femoris.
The functions of the hamstrings include stabilizing, flexing, and rotating the knee, and also aiding in hip extension.
The hamstrings play a primary role during the first pull phase of the power clean that involves getting the bar off the floor and up to the mid-thighs, and also during the catch phase of the routine.
Furthermore, the hamstrings actively work throughout the power clean to stabilize the knees, and they collaborate with the glutes during hip extensions.
Hip joint extensions are major movements in power cleans, and that is where the gluteus maximus plays a significant role. The gluteus maximus is the largest of the hip muscles and the prime movers and stabilizers of hip extensions.
During a power clean, the glutes thrust your hips forward during the first pull to get the barbell off the floor. They also facilitate the explosive hip extensions at the end of the second pull, when the bar is propelled outward and upward into the catch position.
The quadriceps comprises four muscles: the vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis, and the rectus femoris.
As a group, these muscles collaborate to flex the hips and stabilize and extend the knees. The quadriceps extend the knees during the first pull as you lift the bar off the floor.
However, the primary role of the quads is in the catch portion of the power clean when they absorb the force of the barbell and then the knee extension immediately after the catch when you stand up tall with the added weight
The soleus and gastrocnemius muscles of the calf are responsible for plantar flexion, which is the movement that occurs when you lift your heels off the floor.
This action occurs immediately after the first pull when you have cleared the bar from the floor, and your transition into the power clean’s second pull phase.
Your calves allow for extension and flexion of your foot at the ankle joint.
During the power clean, the plantar flex occurs in the foot as the momentum of the hip thrusting develops.
The trapezius of the back and the deltoids of the shoulders are the primary upper body muscles used during the power clean.
Along with the traps, the other large back muscles, the lats, serve to keep the spine aligned throughout the power clean. They also provide the necessary pulling force to pull the bar off the floor and into the catch position.
When it comes to the shoulders, the traps are used to shrug the shoulders during both the pull phases of the power clean, and they also serve to rotate the shoulder blades during the scoop phase.
Furthermore, the delts or deltoids in the shoulder work to lift your arms up and pull your elbows out during the scoop and second pull, and also to stabilize your shoulders during the catch phase of the exercise. They play a vital role in creating a shelf to support the barbell during the catch portion of the power clean.
The biceps are located on the top of your upper arms, and they are responsible for elbow flexion and strength. Pulling strength is essential through most of the power clean, and the biceps are crucial to help flex the elbows to get the arms in position for the catch.
Maintaining an aligned spine throughout the power clean exercise is essential, and your abdominal muscles work with your lower back muscles to provide trunk support and keep the spine aligned throughout the movement.
Power cleans are not exclusively for strength training. They have a ton of performance benefits for all, including body composition improvement, and working multiple joints and muscle groups simultaneously.
The Power Clean trains “triple extension,” which involves extending your ankles, knees, and hip joints simultaneously — a key movement for athletic performance.
Power cleans are an explosive movement, requiring you to shift a reasonable amount of weight in a pretty short space of time. Substantial grip strength is essential to hold and maintain control of the weight throughout the entire range of motion.
The posterior chain of muscle groups, including the glutes, hamstring, back, etc. are heavily involved during the first lift. In turn, the anterior component of your body – the abdominals, deltoids, quads, and others – are heavily taxed during the ‘catch’ position, the second lift, and the control of the return to the starting position.
Anaerobic exercises are essentially short, explosive, high-intensity movements. When you perform such exercises, your body draws energy systems called lactic acid and ATP-PC to cope with the increased energy demand. If you include anaerobic exercises in your regular workout routine, your body will adapt those energy systems to provide in the demand, thereby improving your anaerobic endurance, and allowing for better performance.
The more muscles you put to work the more kcals your body will burn. Power cleans require plenty of energy for large muscle groups at work, and to enable you to generate the necessary force to complete movements, your body metabolizes calories, or fat, and converts them into energy.
Exercises like power cleans involve a significant amount of damage to muscle fibers. Your body’s response is called muscle hypertrophy, which is the enlargement of total muscle mass and cross-sectional area, which essentially means your muscles will become bigger and stronger.
When it comes to your posture, long hours and late nights in the office are bad news. The power clean dominates the muscles of the body’s backside, known as the posterior chain. Strengthening the posterior chain will restore balance in your body and improve posture.
The proper term for body awareness is proprioception. Your level of proprioception is determined by how in tune you are with the position and movement of your body. The better your proprioception, the lesser your risk of injuries during workouts.
Exercises like the power clean that involve complex movement patterns and large amounts of muscle recruitment can improve the synergy between the two aspects, helping you to develop better body awareness, and fewer injury risks.
Exercises like power cleans help boost your balance. For example, the second pull and catch phases of the power cleans force you to offset your center of mass against the barbell weight’s movement without losing your balance. Regular reps of the power clean will serve to boost your balance.
As long as you use proper form and avoid using too heavy weight plates, power clears can strengthen your bones and improve their flexibility. The same applies to connective tissue and joints, making them stronger as you progress through mastering this exercise.
If you have an injury or a health condition, it’s best to talk to your physician before tackling the power clean. Furthermore, if you are a beginner, consider working with an instructor when you start doing power cleans, rather than relying on online workouts and videos. An instructor can ensure you maintain proper form, and point out errors that could lead to injuries.
Power cleans feature in workout programs of Olympic weightlifters, CrossFit trainers, bodybuilders, powerlifters, and more. The explosive strength of power cleans even benefits athletes in field items that require high and long jumping.
Barbell cleans are equally popular among lifters and offer similar benefits.
Targeting multiple muscle groups will torch calories in no time, boost your strength, max your muscle mass gains, and build functional muscle.
If you want to build explosive functional strength and improve athletic performance, don’t wait – get started; however, don’t neglect your health. An optimized physique requires optimized health.
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