The Best Single Weight Exercise

Few regular gym trainers do the single best weight exercise there is. Its greatness lies in how complete it challenges so many muscle groups with such an intensity that in only a few repetitions it becomes a cardiovascular exertion.

You may never have seen it performed and you could look in a lot of gyms before you saw one.

The ‘power snatch’ is a variation on the olympic quick lift, the ‘snatch’. Essentially it is one single continuous explosive pull of a barbell from the floor to overhead. It is a skilled motion best learned with an empty bar or a broom handle and some great lifters have mastered it this way.

While a continuous motion, the lift is completed through a series of ‘handoffs’ from one muscle group to another as the bar rises. The cardio vascular challenge results from the number of large muscles used during the lift.

The lifter will not be puffing after one such 2-second exertion, but panting after 10 repetitions with even a light weight is normal.

The combination of weight, explosion and speed generates a large amount of horsepower.

It was calculated that the great American heavyweight weightlifter of the 50s and 60s, Norbert Schemansky generated about 5.5 horsepower in his then world record snatch of over 360 pounds.

That, however, was not a “power snatch” but a regular competitive snatch using the “split style”, now superseded by the squat snatch.