The best lift you're not doing: no touch muscle clean

Published: 2024-11-22

As a trainer of many Olympic lifters and a former Olympic lifter myself it might surprise you that I don't really teach the clean to regular folks the way I do to Olympic lifters who need impeccable technique. No, I'm much more old school with it. In this article I explain why and how.

What's in a name
Terminally confused
How to do no touch muscle cleans
What about muscle snatches?
Final thoughts
Get help

What's in a name

In The why's of the lifts I extolled the virtues of cleaning before you press. In ye olden days, back when moustaches were running wild, the clean was different. Before there was a clean there was a clean where you were not allowed to have the bar touch your body before reaching the chest. You had to get the bar to the chest "clean", so to speak. It's one reason why early weightlifting technique look so bad to many. Sometime in the 1960's it was decided that the bar could touch the body on its way up and a new technique developed, one where a hit is made in order to make the bar fly up.

Since the bar fly up from the hit, less upper body strength is required. For a competitor this makes sense, the goal is to lift the most weight. I don't compete so I have no interest in that. My interest lies in the greatest strength development and doing a no touch power- or muscle clean makes more sense because it builds more strength, particularly in the upper body. The lower weight is a feature, not a problem.

Terminally confused

"A no-thingie-whatty?", you ask. Fair. There's a lot of confusing terminology going on. I will clear it up the best way I can so you understand that a name like no touch muscle clean is not some made up nonsense.

A clean is where you start from the floor, pull the bar while simultaneously dropping down and catching it in a full front squat. There's no such thing as a "squat clean", regardless of what you may have heard at CrossFit classes.
A power clean is the same as above but you don't drop into a full squat, more like a quarter or half squat. Personally I consider anything where you're not below parallel a power.
A muscle clean means that there's no dipping under the bar at all. That is to say, the bar is caught with straight legs.
So the three categories above deal with how we dip under and catch the bar. No touch simply means the bar can't touch the body before you catch it as I explained in the history lesson above.

With a no touch clean you still drop under the bar and catch it in a full front squat. You can of course also do a power-variation, catching it half way down, but I prefer the muscle variation. Muscle cleans are plain great muscle builders. You start the movement with your legs, your entire backside gets involved, and you finish by "muscle up" the weight with a strong upper body pull. What's not to like? Of course you can "hit" the bar at the top of your thigh as in a regular clean but I advocate the "no touch" version (which should really be called the "classic" version) because it requires more pulling strength.

How to do no touch muscle cleans

Let's get you doing no touch muscle cleans.

We're going to start from the top. Stand up holding a bar with a shoulder width grip.
Pull the bar straight up, close to your chest, with the elbows pointing straight out to the sides. It's essentially an upright row.
No, do it again, I said the elbows should be pointing straight out to the sides.
Do the above for a while until you get the hang of it. When you feel comfortable simply "flip" the bar over to a front rack position at the top of the pull. Do it fast! Think more about pushing the elbows in under the bar than actually using your hands.

Drop the bar down to the start position and do several reps for as many sets as needed until your comfortable with the above. Once you've gotten the hang of it it's time to lower the bar.

Now instead of standing up straight you will start with a little dip in your knees. "Sit down" from the standing position until the bar is just above your knees. Keep your back flat.
Now push the floor away with your feet until the legs are straightened and then - and not a second before! - pull the bar like you did before. You want to use the momentum generated by the leg drive.
Since I know you started pulling way too early I will say it again with different words: use the strongest muscles first - those in your legs. Only after they've got nothing more to do will you use the weaker muscles in your upper body. You might have to practice this a lot.
Once you can piece together the above fluently, in one motion, and in correct order it's time to do start with bar below the knees instead (sit deeper down). Still remember to keep the back flat.
Finally start with the bar on the floor. You should really have weights on the bar for this. Use large practice weights unless you're strong enough to use proper 10kg (or heavier) plates.

WARNING: The most common mistake I see in muscle cleans is lifting the bar with the hands rather than thinking about elbows. This results in sort of a dynamic front raise/reverse curl combo. Maybe good for building forearms and also pretty decent at wrecking havoc on your shoulders... In a bad way. Instead of this horrible abomination, when the time comes to pull with your arms think only about pulling with the elbows, they should point towards the roof. This puts the load on your upper back instead. To flip over the bar into the front rack position you again don't think about the hands but about pushing the elbows in there fast. To sum up, if you think about your hands at any point in the clean you're likely screwing up.

What about muscle snatches?

Muscle snatches are much more common to see among competitive Olympic weightlifters compared to muscle cleans. Personally I think they're extremely overrated for that demographic. I haven't seen any real carryover from muscle snatch to the competition snatch at all. Though I admit liking it as a warm-up.

For the non-competitor it's a different story! All of what I said above about no touch CLASSIC cleans (I'm on a mission now!) and muscle cleans apply to snatches as well. For maximum upper back strength increase you should muscle them and don't let the bar touch the body on the way up.

WARNING: Like with muscle cleans, the most common mistake I see in muscle snatches is trying to lift the bar with the hands. You must focus on pulling with the elbows or your shoulders will end up hating you.

Final thoughts

The classic way of doing cleans, that is without hitting the bar on the thighs, is superior for strength development because of much larger involvement of the upper body. That's why it's what I teach to people who simply want to be strong. Olympic lifters of course need to practice the competition lift as it's done today.

Most folks won't be pressing any numbers they can't muscle clean (unless they're doing push presses or something like it) so I advocate the no touch muscle clean most of the time. However, as the pressing strength improves it's absolutely valid to power clean before the press. Again, do it in a no touch fashion... Sorry, let's try that again: do it the classic way.

Get help

Online training. Ready to start muscling your cleans before you press? I help regular folks who want to be strong, as well as athletes - from rank beginners to international level lifters.

Workshops. I occasionally do workshops and seminars for athletes as well as the average Joe and Jane.