• Start with shins touching bar

• Grip bar just outside athletic stance

• Get into deadlift position with back locked, shoulders up, and abs and chest flexed

• Explode by fully extending hips, knees and ankles and forcefully shrugging

Carlisle’s Comments: Any time you train your explosive joints—the hips, knees and ankles—to go from 90-degree angles to fully extended, you increase your explosiveness on the field. If you slow things down and look at an athlete tackling, blocking or coming out of a stance, the joint angles are the same as with these Olympic movements.

A football player doesn’t need to concern himself with the catch portion of the Olympic movements, especially in season. The clean pull works the full range of the triple extension without placing additional strain on the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints, which may be sore or strained during the season. In addition, sometimes the purpose of the power clean is defeated by technique. If an athlete is too concerned with the catch, he begins it too soon and doesn’t bring his hips all the way through to full extension.