The Snatch is one of the two Olympic Weightlifting movements. It is a highly technical movement that requires the lifter to move the bar from the floor into an overhead position.
You can watch one of the worlds best HERE
Nobody at Defy snatches that kind of weight – just like no one reading this runs a sub 2 hour marathon, but I’m sure a lot of people still run.
I can’t think of a situation outside of the gym where I have performed a snatch like movement to achieve an objective…
But the idea of functional fitness is that the things we do in the gym enhance what you do outside the gym.
So why do we teach the snatch?
There are many variations of the full snatch movement than we can do. The idea is to work at the level you are competent at. This is a full-body, powerful movement that requires coordination, balance, strength, speed, power, etc. It will challenge you physically and mentally.
The act of performing a snatch has your brain solving the problem of how to get the bar overhead efficiently. The body’s flexibility and stability are challenged and everything needs to come together connecting mind to body.
Although you may never see a snatch like movement in regular life. Improving your snatch technique will help you in your everyday movements. Your body awareness improves as well as the development of your athletism.
There are a lot of these movements that are very specific to a gym like Defy. For most people, the aim isn’t to become efficient in the snatch so they are really good at the snatch.
The goal is to use complicated movements like the snatch to develop skills that will enable them to Get Better At Life. To get better at playing baseball with your kids. To be able to wakeboard at the cottage in summer or to ski down a hill in the winter.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the direct translation to regular life and sometimes there is no direct translation. However, every exercise we do will help with something at some point.
Being functionally fit means you are ready to do anything at any time and that’s pretty cool.