BBA Journal of Sports Performance - PEAK POWER OUTPUT BETWEEN HEX BAR JUMP SQUAT VS HANG CLEAN AND HANG SNATCH WITH SAME LOADS
For anyone that has done research or submitted to a journal, knows the amount of time, detail, revisions, and head-ache that goes into writing and researching for a paper.
Writing a proposal, getting proposal approval, getting IRB approval, collecting subjects, data collection, data analysis, submission to journals, rejection, another submission, revisions, re-submission, more revisions, re-submission, and finally acceptance. This process can take anywhere fem 6-18months from start to finish; not to mention the tons of stress and time and loss of confidence that comes from writing, sifting through hundreds of research articles, inevitable rejection, double digit revisions, and wondering if your work will ever be accepted.
For those of us who are full-time coaches, it is difficult to find the time and energy to dedicate to this type of consistent research.
With that being said, I do think every S&C coach should strive to produce a real scientific paper and be published by a journal.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
We have access to real, high level athletes - something a lot of research is missing
Give back and further the education of our field
Appreciate and understand of how difficult, tedious, and in-depth research can be. It's a pet peeve of mine when coaches, who have never published research, criticize those that do. You'll be humbled when you go through this process
While I do enjoy the process and the opportunity to have work published, I also know there is simply not enough hours in the day to get all the data I track published into a journal.
So instead, I will label articles in this section as BBA Journal of Sports Performance. This will be where I can dump research that we're conducting at BBA, but aren't working to get published into a journal.
With that being said, this work will all be conducted in a scientific manner - clear procedures, proper set-up, detailed data collection, and data analysis. There will be less detailed introductions and discussions - just want to present the data with a few closing thoughts.
The overall goal is for this data to be more than anecdotal or what another pet peeve of mine is when coaches say, "We've seen great results from INSERT EXERCISE/TOOL/MODALITY". Yet, they cannot produce results, a control group, or inferential statistics to validate their claims.
So without further ado, let's go into this BBA Journal Study.
PEAK POWER OUTPUT BETWEEN HEX BAR JUMP SQUAT
VS HANG CLEAN WITH SAME LOADS
In many strength and conditioning environments, the implementation of the Olympic lifts is very common. The Olympic lifts are suggested as a training modality to enhance power production and athletic performance (1,2). This notion has been commonly accepted and adopted by many S&C professionals, despite previous literature failing to provide unequivocal evidence to support this claim. The Olympic lifts fail to elicit the power production of a vertical jump (4), and sub-maximal deadlifts have been shown to produce similar power production (3) as the Olympic lift variations. Not only that, previous literature suggests that Olympic lift derivatives (pull, shrug variations) may provide a training stimulus that is as good, if not better than the full Olympic lift variation (5). Previous comparisons of the hang clean vs jump shrug, and high pull found that the jump shrug produced greater peak power output, peak GRF, and peak velocity than either the hang clean or the high pull. Also, the high pull produced greater peak power output and peak velocity than the hang clean (5,6).
This study aims to compare peak power outputs during the hang clean and hex bar jump squat.
Seven trained male subjects (n=7; age=24; years of Olympic lifting experience = 5.86). Each subject was a former collegiate athlete, who went through a college S&C program which included Olympic lift variations.
Participants went through their own individual warm-up before getting set-up for a hang clean and hex bar jump squat training session. Using a tendo unit, subjects started at an estimated 20% RM, and performed sets of 2 at full effort and intent to move the bar as fast as possible. The subjects would perform a set of 2 on the hang clean, wait 2-minutes and then perform a set of 2 on the hex bar jump squat with the same load. They would then rest another 2-minutes before performing repeating this process with an additional 5-15% load. This process continued until the participant reached a RM set of 2 in the hang clean. Every repetition was recorded with a tendo unit, and peak power output information was collected with every rep.
Each participant recorded between 16-20 data points (depending on how many sets they performed until reaching their RM set of 2) for each the hex bar jump squat and hang clean, for a total of 130 data points for each experimental group.
Using a paired T-Test (p< 0.05), significant difference (p=0.02) was found between the hex bar jump squat and hang clean (3263.49 watts vs 3042.66 watts) in favor of the hex bar jump squat. Peak power output, in matched loads, was greater in the hex bar jump squat than the hang clean.
Coaches may want to consider further evaluating the effects of long-term Olympic lifting programming vs alternative means of power production. These results show that the hex bar jump squat produced higher amounts of peak power output in trained subjects and may be a better alternative to the hang clean.
Michael Zweifel CSCS-
Owner and Head of Sports Performance. National Player of the Year in Division 3 football. Works with athletes including NFL, NHL, and Olympic athletes.
In House Research