The Entire Reason we use Olympic Lifts with our athletes....

I have always weighed-out the teaching-time to benefit ratio when it came to using the 'full' lifts like power cleans and power snatches (and their variations) vs. a simple jump shrug from the hang position or a clean or snatch pull from the floor. Well, I then came across this study that compared power outputs of hang cleans vs. jump shrugs.

http://www.nsca-lift.org/Abstracts/detabs.asp?id=507

This is a pretty significant finding as jump shrugs take VERY LITTLE teaching time for most folks. It also makes the point that we don't need to 'catch' the weight to get the explosive benefits of many Oly lit variations. I emailed the primary author (who is a former college S&C coach) and he said he decided to look at this comparison since he did a lot of jump shrugs due to lack of teaching time and many athletes who just could not get proficient at the full movt. He said he thought the power outputs would be similar but never would have thought that the Jump Shrugs would actually result in greater numbers. Food for thought...especially if you are training individuals who might tend to be a bit 'motor-challenged' at times!