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Off the Floor

How to Find Your Correct Starting Position

The fault

Getting pulled forward the moment the bar breaks the floor, or never feeling balanced over the middle of the foot.

Why it happens

A start position copied from someone else's video rarely fits. Limb and torso length change where the hips sit, so the only reliable reference is balance, not a picture.

The fix

Float the bar a couple of inches off the ground and hold it. Feel where the pressure sits in your foot, push through the whole foot, and adjust until you are balanced rather than on the toes or back on the heels. That is your start.

About this fix
Originally published as "How To Find Your Starting Position", part of The Lifting Fix, the free weekly technique series Danny Lehr started filming over a decade ago. He gave every episode away then, and they are still free here. Danny Lehr competed in Olympic weightlifting from 2010 to 2019 and won the 2019 Masters World Cup. More about Danny Lehr.
Transcript

not I'm Danny from The Lifting Fix, we're at CrossFit H Town in Houston. We're in town for the World Championships. And so I'm working with Isaac Littlebit, with Charlie as well. A lot of people with longer limbs, got kind of long arms, kind of long legs.

I would say to play deep, but perhaps describe that as gangly. Might be another way to do it. They tend to have the same problem. And that's starting too far over the bar because their legs are so long It's kind of hard to sink down kind of feel the right position gonna get set like this And you'll notice it's right.

You'll notice that you get set He's too far over the bar. His shoulders are well in advance of the bar like almost eight inches or so Okay, so what we're gonna have to do is work on feet the position where his shoulder goes directly over the bar where they should be. So all he's going to do is just crack the bar off the ground like a quarter inch like barely. So, you're going to go ahead and do that.

And you're going to float it off the ground again. A little lower even still. Good. Because that corner is feel balanced.

Drop back forward, feel, pushing to your full foot. Feel balanced because the barbell's weight is now more in your body when you find your center mass together. And again, smash it there. There it is.

We have a much better starting position. It allows you to push through the floor through his whole foot.

More off the floor fixes

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Your Back Lights Up When You Lower the Bar

Pain or a hot, fatigued low back on the way down rather than on the way up.

Off the Floor2:18

Your Hips Rise Before Your Shoulders

Off the floor the hips shoot up first and the shoulders lag behind.

Off the Floor2:31

Your Upper Back Is Loose at the Setup

No tightness through the upper back before the bar leaves the ground.

Off the Floor1:54

Want the rest of this category?

Every fix I've filmed for what happens off the floor, one a day for five days, in the order I'd work through them with you. Not the order they got uploaded. The order that actually fixes it.

Plus the snatch pull checklist. One page, nine points, floor to hip.

Free, and these videos are free on this site whether you do this or not. This is just me putting them in the right order and sending them to you, so you don't have to guess where to start.

Or just download the checklist, no email needed.