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Bar Path

You Loop the Bar in the Snatch

Coaching by Danny Lehr1:41

The fault

The bar swings out in an arc at the top instead of staying against the body.

Why it happens

A loop means the bar is traveling horizontally when it should be traveling up and you should be traveling down. It costs height, it costs time, and it puts the catch out in front.

The fix

High pull, then immediately a full snatch. Pairing them lets the corrected path from the pull carry straight into the full lift.

That's one fault. There are sixty-four.

The free fixes assume you already know roughly what you're doing and something specific is going wrong. Find it, fix it, get back to training. That's what they're for and they'll always be here.

The course is the other direction. It goes in order: the positions, how you move through them, the finish and the catch, then the faults that come out of each one. It's what I'd teach you from scratch, filmed properly instead of on a phone in the corner of a gym.

Thirteen modules in 1080p, plus a 16 page written companion you can read at the gym instead of watching.

Taught by Danny Lehr. Competed in Olympic weightlifting 2010 to 2019, won the 2019 Masters World Cup. Coached these lifts under Glenn Pendlay and Dave Spitz.

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Snatch Bar Path

About this fix

Originally published as "Stop Looping the Bar", 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

Right? Are we on? Alright today we're going to talk about fixing a roofing bar path. By the way, I'm Danny with The Lifting Fix.

I have Ariana help me out at CrossFit Excel. So big problems people have, especially newer lifter people in general, is they roof the bar. Okay, when it needs to be a lot more vertical. So what we're going to do is we're going to have Ariana actually demonstrate a bad lift and have her lift.

I'm going to do it anyway because it's going to help me personally. Okay? So let's ruin your snatch real quick. You see it's going to kind of loop out around a little bit.

[BLANK Okay, not really good, all right? So what we want to do is we need it to be more vertical. All right, now if she's doing a good job of getting more close to her, a lot of times just into the arms, they just don't understand what they should be doing. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna have her do a high pull from elbows high and outside and then follow that up with a snatch, thinking of those same.

elbows high. One way to think about it, if you think like someone's behind you, okay, and they're going to be behind you pushing out your elbows, make sure you keep them out instead of getting back too early. That'll help her to bend her arms at the right time. Keep them, keep them are close.

Alright, let's go ahead, do that high pull first. Elbows high and outside. Now it's just going to go down, do good snatch, loose arms. There we go.

Loose arms, keeps it close, and then the ball is at the end. In the slot, down instead of trying to catch it as it comes back. Nice job. Nice job.

More bar path fixes

Your Snatch Is Inconsistent From the Power Position

Looping the bar and hitting a different position every rep.

Your Lats Are Not Engaged, So the Bar Swings Out

The bar drifts away from the body during the pull.

You Drag the Bar Up Your Thighs and Throw Your Hips

The bar never gets back into the hip, so the hips lunge forward to meet it.

Want the rest of this category?

Every bar path fix I've filmed, 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.