Finding Your Clean Grip Width

In the Clean, your grip width is ultimately going to dictate where the bar makes contact in your power position and what your front rack ultimately ends up looking like. For most athletes, the bar should make contact between low to mid thigh.

Your front rack is important because in the Clean we’re trying to produce force and absorb force effectively. The first thing you want to do is look at your body’s natural carrying angle without the barbell. In this video, Wes rotates his hands out and we can see that there is a carrying angle that exists from his shoulder to his elbow to his hand.

As a result, his hands flare distal from his shoulders and we need to account for that in his front rack. By applying this same carrying angle to our front rack position, we’re going to produce a stable front rack that can support the weight through our Latissimus Dorsi muscles while bracing through our core properly.

When assigning your grip on the bar, make sure to use a hook grip. The hook grip allows you to relax your arms while maintaining connectivity to the barbell. Try to wrap at least your first two fingers (pointer and middle) around your thumb. Will this hurt at first? YES. It’s normal for you to experience discomfort in your thumbs but overtime this will go away.

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