How I Finally Hit a Snatch PR
If you’re following along on Instagram you know I hit a big snatch personal record last week. The snatch is 50 percent of the Olympic sport weightlifting. It’s highly technical and an incredible display of athleticism, power, timing and coordination. It’s hard to learn, difficult to practice and takes many years to gain an understanding of the complex movement.
There are a few factors that helped me hit this big 25 pound PR that took at least 6 years for me to break. Hopefully you can learn a thing or two about training from them.
No heavy attempts for a while.
In the spring or summer 2021 I hit a 185 snatch. That was the most recent time I had snatched that weight, which had been my top lift since 2017. In the fall of 2021, I followed a once or twice per week snatch plan for a couple months. I drilled the technical skills, got a lot of reps in, and limited the percentages to keep every single rep as proficient as I could. I planned on this leading into a big PR attempt in January but instead I got sick, felt unmotivated and shifted my training for other things, like the Hyrox.
Lots of light snatches.
Even though it had been a while since I was snatching was a staple in my program, I would often use lighter weight power snatches in conditioning based workouts at 95 or 135 pounds, usually under fatigue, which despite my previous views on it, can be an excellent way to grease the groove and become more efficient.
Big squatting.
For the past two years I’ve been trying to build my squatting strength. It’s a challenging movement for me and it’s expensive for my body. Even though I haven’t hit a PR since December 2021, my base level strength is at an all time high. When I would miss olympic lifts in the past, it was because I would get stuck standing up the weight. This year, that’s been no problem.
DB Snatches.
I’ve been snatching dumbbells a lot this year. I can think of at least 4 workouts where I’ve snatched the 100 pound dumbbell. Each time it got a little easier, and that last time, I was running hills and snatching, and I thought, I better test my snatch soon, this is feeling better than ever and I wonder if it’s going to carry over to the barbell. That was in October.
Physical therapy.
I’ve been working diligently to fix some imbalances and getting help figuring out precisely what my body needed got me on track and helped me make sure I wasn’t slacking on my daily mobility.
Body weight.
I’ve put on some muscle mass over the past two years and I weigh about 220 pounds right now compared to 195 pounds back when I set the original PR. As the saying goes, mass moves mass.
No pressure.
Since there wasn’t a big lead up to this I had no expectations. I had a PR attempt on my mind for months, and I wasn’t even thinking about it last Friday. I started to warm up and thought, today’s the day.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
