IMPORTANT CONCEPTS OF WEIGHTLIFTING FOR POWERLIFTERS

While these are all things that weightlifting also need to work on, in here I'm focusing on what powerlifters need to pay even more attention to because these movement patterns and concepts run counter to powerlifting movement patterns and will feel very alien in the beginning. Special attention will be needed otherwise bad movement patterns will persist and hamper your ability to develop good weightlifting technique.

Leg Drive: Leg movement in weightlifting is quad dominant. This does not mean that hamstrings and glutes don't matter, they very much do, but quads are the primary mover. Quads is where your power will come from. At first leg drive will feel very awkward and feel much less powerful than using your posterior chain, but that's mainly because you aren't used to it. A major reason why leg drive must be used over posterior chain is because using leg drive enables a much more vertical and straight bar path. 

For pulling off the ground, on the setup you'll load your hamstrings and squeeze your glutes, then push through the floor with the balls of your feet off the ground. For many people, it also helps to push your knees out throughout the pull off the ground as well. 

For jerks and push presses, it helps to push your knees out to initiate the dip, rather than thinking of dipping. This because due to low-bar squat motor patterns, the idea of "dipping" will often be to stick your ass out as you dip, which is something you 100% do not want to do. Stay on your heels throughout the movement as long as you can, and keep your ass and back tight. Powerlifters usually won't have an issue of shoving their hips forward, but if you do, then it may be helpful to think of sitting on a really high stool rigth below you.

Staying over the bar: In this, you keep your shoulders over the bar and the back angle same for the majority of the first pull. This is another thing that's going to feel very foreign for you, because staying over the bar is going to feel like a weaker position, your lower back will complain, and you will want to default to pulling back. Well, that's just too bad, deal with it. You don't want to be in the strongest position possible, you want to be the position that's best for weightlifting.

Weightlifting as a sequence of movement: Weightlifting is a kinetic chain of movement. Just like throwing a football, doing a high-kick, or throwing in judo, there is a sequence of movement. For weightlifting, the movement for the second pull starts in your hips, then knees, then ankles, and immediately transitions to the third pull, which consists of shrugging with your traps and then actively using your arms to put the bar into place. For snatches and cleans, you'll want to pull off the ground slowly, which shouldn't be phyiscally challenging because you should already have a strength basis due to powerlifting, and wait until the power position before violenting extending. The natural thing to do for you as a powerlifting is to pull off the ground as fast and hard, so being sure to pull very slowly off the ground will help you offset this habit.