I like to do power cleans. I train with a barbell because, next to rugby, it’s the only form of exercise I’ve found I will perform consistently and enjoy.
My goals for training are to take inches off my waist. Play recreational rugby at a high enough level to enjoy it. Mitigate injury risk as much as possible. Be able to live an “active” lifestyle as long as possible.
I think your position on power cleans is that they’re not terribly useful for strength adaptations.
For someone training for a contact sport with physical requirements closer to that of some awkward combination of wrestling, football and soccer than powerlifting. Do you see any utility to programming power cleans in the off or in season strength and conditioning program?
Is there any athlete you would program power cleans for that doesn’t perform the power clean or close variation in competition like olympic weightlifters or crosfitters?
My goals for training are to take inches off my waist. Play recreational rugby at a high enough level to enjoy it. Mitigate injury risk as much as possible. Be able to live an “active” lifestyle as long as possible.
I don’t think power cleans provide unique benefits for most of these things. The extent to which they benefit / transfer to sports performance in rugby (or the other sports you mentioned) is hard to quantify or perform controlled studies on. With that said, if you really enjoy performing and training power cleans, go for it.
The psychological benefits of actually enjoying training seem to be under-rated nowadays.
So, while strength is the most important adaptation, don’t power cleans (or snatches) train explosiveness and therefore could be very useful to a rugby player?