Whole Body · Barbell
Power Clean
The power clean is a weightlifting movement in which the lifter pulls a barbell explosively from the floor and catches it racked across the front of the shoulders in a partial squat.
Also called Powerclean. orcatrain matches these names when you search the movement catalogue.
How is the power clean performed?
The lifter sets up over the bar as for a deadlift, then pulls it from the floor, accelerating as it passes the knees and extending the hips, knees and ankles in one explosive movement. As the bar rises, the lifter pulls under it and catches it racked on the front deltoids with the elbows driven forward, receiving it in a partial squat — the "power" position — rather than a full one, then stands up.
What does the power clean train?
The power clean trains rate of force development: how quickly force can be produced, rather than how much can be produced given time. That makes it a different quality from the powerlifts, and it is technically the most demanding movement in this list — the limit is usually coordination and timing rather than raw strength. It is commonly trained for that reason in athletic preparation rather than for maximal load.
How does orcatrain score the power clean?
Scored on its own as an orcatrain strength score, computed with the DOTS coefficient. Be aware that the coefficient and the one-rep-max estimate behind it were both built around slow maximal strength, so a power clean score should be read as a marker of your own progress rather than as directly comparable to a press or a pull.
Every scored set is turned into an estimated one-rep max, and that estimate is scored with the DOTS coefficient against your bodyweight and sex — so a set is comparable with your own past work and with lifters of a different size. Sets above ten repetitions are recorded but not scored: the estimate is a curve fit that stops being honest past that point, so orcatrain returns nothing rather than a confident guess. Weights are stored in kilograms.
Track your progress on Power Clean.
Movement names and groupings come from Strength Level, where you can also see their strength standards for this movement. DOTS is computed by orcatrain itself.