The Power Clean, by Mark Rippetoe - Aug 06 CFJ

I have now been coaching the Olympic lifts for almost twenty years and am well aware that the full squat clean is a very important movement, both for motor skill development and for full-body conditioning. Learning it is important, since it is complicated, and learning complicated things improves the ability to learn. But I still teach the power clean to my novices first, just like Bill did.

This is not because I can’t teach the squat clean to inexperienced lifters. I can, and I have. But I choose not to because I think it interferes with learning the squat correctly.

The front squat—the “squat” part of the squat clean—and the back squat are two very different movements that happen to be similar enough to cause problems for a novice lifter. The back squat depends on hip drive for power out of the bottom, and relies on an initial hip extension.

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