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

4. Stability and Strength

Everything felt great coming of the floor, the transition was impeccable, hit that bottom to receive the lift lighting fast but you just didn’t receive it correctly or were unable to stand up with it. There could be a number of reasons why it wasn’t a successfully lift but for the sake of our conversation, we will target stability and strength.

The following three exercises need to be programmed for our athletes

• Snatch Balance

A trifecta of mobility, footwork, speed getting under the bar. Avoid letting your torso shift / incline forward as you dip and focus on maintaining a vertical torso throughout the movement:

• Tempo Overhead Squats

Slow eccentrics, with a pause in the bottom position, and slow concentric with a short pause at the top can provide the stimulus we want (for example 3,3,3,1) This might appear counter intuitive to our discussion on greater speed, but we also need to be able to control that speed in a proficient manner. This is where the temp overhead squats can prove very useful, with added focus on balanced foot in bottom position.

• The Press In Snatch

Too often athletes rush out of the bottom. Similar to the Overhead Squat above, in the press in the snatch, an athlete will spend an extended time in the receiving position while also developing strength in the overhead once we are under the barbell. The press in the snatch will also expose any glaring mobility restrictions in the upper body:

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