Snatch Balance

🎯 Quadriceps🏋️ BarbellIntermediateCompoundCalves (2°)Glutes (2°)Hamstrings (2°)Shoulders (2°)Triceps (2°)

How to do the snatch balance

  1. Begin with the feet in the pulling position, the bar racked across the back of the shoulders, and the hands placed in a wide snatch grip.
  2. Pop the bar with an abrupt dip and drive of the knees, and aggressively drive under the bar, transitioning the feet into the receiving position.
  3. Receive the bar locked out overhead near the bottom of the squat. The torso should remain vertical, lowering the hips between the legs.
  4. Continue to descend to full depth, and return to a standing position. Carefully lower the weight.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the calves control the ankle and hold the heel position; the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.

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

Every exercise for:QuadricepsCalvesGlutesHamstringsShoulders

How this movement works

The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.

It is filed under olympic weightlifting. The bar must move fast enough for you to get underneath it, which makes this a skill rather than a grind: low repetitions, well short of where fatigue starts editing technique.

What you need

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

Every exercise using:Barbell

These train the quadriceps 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 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 62 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.