Why the Snatch is the Best Lift and Why You Should Love it

The Snatch, some people love it and others hate it. In the past 8 years of my Olympic Weightlifting career, the Snatch has easily become my favorite of the two disciplines. In this article, I want to convince you why you too should love the Snatch and should make it a regular part of your training!

1) Core Stability

The Snatch in my opinion is unparalleled in creating a solid and stable core. The reality is, most of us have gone about core strengthening all wrong. Instead of using exercises that strengthen our ability to keep a neutral spine, we opt for using exercises that encourage flexion in our spine such as crunches and sit ups. The problem with these exercises is that you do not learn how to stabilize your core and resist outside forces. The Snatch will teach you how to do this, which will also prevent back injury!

2)Explosive Power and Improved Reaction Time

If you ever watch a professional Olympic Weightlifter, you will be amazed at the speed at which they are able to lift the weight off the ground and pull themselves underneath into the catching position. While it takes years to become truly proficient in the Snatch, all it takes is repetition and consistent practice in order to start become more explosive, fast, and athletic.

3)It Will Make You Smarter

Snatching will improve your over all body awareness. More specifically it is called proprioception, which is defined in dictionary.com as, "the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself. " Studies have linked training that increases you proprioception to an increase in your brain's gray matter, which is helps with memory, learning, attention span, and brain function as a whole!

4) Flexibility and Mobility

Anyone who has ever Snatched probably can remember the first time they tried to drop into the bottom of a Snatch. For most people, they feel like their shoulders, hips, knees, ankles and wrists are going into all sort of positions that they usually don't go and believe it or not this is good! The Snatch forces you to increase your mobility in ways that are rarely worked. When you do not regularly do things to improve your hip, should, and ankle mobility, the lack of use will increase their immobility. Stiffness in joints leads to unhealthy joints, which will make you more prone to injury. If you consistently Snatch, your overall mobility WILL be improved and the stiffness that has slowly been setting into your joints will start to lessen.

5) Improved Self Confidence

The beautiful thing about learning how to do something that 90% plus of the people that exercise don't know how to do is what it does to your self confidence. Snatching is an extremely technical exercise, no, it is THE single most technical thing you can learn in weight training. So as you learn how to Snatch and start to PR you should feel very self accomplished! You deserve to! Snatching looks cool and people that can Snatch automatically can impress most people at the local gym.

6) IT IS FUN!!!

Once you have worked your way through the initial learning pains and you see the benefits, that are listed above, coming to fruition YOU WILL HAVE FUN! Yes, it still might be frustrating at times, but the art of the movement will be something that you will learn to appreciate!

There is much, much more that could be written about the Snatching and it's benefits. Hopefully, this will peak your interest and motivate you to go and Snatch!