Does Bar Height Or Bar Speed Matter More In The Snatch & Clean?

What's more important for the snatch and clean? Bar height or bar speed? Bar height does matter, but it's useless without adequate speed. Think about a high pole. The bar goes higher than it does in a snatch or clean, but you can't get under it unless the weight is really light. That's because the upward speed drops quickly after you finish extending your legs and hips and is zero at the bar's peak height. Without adequate upward momentum on the bar to briefly continue its upward motion as you move under it, you would have to actually lift the bar up, or at least hold it at its current height with your upper body as you squatted under it. If you don't quite understand what I mean, do a snatch pole and pause at the top, and then try to get under it. You extended your body just as much, you got the bar to the same level as in the extension of a heavy snatch, but it's impossible to actually snatch it without the upward speed on the bar. If you think you just need more height, repeat that process with a high pole and see how it goes. So as a general rule, just forget about bar height. Quit asking how high the bar needs to be for you to get under it, because that depends on the bar's speed, the weight, your timing, and your speed under. Height on its own is meaningless. Just focus on maximal acceleration in your pole and no hesitation at the top. Now here's where it gets extra confusing for a lot of athletes. The bar will continue rising as you pull down under it, more than it would if you let go of the bar at the top of the pole. There's more to the bar's continuing upward motion than just the momentum it has from the leg and hip extension force. Your active pull with the arms against the bar to start moving your body down under it preserves some of its upward momentum, meaning it will reach a higher point as a result of that pull under than it would without it. In other words, you're not really lifting the bar with your upper body, you're just helping it continue rising longer with the momentum you've already created. This is just a convenient side effect of using the bar's inertia as the anchor to accelerate your body down under it. That pull to make your body stop moving up and start moving down is putting additional upward force into the bar. This is much more dramatic in the snatch than in the clean. In the clean, that initial pull down with the upper body is very brief and often nearly unnoticeable. The distance the bar and body have to travel relative to each other is much less than in the snatch, so more of that movement under the bar can be accomplished with the existing force from the second pull alone. Because the distance the bar and body have to cover in the snatch is about double that of the clean, it requires a longer downward pulling effort before the actual turnover begins, which means longer upward force on the bar in reaction, and therefore more continued elevation as you move down under it.