The turnover and Catch

So… Last in the series of the Snatch and I’ll be moving onto the Clean next.

I’ll be covering the turnover and the catch here, but not the recovery as if you get it right from the floor up, it’s literally just an Overhead Squat… at least in theory.

If you haven’t read my Overhead Squat technique article that goes hand in hand with this series, click the link below and read that before you continue with this.

Now that you’ve read about the Overhead Squat, you’re probably ok to learn about the turnover and catch.

Reason being is when I teach a beginner, or work with an athlete for the very first time, while I don’t like to teach people to ‘suck eggs’ I always look at the Overhead Squat first. This is because if you can’t put the bar in the right place overhead, either because your mechanics are off or because you just don’t know how to do it, you probably don’t have much chance of Snatching efficiently, safely or well.

Its just a case of teaching the right things in the right order.

The series

Its been fun putting my own thoughts, techniques and experiences into words for this… I have however been putting writing this one off for a little while.

Its hard enough to explain the turnover in person to someone in person, let alone through writing about it and its certainly something I think develops through practice, exposure and being coached into the right positions in both the second pull and the catch rather than coaching the turnover specifically.

Reason being is its such a fast movement where the whole body usually leaves the ground, making it almost impossible to simulate the exact movement slowly.

Turnover / Third Pull / Pull under

A successful turnover, third pull, or ‘pull under’ which is a term I dislike because it can encourage overuse of the arms… Yes, terminology is important when coaching because it builds a mental picture for the athlete that can sometimes be hard to overcome…

I got side tracked there… the turnovers essentially about 3 things:

1. A fast change direction

2. Keeping the bar and body as close to each other as possible

3. Being in a position to hit a stable receiving position

What this actually looks like, much like any other position, can vary among lifters, but those are the 3 goals and if your hit them you’ll probably be ok.

A lot of this depends on extending vertically with the legs before you leave the ground (as discussed in the last article) and once you have left the ground having the ability and position to allow the elbows to continue traveling up and out while squeezing the shoulder blades back and together… this is what creates that idea and cue of the ‘shrug.’

I’ve already said its a hard thing to teach and that its something I feel you have to perform to get the feel for. I also believe its more important to be in the right position through the rest of the movement and at the end of the second pull in terms of turnover mechanics than it is to actually teach the turnover, so i’m going to move straight onto covering the drills you can do to help.

Sorry if this isn’t what you we’re after, but there’s no straight forward answer and we’ve covered everything in previous parts of the series to put you in the best position to get this right.

Drills

There are a few drills you can use to practice the turnover, ultimately though, most are just partials of the full Snatch that allow you to get into optimal positions before the turnover rather than training it.

My favourites are the Tall Snatch and the Power Position Snatch. When performed right both of which put you in good positions with minimal travel before you hit the top of your pull allowing you to minimise the errors which may change the mechanics of your turnover beforehand.

I find these two movements are great for most people as they increase the total amount of exposure an athlete has and can have to the turnover specifically without much extra fatigue build up because of the natural limitations in weight.

They’re great on recovery days as a way to work on weakness’ and I also use them in a lot of my bar warm-ups in my weightlifting sessions as a movement primer.

The other two movements that I don’t necessarily recommend for everyone, but have used are the Muscle Snatch and the Snatch High Pull (from various hang positions).

The reason I don’t recommend them for everyone is that they can promote an overuse of the arms in the turnover and while its important to remain active in the upper body it is also important not to overuse the arms as this will usually result in the feet contacting the floor earlier, killing the timing of the catch and actually slowing the whole turnover down.

I’d usually use these drills for those that go a little ‘floppy’ and lack upper body activity in the turnover. Its often the same as extending and not ‘shrugging’ as discussed above and not doing this can cause the bar to swing out after contact or for the bar to crash in the catch.

Don’t be scared to utilise Pulls and Snatch’s from high blocks too, they’re a great way to get into correct positions without the fatigue or weight limitations a hang variant can cause.

Catch / Receiving Position

The catch, or receiving position, should be the exact position you’re in at the bottom of your overhead squat. This is the last position in the chain before the recovery and ultimately has a huge dependancy on whether the rest of the lift went well.

The higher up the chain you go, the more it depends on what happened lower down and before and as a result its more about being strong and having a technically sound Overhead Squat then working on the rest of the movement.

If you find the bar crashes you can train the catch through things like the Snatch Balance / Drop Snatch (same thing, different names) or something like Michaela Breeze’s ‘Snatch Pop’.

I’ve also used things like Snatch’s with a pause in the catch to create confidence and stability for those who need it. Speaking of which, don’t be scared to sit in the bottom of the Snatch for a while if you need to stabilise. Unlike the clean, you don’t need to utilise the stretch reflex, or ‘bounce’ to get out of the hole and often lifts are missed simply through trying to stand up too early.

Other than that, get strong and comfortable in the bottom of the Overhead Squat in the same way you would any other strength movement.Use pauses to create stability, mobility and isometric strength and movements like the Heaving Snatch Balance to help create confidence and strength.

Don’t worry if you can’t Overhead Squat as much as you can Snatch, some people can’t and some people can’t, but you should always look to progress it.

Summary

While this maybe hasn’t been as cut and dry as some of my other articles in the series, its also the position and section of the movement that has the most scope for error as it is right at the end of the chain and is the piece of the puzzle you can’t slow down a great deal.

Its also one of the most important parts of the movement to get right, both in terms of whether you make that specific lift, how consistent you are in making lifts (especially above 90%) and also what your overall ceiling is in terms of your current strength levels.

While I could go a little deeper into things such as the exact theoretical point you should turn the bar over, which Greg Everett describes as ‘approximately shoulder height’, the reality is that when I describe things like that within the turnover, I find it encourages people to pull more with the arms and generally gives people too much to think about.

Part of the art of coaching is picking what information your athlete doesn’t need at that point in time as well as giving the information that will benefit them.

Yes the elbows should travel up meaning the arms will bend in order to keep the bar close, but that movement should come from a forceful contraction of the traps while maintaining the looseness in the arms you started the pull with. That looseness in the arms is one of the reasons we use a hook grip by the way.

With all that out the way, its why I believe breaking down the movement and doing the rest of the lift correctly along with overall exposure to the turnover is key… along with patience.

Great technique doesn’t happen over night in weightlifting, it takes practice and refinement. As you improve one aspect of your lifting, something else may deteriorate a little, because of the change and improvement of technique somewhere else. It’s very much 2 or 3 steps forward in one thing and one step back in the other.

The main thing is you keep moving forward and with a movement as complex as the Snatch I take the stance of…

‘As long as the overall sum of its components are better than it was before you’re onto a winner.’

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this and I’ll be back next with the Clean!

Adam Johnston, 11th August 2020