How to Improve Your Footwork, Speed and Stability in The Snatch

3. Change Of Direction

Now that we have laid a foundation of suppleness and speed, we can move forward to the fun part. The Olympics lifts can be described in many ways, but if I had to describe them in three words it would be “change of direction”. We go up so we can come down. It sounds very simple but much more difficult to execute.
My go to exercise is the tall snatch and my favorite part of the tall snatch (or tall clean) is watching athlete’s brains spin as they try to figure it out. There is no counter-movement involved and is a great transition from the first two points. With the tall snatch, we isolate and emphasize the pull under the bar and focus on speed and aggressiveness. Imagine a person’s face you really dislike and punch under that bar.

Tall Snatch:

If you or your gym has the equipment, snatches or cleans from the blocks are also great at developing the speed and acceleration of the bar to each position from different pulling positions for the explosive change of direction required in the successful completion of both lifts. Again, no countermovement is involved as we focus on the transition to get under and receive the bar.