CrossFit Games Masters athlete Jacinto Bonilla has shoulder pain, especially when he performs squat snatches. So Olympic-weightlifting coach Mike Burgener recommends he split snatch. The split snatch is often used by athletes who have flexibility issues and is more forgiving of technical errors.
“The pull’s exactly the same. You don’t pull a barbell up. You pull your body down into the split,” Burgener says while hosting several competitive CrossFitters at his home. “So you gotta get flexible—ankle, knee and hip flexibility—in that lunge, and you gotta learn how to create speed on the barbell and then get underneath it.”
Burgener warns that it’s not about pulling the bar up; it’s about moving quickly.
“You can do it if you get that torso straight up and down,” he tells the 72-year-old Bonilla.
Burgener recommends footwork drills.
“You more than anybody else have got to be thinking speed, speed, speed, speed right into that lunge.”
Video by Again Faster.
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Additional reading: Burg’s Eye View No. 4 by Mike Burgener, published March 7, 2011.