What's a Snatch

There's a sport called weightlifting. The athletes perform two lifts. One of them is called a snatch.

The snatch is highly complex though the goal is simple, get the barbell from the floor to overhead in one motion.

At Gain, we distill from best practices. Through solving the problem of how to get the most weight overhead from the ground, these athletes have taught us valuable lessons on how to train power, strength and coordination.

Due to its complexity and learning curve, most people don't need to snatch a barbell. It falls into the risk vs reward category for me as a coach. Only the dedicated should take on the challenge. However, many people can easily learn a snatch variation with a dumbbell (or kettlebell) and the benefits are practically the same.

Dumbbell snatches provide us with:

Learning to drive our hips forward by pushing our feet down (aka how to jump)

Proper landing mechanics

Pulling

Transferring force from lower body to upper body

Stabilizing

It demands coordination, timing and concentration.

It will develop explosiveness, strength, skill and transferability to other athletic movements and scenarios.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain