TRANSITIONING FROM A POWERLIFTER TO WEIGHTLIFTER PART 2 (Preparing)
Now that we've gone over mobility for weightlifting, we'll go over what you can do while still powerlifting to help ease the transition. All of these shouldn't detract very much from your focus on powerlifting. How much effort you need to spend on this part relies much on your natural athleticm, how long you have spent powerlifting, and flexibility. The most important part here is the ability to use your quads, aka leg drive, as the main mover for clean/snatch deadlifts, because it's vital for a good first and second pull.
1. Learn how to use leg drive. Essentially, this means learning to be quad dominant in everything you do. Squats, deadlifts, push presses, etc. This often takes a good while to learn because your motor patterns for powerlifting is typically very posterior-chain dominant.
2. Switch to high-bar squatting/clean deadlifts. If you can, have sumo deadlifts be your main deadlift movement for powerlifting. Conventional deadlifts and clean deadlift motor patterns interfere with each other, but sumo deadlifts won't cause that issue. This is to help learn to use your quads for leg drive and start adapting to a motor pattern more beneficial to weightlifting.
(Start at 1:13 in the video)
High-bar Squatting:
1. make it as quad dominant as possible throughout the movement. The more quad dominant you are when squatting, the more naturally upright you will be.
2. Don't hyperextend your lower back.
Clean/snatch deadlifts: This might be difficult to get used to. In powerlifting, you pull up and back, but in weightlifting you pull straight up, using mainly quads, while keeping your bodyweight over the bar. To accomplish this, push through the balls of your feet off the ground and eventually your weight will be on your heels as the bar gets to your knees. Your shoulders still stay over the bar. You should feel the weight on your lower back. Your hamstrings should be loaded during the setup. Compared to powerlifting, there is a good amount more emphasis on your lower back for maintaining your body's positions throughout this movement. Go slow off the ground, it's actually better to do it slow to make it easier to develop and understand proper positions through the lift.
Most attention should be spent on this movement, because the better you can do clean/snatch deadlifts properly, the the struggle you will have with weightlifting technique will decrease by a factor of 10. Much of the hindrance in learning weightlifting is having a bad motor pattern developed by powerlifting when pulling off the ground.
3. Sit in the hole as often and long as you can. Start overhead squatting regularly, while staying as upright as you can. One of the biggest issues powerlifters have is not being comfortable being in the hole, because they have no reason to ever really go below parallel. Getting comfortable being in the hole as soon, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, as possible will be very beneficial.
4. Start doing push presses. Learning how to push press like a weightlifter will help tremendously in learning to jerk.
Initiate the dip by pushing his knees out while staying on his heels with a slight dip, then explosively drive up with leg drive. Keep torso vertical throughout the movement. Keep a tight back. Squeeze your ass entire movement as well.
5. Strengthen and bodybuild your lower back, shoulders, and quads as much as you can, without losing flexibility.