Done An Axle Continental Clean And Press

March 16, 2011 Filed in: CrossFit | Strongman

I like to think of San Francisco CrossFit as an outdoor playground for people that want to be fit. Instead of jungle gyms, there are pullup bars. Instead of slides, there are weights and barbells.

My friend Carl Paoli, the “pocket gymnast”, is a trainer at this fine establishment and I enlisted (begged for) his help with one particular piece of equipment I was interested in, the axle.

An axle (or fat bar) differs from a regular barbell in a couple of ways:

-It’s much thicker. The thicker the bar, the less leverage the hands and fingers have while holding it. It’s definitely hard on the forearms and hands.
-It doesn’t spin. The bar is fixed, so when your hands roll, the bar does too.

Because of these things, it’s good practice to do a continental clean when you’re lifting it. A continental clean is getting the bar from the ground to the shoulders by any means possible, but in general, it usually means taking the bar to the midsection, resting it there, and pulling again to get it to the shoulders.

I started with a deadlift switch grip.