Power Clean Progression

One of the most important aspects of football is of course power and explosiveness. There are so many ways to develop this quality ranging from plyometrics, dynamic effort method, and Olympic lifts.
For our Olympic lift for football I have utilized the power clean. One of the first things I did was find a method to get them to be able to perform this complex lift with out having to "think" about too many little details in regards to form. This past Summer I attended a Conference at the University of Louisville. Here Strength Coach Joe Kenn demonstrated a very smooth progression he used to get his athletes to clean with decent form using three simple cues: Push, Jump, Punch.
The Push cue would be telling your legs to "push" through the floor to bring the weight off the ground. This motion is identical to a deadlift so many of the same rules apply in regards to feet placement and technique (neutral spine, suction cup feet, stay tight...).
The Jump is about as simple as it gets. As the bar approaches the knee caps all that should be going through your head is trying to jump through the roof. In this action your body should achieve triple extension. This meaning hips, knees, and ankles fully extended which would be very similar to a max vertical jump.
The punch is the indicator reminding the athlete to punch through the bar when ready to catch. This should be quick so that you can focus immediately on absorbing the force of the weight with your legs as quickly as possible.
To progress the team I used a sequence of lifts to gradually teach them portion of the power clean. I took a bottom up approach unlike the Olympic style top down mainly because that's how I learned it. The first lift was a simple explosive hip extension exercise, a explosive RDL to shrug. This is a great way to teach basic hip extension in the same explosive manner used in the power clean but in a much more controllable manner. Then I moved them to a Jump shrug from the ground. Constantly reinforcing the push and jump portion of the lift as well as triple extension. I followed that with a high pull from the floor then brought it to a full clean. This was 6 week process. Here are a few videos of one of the athletes going from the jump shrug, to the high pull, and then into a full clean. Sorry for the formatting they are sideways...


Above is the second progression to the Power Clean the Jump Shrug. Emphasizing "PUSH" and as the weight gets to the knees "JUMP".

Here is the third progression the High Pull. The arm action is unloaded and sets them up for the catch phase.


Here is the finished product. In terms of position of the body when in the catch phase preferably I would like them in sort of a quarter squat wanting them to work on absorbing force as much as possible.