Muscle Clean: How to and Exercise Guide

July 10, 2023

The muscle clean builds strength and power and improves Olympic lifting.

Are you ready for an explosive workout that targets your total body? Look no further than the muscle clean! This killer exercise works on your upper body pulling strength and gives your legs a power boost. It’s no wonder Olympic weightlifters and top athletes swear by this effective training move. This article will cover everything you need about this Olympic movement and alternatives like power clean to take your fitness game to the next level.

Improving your upper body pulling strength is a great way to work on the muscles in your back. You can’t ignore pulling routines if you want that good-looking V-shaped torso and strong posterior chain. Great upper body strength will help you perform exercises like rows, pullovers, and pull-ups better.

The muscle clean helps with your pulling strength and builds muscles in your upper and lower body. However, it’s only effective when done properly. This guide discusses how to do them properly, what muscles this exercise targets, and some variations you can try.

Muscle Clean Technique and Muscles Worked

Much like the power clean, the muscle clean is a full body movement that works on your shoulders and upper and lower body muscles. These include traps, spinal erectors, delts, glutes, quads, and hamstrings. This exercise also recruits other muscles, such as abs, lats, calves, and adductors.

This full-body exercise is an explosive movement that’ll increase your overall athletic performance. There are three pulls when doing this routine, requiring no movement under the bar. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do the muscle clean.

Start with your default position. Your feet are directly under the barbell, shoulders over the bar, face front, back straight, chest out, and a good overarm grip. (This will make a seamless, straight, and smooth transmission of the barbell from your feet to your shoulders.)
Your feet should feel centered and firm because that’s where all power originates when doing the first barbell pull.
Push firmly against the floor while maintaining the same back angle until the barbell is above the knee (your first pull).
Continue pushing against the floor with your legs, and once the bar gets to your thighs, you must aggressively push, extending your knees and hips upward with the bar like a mini hop with both feet, keeping the barbell close to the body throughout. (This is your second pull.)
The moment the knees have been extended, don’t rebend them. Throughout this movement, your knees and feet stay fixed and firm.
Pull the barbell upwards, always keeping it close to your body. (This is your third and final pull.)
Finally, to finish the muscle clean, spin the elbow around the bar and bring it home in a racking position. This allows the bar to arrive smoothly on your shoulders.

Note: The muscle clean doesn’t require squatting to catch the movement like a squat clean. When doing them, remember that the movement is slow off the floor and fast into your hips. If you’re a beginner, you can start this movement from the hang at the middle of your thigh till you master it.

Muscle Clean Benefits

The muscle clean is a high-intensity resistance exercise for building power. Routines like Olympic weightlifting can be very technical; muscle cleans help you master the movement pattern and improve your performance, that’ll carry over to other Olympic movements like snatches.

Bigger Traps and Back

Setting aside a day for this exercise or including them as part of your warmups builds your back and traps. This mainly happens during the vertical part of the movement.

Better Muscle Coordination

Muscle coordination affects your ability to get a group of muscles to perform a task. This study shows that Olympic weightlifters have better muscle coordination (1).

Improves Power Clean

Beginner and intermediate lifters can use the muscle clean to improve their strength and turnover when pulling, improving their power clean strength. Many athletes must remember to stay active with their forearms and traps when they finish their pull and transition during this movement. The muscle clean helps you perfect this to prevent the barbell from sliding forward off the shoulders excessively.

Better Pulling Height

Generally, the higher you pull the barbell, the better muscle activation. Getting into a more stable front rack position is easier if you lift your barbell higher. Muscle cleans teach you to drive your legs aggressively enough to pull the barbell higher.

Lower Impact Olympic Lift

Injuries to your knee, ankle, and hip can affect your training. You can train around these injuries with the muscle clean because it has a lower impact than a squat clean or power clean.

Power Development

Due to their explosive nature, cleans can help you improve your power output and development. This 2019 study shows athletes who include cleans in their training significantly increase power development (2). Improving your power development is especially beneficial for athletes.

Muscle Clean Alternatives

The muscle clean is a great Olympic lift that improves your muscles and power. Below are some alternatives.

Tall Muscle Clean

This muscle clean completely eliminates the lower body from your lift. There are no knee or hip extensions, you keep your feet firm and locked for good balance.

Hang Clean

The clean can also be performed from just the hang position. This method is recommended especially for beginners since it helps focus on upper body movements. When doing this, you keep the barbell “hanging” by on your thighs instead of starting on the floor.

Power Clean

The power clean is another clean variation that greatly mimics the muscle clean to develop your power and strength. In this routine, you catch the bar in a power position or partial squat.

Clean and Jerk

The clean and jerk is an Olympic competition movement with an overhead press tagged at the end of the power clean. This exercise also catches the bar in a power position or a partial squat before thrusting the barbell overhead.

FAQs

What does muscle clean work?

The muscle clean improves your power and strength and works on muscles in your upper body and posterior chain. Check the muscle clean guide above for a more in-depth look at the muscles involved.

What is a good muscle clean?

A good muscle clean is done with proper form. This has great carryover to muscle cleans and Olympic weightlifting as it ensures you hit the same regular positions.

Can you build muscle with cleans?

Yes, you can build your muscle with cleans since they involve your whole body in an explosive movement. It also improves your muscle coordination.

References

Santos, P. D. G., Vaz, J. R., Correia, P. F., Valamatos, M. J., Veloso, A. P., & Pezarat-Correia, P. (2021). Intermuscular Coordination in the Power Clean Exercise: Comparison between Olympic Weightlifters and Untrained Individuals-A Preliminary Study. Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 21(5), 1904. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21051904
James, L. P., Comfort, P., Suchomel, T. J., Kelly, V. G., Beckman, E. M., & Haff, G. G. (2019). Influence of Power Clean Ability and Training Age on Adaptations to Weightlifting-Style Training. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 33(11), 2936–2944. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000002534