Auxiliary Jerk Workouts

Here is where my strength in weightlifting lies. As a senior in high school, I was able to jerk 300 pounds fairly easily, seeing as I rarely ever had to work on them my senior year as my clean was about 40 pounds behind. The reason my jerks progressed this far was I took them seriously. At the beginning, many people are much better at the jerk than the clean, but instead of focusing on the jerk, they for some reason just focus on their bench (in high school weightlifting). I did my workouts as I was told, and did all my auxiliaries with them and the gains came easily. Remember that there is no auxiliary that will improve your jerks faster than doing jerks themselves, so don't sacrifice effort on your main workouts to save energy for an auxiliary workout.

Standing press: Bread and butter for the auxiliary workouts of the jerk. With the bar on your shoulders bend your knees and drive the bar upwards, but instead of rising up on your toes or dropping below the bar keep your feet flat and drive the bar up with your shoulders. This will greatly improve your shoulder strength and your core strength which is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE in executing very heavy jerks. The main stress of doing a very heavy jerk is not in your shoulders but in your abs and chest trying to keep the bar stable for the first few seconds.

Seated press: Works and isolates the shoulders more than the standing press, but isolation isn't our priority. These are to develop weak shoulders. If your shoulders are doing just fine you may not want to do these workouts at all and put that effort into your jerks.

Dumbbell shoulder press: Yet another workout for your shoulders that isolates them. This builds stabilizer muscles which are important in keeping that bar straight overhead, so these are definitely something you want to do if the bar starts to go crazy overhead after every time you perform a jerk.

Dumbbell jerks: I'm willing to bet you've never seen anyone do these, simply because it feels weird, and I can agree to that. However, this exercise can greatly improve your stabilizer muscles and train you to keep the bar straight overhead. Make sure to use a heavy weight when you've gotten the motion down pat, otherwise you won't get the full effect.

Situps: You think I was kidding when I said that your abs are gonna hurt when you do a heavy jerk? I wasn't, you'll need to develop those abs for strength, which includes doing those decline situps while you play catch with a medicine ball. Oh yes, they hurt; but they help.

Pull ups/downs: These are good for developing your upper back which is going to have a great effect on your balancing act as well as your ability to control the bar on the way down after the jerk. If you cannot do a pull-up or enough of them, do pull downs while you develop that strength.

10 second holds: I almost forgot about these. These are the secret to success with stabilization. After you perform a jerk, hold it high above your head for 10 seconds. You'll develop that balance quick. Think it sounds easy, as you've already locked it out? Well, you'll see what I meant about the abs coming into play. If you can do it easily, good for you. Find someone else and watch them try, it won't be long before you find someone who finds this torture.

I was actually surprised as I wrote this article as to how many auxiliaries I used for the jerk over the years. Do these from the start and you won't have much trouble at all in reaching high poundage. Good luck!