LSU Tigers Coach Tom Morfitt: The Hang Clean Exercise

Tom Morfitt, the head strength and conditioning coach for Louisiana State University (LSU) Tigers football team, teaches the Hang Clean. ""The most important aspect of Hang Cleans is how we lift it off the floor. And I don’t know if you noticed today, but we have our guys when we’re doing Hang Cleans we’re gonna do a clean pool to get in the power position. So that’s the first coaching point, is how we lift it off the floor. We do not want our football players bending over and picking their way up like that, you know, near limit weight. That makes no sense at all. All right, the key and then once we get the ball here to the power position if we’re doing Hang Cleans from above the knee, okay, in the power position, then I should be in this position here with my wrist curl, the bar at the top third of my thigh, but it will both rotate it out to the side and my shoulders over the ball. From this position now, there is some pre-stretch, the guys can rock a little bit, then go down. And from this position here they’re going to jump shrug in pool and generate that force to get the bar to travel in the air. I mean they simply drop underneath it and meet their elbows up. And I don’t have great flexibility here in my wrist and triceps either, but this is another very important position here coz too many guys, they rock the bar with their elbows down and they rock it on their chest. You can’t lift heavy weights like that. You’ll miss a lot of your heavy power cleans and stuff if you’re not properly rocking that bar here in the throat, this whole top of the clavicle, between the Adam’s apple and the clavicles where that bar’s supposed to go. But flexibility in your own--my triceps and depending on my arm length, there’s a couple of factors that determine how high that bar goes. But that’s what we’re looking for. We want to make sure that when we explode, we generate enough speed to get the ball to go up so that we can quickly drop on anything. Then you take, you know, best time acceleration, gives us our power. That’s why it’s so important that the bar goes fast also coz we’re generating watts.""

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[crombet01]

am an s&c coach from the uk and the power hang clean is a great exercise, if taught and performed correctly. If one of my athletes performed their clean like this he would be told to put the bar down and start again. the clean is a hip exercise, this guy muscles it up with hi arms, all the force should be generated from hip,knee and ankle extension!

[YaBoyBigRed]

I love how people somehow think they know more about strength than an SEC strength coach. I'll take the advice of the strength coach of one of the top i'll say 7 college football programs in the nation. Geaux Tigers!

[lukeman3000]

We all agree that this guy's form is terrible, but could someone link me to a video of someone performing a hang clean with proper form?

[howardlitt86]

@YaBoyBigRed His form is terrible... lift heavy shit and you will know this. I had the privilege of being able to watch a Senior Olympic Lifting Coach teach these movements. He is doing it all kinds of wrong.

[powershotplayer]

I'm so sorry to get in on the math science nerds who are talking here

But just look at what the lsu team has accomplished in terms of size and speed on the field and it's all about what they do in the weight room

So shut up

[Pandaball163]

@boomboombam6 yes they do generate power (watts), but he explicitly said that "mass x acceleration gives us our power" which is completely false... yes there will be a given distance and time interval with this... but in order to come up with power both of these need to be taken into account.

[boomboombam6]

@Pandaball163 You do generate power (watts) from this, he said they go at x speed and then you take mass x acceleration. And obviously there is a distance associated with this.

[Pandaball163]

mass x acceleration = force .... not power... so they would be generating newtons, or pounds of force... not watts... watts is power which would be the amount of work done (force x distance) divided by the time.

[AthleticFX]

@crombet01 Great explanation! you are very right

[jacksonvile12345678]

@YaBoyBigRed It is easy to get amazing results when you get to work with nothing but genetically gifted athletes. True test of a strength coach is to make an amazing athlete out of a terrible athlete.

[GoodLifeGodLike]

@sk8291 Actually he is right, they are generating watts. Here check this video about GSP and the watts he generates in his takedown: watch?v=FzmUhhB8SmA