Smith Machine Hang Power Clean

🎯 Hamstrings🏋️ MachineIntermediateCompoundGlutes (2°)Lower back (2°)Quadriceps (2°)Shoulders (2°)Traps (2°)

How to do the smith machine hang power clean

  1. Position the bar at knee height and load it to an appropriate weight.
  2. Take a pronated grip on the bar outside of shoulder width and unhook the bar from the machine. Your arms should be fully extended with your head and chest up. Your elbows should be pointed out with your shoulders back and down. Your hips should be back, loading the tension into the hamstrings. This will be your starting position.
  3. Initate the movement by forcefully extending the hips and knees, accelerating into the bar. Ensure that you keep your arms straight during this part of the motion.
  4. Upon full extension, rebend the hips and knees to lower your receiving position.
  5. Allow the arms to flex at this point, rotating the elbows around the bar to receive it on your shoulders.
  6. Extend through the hips and knees to come to a standing position with the bar racked on your shoulders to complete the movement.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the hamstrings, which extend the hip and bend the knee, frequently at both joints in the same repetition.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the glutes finish hip extension; the lower back keeps the spine from rounding; the quadriceps straighten the knee and take load on the descent.

The shoulders and traps take a share of the work as well.

Every exercise for:HamstringsGlutesLower backQuadricepsShoulders

How this movement works

The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

The machine fixes the path, removing the balance demand and letting you train close to failure without a spotter. The cost is the stabilising work a free weight would have made you do.

Every exercise using:Machine

These train the hamstrings too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 86 hamstrings exercises in this database, 35 are listed at intermediate level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.