Right. So. How to jerk.
Pre-requisites:
1) Ability to OHP the same weight you’re jerking;
2) Hip drive a la OP;
3) Good inward/outward shoulder rotation;
4) Somewhere safe to drop a barbell without annoying/injuring anybody;
5) Massive, massive balls (sticking 100kg over your head when you can only OHP 65kg or whatever takes some commitment and sense of humour).
The point of Olympic lifting – pointed out eloquently once upon a time be UE – is to lift more weight through a combined movement than individuals movements/muscles can manage. Not sure how many people can OHP 263kg, but a few people can jerk it overhead. This is why you will see a lot of dropping heavy barbells by weightlifters, and not much re-racking. ? This also why Olympic lifters generate enormous amounts of power (not necessarily force!) from their hips (check out the lightweight lady lifters: most of them are tiny waif-like creatures with MASSIVE thighs/glutes).
This is epitomised in the jerk. The principle of the movement is to generate enough power from the hips to lift the bar off the shoulders and then dive under it, lifting it back up with the legs: technically speaking, the arms are used to push the lifter down under the bar, rather than lift the bar itself.
So how does this work?
START POSITION:
1) Sit an unloaded bar in a comfortable front rack position;
2) Keeping your core braced, shoulders back, let your ankles/knees have the 5 degrees of flexion, so you sink down ever so slightly;
3) Sink back into your hips, taking the strain onto your hamstrings. You should wind up in a slight facsimile of the clean/snatch from hip position;
POWAAAAAH!
4) Keep your head back as you do this! From here, dig your heels into the ground and ram your hips forward as hard as you can (hip drive!): if your core is braced correctly, your hips should extend and your quads should engage to force you into an odd, heel-drive jump.
This should launch the bar off your front rack: could be lots, could be a little bit. Either way, the fun part comes next.
THE POWER JERK
1) When you ‘jump’, the first thing to do is push up on the bar, lock your elbows and pinch your scaps. The idea isn’t to drive the bar up, but to force YOU down; as you do this, force your head forward. This gives you scaps the room to really pinch and gives your shoulders a nice, stable position to work from;
2) Your lower half: keeping your core tight, bring your knees up and out. This should flex your hips to get you into a PT squat position (femurs at 45o from parallel).
3) Land and brace.
4) From here, it’s a simple question of reversing the ‘squat’: push with your hips, and up you go.
THE SPLIT JERK
1) Same principle applies as for the power jerk, but as you dive under the bar, throw your primary foot (the one with which you’d kick a ball) back and the other forward.
2) Front foot: out straight, and weight on the heel. Back foot: on the toes, heel straight up in the air. Weight should be evenly distributed between them.
3) To recover, push off your front foot and bring it into line with your body. Then step up with your back foot.
The key to both these jerks is speed. The best lifters out there are not necessarily the strongest, but the fastest: who can get under the bar quick enough. You might get bored of me mentioning this, but check out Ilya Ilin: he’s by far and away one of the fastest lifters I’ve ever seen.
And no, I’m not going anywhere near a squat jerk. Those a truly insane (check out Xiaojun Lu for an example of this craziness).
) which really hurt that forward knee.
