Concern for wrists and elbows is a realistic one with the HPC. I always use snug velcro wraps on the wrist for my HPC work. The elbows (and knees and lower back) should be warm and stretched in advance as well, and I wear a good pull over knee wrap (Mueller Hg80) and sometimes rubber elbow wraps, too. of course, I'm nearly 55

That's a foolish fear to have. I've NEVER seen someone hit themselves in the face with the bar when doing any sort of clean. I've seen someone fall backwards, but that's when I was in high school. The kid was doing way too much weight and from the floor. It's pretty much a given that he was doing them improperly. That would be much harder to do from the hang position. If the weight is too heavy you aren't even going to get close to a position that could get you in trouble– you'll simply pull the bar a few inches and it will come right back down. I suppose it's possible that you'll drop it, but that's not nearly as dangerous.

Excellent job of bringing these types of lifts to the mass audiences.

The other day I was talking with a co-worker and he wanted some advice as to what he should be doing to get a total body workout… I told him… bra, all you have to do is look into olympic type lifts…

Love your site.

peace,
zz

The power clean is definitely a great exercise. I would highly recommend avoiding higher reps though, as the fatigue they create will wreak havoc on your technique and speed, which not only hurts your results but can also set you up for an injury.

Train hard!

Diana –

Wow, that’s a pretty serious caloric deficit. Granted, there is a lot of individual variation, but a standard maintaince intake for a 5’4” 112lbs SEDENTARY female is around 1600kCal a day. If perform even some modest workouts you’re getting into the 1900-2000calories/day range.
Consistently holding a deficit, as you seem to be, could be part of the problems. I can dig up study links if you want, but in English, you’re probably kicking your body into starvation mode most of the time. There’s some evidence that a severe calorie deficit can actually make your body more reluctant to get rid of fat, though judging by your numbers it sounds like you don’t have much excess bodyfat to begin with. There’s also a whole slew of health problems this can lead too – in short, it’s a really bad idea.

Without pictures, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of you gaining too much muscle too easily. Nearly all the female sprinters I’ve encountered were well muscled and lean, but not overly large. Marion Jones with a tad large, but she was also (caught) taking steroids.
Of course I’m not sure what your goals are, if you goal is to look like this:
(Chris…my blog isn't letting me put links in some of the comments…they disappear)
I’d suggest a long, serious look in the mirror. This girl has nearly no muscle – she’s pretty obviously very “skinny fat” ( i.e. not terribly low body fat, but very thin with nothing to her. The heavy airbrushing is a good way to tell she’s not as lean as they make her appear here).

I don’t mean this to be overly harsh. If anything, the completely unrealistic idea of beauty that is pushed on women gets me pretty angry. Most women are not going to look like this, ever. Personally, I’m not sure why they’d want to. These women don’t really look like this without a ton of editing.

Thank you so much for your help, I truly appreciate it!
Diana

You seem to have a fairly uncommon problem. A few train of though questions and observations. I apologize in advance, since looking over this post, it appears to have gotten rather long winded.

What would you describe your general build as? Working out can do wonders, but if you're naturally endomorphic (broad shouldered, well muscled) attempting to go for a the model look is going to be conter productive. I'm not trying to be negative in any way – I'm certain you can make gains with what you have, but a lot of genetics is just what you have to work with.

When I was in highschool it really frustrated me (as an insecure adolescent) when I realized that despite all the lifting and getting stronger, I was never going to have the large football player build.
Even with an additional 30 pounds of muscle on my frame it wasn't me though.

The exercise selection is a little more problamatic. If you're really concerned about avoiding size (again, most women don't need to be, but you might be an exception to this genetically) you can avoid the 8-12 rep range that will cause the most hypertrophy. Heavier lower rep sets (1-6) or higher rep ones (14-20) will both produce gains in strength (and muscular endurance) without as much mass gain, though there will still be some.

You're correct that you won't gain as much if you don't eat for it, but this is a tough balance, since a calorie deficit (especially post workout) will interfere with recovery. You may need to resort to really regimented eating, such as tracking everything you eat via fitday.com.

The idea of burning more fat doing cardio on am empty stomach has largely been debunked.

In summary, to approach it seriously, you need to be able to answer the following questions:

How much are you eating in a typical day? What are the ratios of carb, prot & fat?

About what is your maintaince caloric intake?

What does your training program look like at the moment?

What is your current body type (height, weight, estimated bodyfat % and level of training)?

What are your goals?

Thanks Tom

Definition is (for the most part) just a function of the development of the muscle, and the amount of fat over it. There is no magic rep range for definition. Lifting in a certain rep range will not "build definition in the muscles".

If you want to be more defined work on your diet (so there is less fat covering the muscles). The effect of various rep ranges is pretty well understood, though obviously there is some overlap.

1-6 reps:

Will lead to strength gains, primarily through increased neuromuscular recruitment. I.e. without the jargon this means that the central nervous system becomes more effective at firing all the fibers in the muscle. This is of a lot of interest for athletes, since it means you can increase strength without large increases in size. (i.e. better strength to weight ratio).

8-12 rep:

More hypertrophy. You'll see the biggest gains in size in this rep range. It tends to stimulate the muscle fiber types most susceptable to increasing their size. Obviously if they get larger the absolute strength will improve (75% of 100 is still more than 75% of 90).

12-15 reps (and up)

You'll see more gains in local muscular endurance here. At higher rep ranges you can see some (not much) decrease in size.

Individual differences in the relative percentage of muscle fiber type will to some extend dictate which type of training the muscles respond to best. Also as I mentioned, there is a good deal of overlap. Heavy sets of 5 or 6 WILL increase muscle size, just not to the extend that a rep range optimized for this will.

This indicates that a great deal of individual trial and error is called for.