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Very Dumb Training Recommendations: Part 4

Why dumbbell power cleans are for dumbbells

Old-time strongmen sometimes promoted themselves by performing unique feats that required not just strength but also a considerable amount of technique – and often special apparatus. These tools of the trade were important because strongman shows often involved audience participation. So whereas an exceptionally strong farmhand might be able to lift a considerable amount in the two-hand deadlift with a barbell, he might struggle to break handcuffs, blow up a water bottle until it burst or perform a one-arm snatch.

In the modern era, one of my favorite strongmen was Mike Dayton. Dayton, winner of the 1967 AAU Teenage Mr. America, followed his bodybuilding success with strongman exhibitions. He was known for tremendous strength in his fingers, hands and forearms. Among his strongman feats were being able to snap two baseball bats in half, rip apart a license plate, bend a dime, tear a Los Angeles phone book in half, and break a pair of bolt cutters and a police nightstick. Dayton also developed his neck muscles to the point that he could hang from a hangman’s noose and survive a six-foot drop!

Such feats of strength are certainly entertaining, but just because they were performed by someone and there are world records kept for these events, it doesn’t mean that you should be including them in your training. Especially those events that involve a hangman’s noose.

The Rise of Modern Weightlifting
Weightlifting was one of the sports introduced in the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, and the competition included single- and two-handed lifts. The single-hand lifts were eliminated in the 1928 Olympic Games. There were three lifts contested through the 1972 Olympics: the clean and press, the snatch, and the clean and jerk. For many reasons, including the stress the lift places upon the lower back, the press was eliminated after the 1972 Olympics, and since then, only two lifts have been contested. After the 1972 Olympics many individuals with exceptional upper body strength tended to be more attracted to powerlifting and later strongman competitions because they had a greater potential to excel in these strength sports.

In the strength coaching profession, workouts tended to focus on one weightlifting variation, such as the power clean or the squat and bench press. Chris Carlisle, who has been the head strength coach at the University of Southern California since 2001, set a strength standard of “3-4-5” for his football players, meaning that they would be considered balanced and ready to play at the highest levels of college football if they could power clean 300 pounds, bench press 400 pounds and squat 500 pounds. Incidentally, Reggie Bush, winner of the 2005 Heisman Trophy, could power clean 330, bench press 425 and squat 550 while he attended USC.

The point of this short weightlifting history lesson is to show how strength training for athletes has evolved from a wide variety of exercises to a few core exercises and their variations. Excellent variations are the front squat for the back squat, and the incline bench press for the bench press; also, rather than having their athletes perform power cleans, a strength coach might have them perform power snatches instead. All excellent choices. What is not an excellent variation is the one-arm dumbbell power clean.

A Closer Look at Stupidity
The dumbbell power clean is one of the best ways to get someone injured. At my former training center in Arizona we treated several athletes – and strength coaches for that matter – who were injured from performing this exercise. I could just leave this discussion with these comments, but seeing as how the dumbbell power clean has become such a popular exercise, I’ll take the time to explain why I consider it one of the most useless exercises on the planet.

The first issue I have with this exercise is that it’s difficult to imagine what exactly you’re trying to accomplish by doing it! I heard that it develops strength and power, but it cannot do so to a high level because relatively light weights are used. Because of the technique involved, an individual who can power clean 300 pounds with a barbell is going to struggle using much more than 100 pounds safely in this exercise. Even if this same individual had exceptional technique and could use as much as 150 pounds, that would only represent 50 percent of their 1-rep maximum; as such, the muscles used in the power clean won’t get much of a strength training effect from this exercise.

In competitive weightlifting, the barbell is caught on top of the clavicles. Looking at a lifter from the side, you should be able to draw an imaginary vertical line from the middle of the barbell straight down through the middle of the hips to the middle of the ankles. This posture distributes the weight vertically among the major muscles of the body. The key, as my weightlifting mentor Pierre Roy says, is to achieve a position of “balance with the barbell and the athlete.”

If the lifter shoots their hips back, this action places more stress on the knees and also on the lower back. Further, if a lifter is attempting to lift the weight overhead in a jerk, shifting their hips back excessively during the dip for the jerk will cause the bar to be thrown forward, making it much more difficult to successfully complete this phase of the lift. But even then, we’re talking about using a barbell. When performed with dumbbells, the diameter of the dumbbell plate forces the weight to be positioned well ahead of the center of gravity of the athlete, which increases the load on the disks far more than a barbell would.

Next, the greater the chest circumference of the athlete, the more the catch part of the power clean becomes injurious to the shoulder joint. The diameter of the dumbbell plates puts it farther ahead of the axis of rotation of the shoulder. The muscles of the shoulder most likely to be strained by dumbbell power cleans are the teres minor and the infraspinatus, which come into play in the external rotation of the shoulder. The strain comes from these muscles trying to stabilize the dumbbells once they fall towards the shoulders at the last part of the catch. Further, the catching portion of this exercise results in a rapid overstretching of the forearm muscles that can present itself as lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow – pain on the outside of the elbow) or medial epicondylitis (golfer’s elbow – pain on the inside of the elbow).

Because of the inherent genetic variations in the angle of fusion of the wrists, wrist strains are a big risk when performing dumbbell power cleans. A wrist injury can be devastating to just about any athlete. Bob Alejo, a former strength coach for the Oakland A’s, said that one of the reasons so many strength coaches for professional baseball players were reluctant to use Olympic lifts was that they were afraid of injuring their wrists. “That wrist is going to help hold a bat, a ball or a glove at some point. No matter how strong your back or how much your vertical jump improves, without a healthy wrist in baseball, you’re done.”

Most dumbbells do not have revolving sleeves, which reduce the stress on the wrists and allow for more natural movements. One reason thick-bar training is not as popular as it should be is that the first thick bars did not rotate, which put high levels of stress on the elbow. Performing dumbbell power cleans with fixed dumbbell handles creates more torque in the shoulder, elbows and wrists upon the catch, with disastrous consequences. All the dumbbells at the Poliquin Strength Institute, which are thick-handled, have rotating sleeves; among the few companies that make such equipment are Uesaka and Black Iron Strength. Oh, and most kettlebells also have fixed handles, which is why it is equally stupid to use a kettlebell to perform power cleans.

The bottom line is that the risks of performing the dumbbell power clean far outweigh the potential benefits. Yes, the dumbbell power clean may be an interesting lift to include in a strongman exhibition and is certainly a part of weightlifting history, but as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”