This is a sample of some power cleans that I was doing last week as part of my training. The first video is probably the best technique of the two, but the second one looks like it was a little easier. What's the difference between the two? Look at the shoulder position before the initiation of the lift. In the first video, my shoulders are covering the bar and my hips are in a slightly higher position. This is a good thing. You want your shoulders covering the bar and the hips slightly elevated. This allows the best transfer of energy from your legs, through your torso and your upper body and into the bar.
The power clean is all about efficiency of energy transfer. Think of the body as a complex mechanical system such as a car drive train. Compare your body to the cars drive-train. Your legs are the engine and your hands are the tires. Everything in between is the clutch, transmission, drive shaft, differential, and axles. If any link between the back of the engine (where the clutch transfers energy to the transmission, your core) and the tires are loose or slack, then the engine has to work extra hard to transfer all of its energy to the tires. The more sloppy the drive train, the more parasitic power loss. This parasitic power loss is essentially the energy lost in rotating heavy parts, loose connections, and high friction areas of energy transfer (i.e. bearings). Any inefficiencies in one of the areas and you end up with less power at the wheels than you have at the drive shaft. That's also why companies, when marketing their new super-car, tell you the engines "brake" horsepower. This is because there is usually a considerable difference between brake horsepower (at the flywheel) and wheel horsepower; up to 30% or more in shitty or older cars. This is one big difference between your honda civic and a corvette (aside from the massive engine), the corvette is a much more efficient car at transferring energy from the engine to the wheels. This also happens to be the case with superior athletes. There are plenty of people with really strong legs, most of us just can't get that strength and power to hook, if you know what I mean.
So how do you make your clean technique revved up like the corvette? Before the bar moves you must set your core, pull your head into a neutral position (this one is debatable), elbow's out and straight, wrists curled, and activate all of the muscles you can that will be moving the bar. All this has to happen BEFORE the bar moves. It comes down to the theory that muscles can produce more power, or strength, earlier in a contraction if they are pre-activated. That means that you have to think of lifting the bar off of the floor without moving it yet. Try to push the floor out from underneath you without picking up the bar yet.
Think of it this way, grab a rubber band and a moderately heavy weight that the rubber band can support. Wrap the rubber band around the weight so you can pick it up with the band. Try two different timed pick-ups of the weight. With the first one, just let the weight rest on the table or ground and pull the band taught, but not stretched. Now, time it and see how long it takes for the weight to lose contact with the floor. Now try the same thing, except this time stretch the rubber band as far as you can before the weight comes off the floor. Stop. Now time how long it takes for the weight to come up off of the floor. See the difference?
Here is what is happening. When you pre-activate your muscles, you are essentially taking up some of that slack that exists in your musculoskeletal complexes, this is sometimes referred to as "Active Tension". This makes energy transfer much more energy efficient. Not only that, but you are also pre-activating large motor-neurons that would normally take a few milliseconds to activate, costing you a great deal of efficiency. This comes back to the size principle. Your body is smarter than you are, it turns out, and it will only use as many motor-units it need to to move that weight. So if you pre-activate, you're already part of the way there. This isometric contraction that occurs just milliseconds before you move the bar also helps increase your muscle tone and motor-unit synchronization, all factors that will allow you to be more efficient at moving that bar.
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