Good Variation or Gimmick? How to Tell the Difference
Scroll through weightlifting content online for five minutes and you’ll see it. “If you are doing this variation you are training wrong, do my variation instead." It’s always the same, someone pushing some new exercise that will supposedly fix your lifts straight away.
Some of it is genuinely useful. A lot of it isn’t. As a coach, I use variations every day, I also like to try new things to see if it would be helpful, so here’s how I tell the difference.
The test
For any variation, I ask one question: what is this teaching or building, and how does it come back to the main lifts?
If I can answer that clearly, it earns a spot in the program. If the answer is “it looks cool,” “it’s really hard” or “it makes you tired,” it’s content, not coaching.
What a good variation looks like
A good variation has a job. Here are a few I use and why:
Pauses. Pausing in front of the knee or in the setup position forces someone to feel a balanced position instead of rushing through it. The job is awareness.
Lift-offs. Lifting to the knee and controlling the bar back to the floor lets us load a little heavier while still holding the quality. The job is teaching the first pull.
Power positions. Starting with the bar at the hip lets us isolate the second pull and teach someone to use their legs. The job is the drive and the finish.
Floating variations. Lowering from the hip to a position and then mimicking it on the way up is a simple way to teach where the body needs to be, without needing much load. The job is position.
Notice that each one has a clear purpose, a clear link back to the snatch or the clean, and a clear way to know whether it worked.
What a gimmick looks like
A few red flags I look for:
No clear purpose. If nobody can explain what it’s for, it’s probably not for anything.
Difficulty for its own sake. Making something harder or more unstable isn’t the same as making it better. Balance tricks rarely carry over to a heavy snatch.
It doesn’t look like the lift. The further a movement drifts from the positions, timing and intent of the main lifts, the less it gives back.
It’s the same for everyone. If every athlete gets the same “special” exercise regardless of their needs, it’s a trend, not a solution.
It’s built for the camera. If it only makes sense as a video, it’s probably a video.
Questions to ask your coach
You don’t need to be an expert to check whether your program is built well. Ask:
What is this exercise teaching or building for me?
How does it help my snatch or clean and jerk?
How will we know it’s working?
When do we go back to the full lift to check?
A good coach will have a quick, confident answer to all four. If you get a vague one, it’s worth a conversation.
Variations are a tool, not a replacement.
Here’s the part that gets missed. A variation only matters if it makes the full lift better. That’s why I’ll run a block of variations, then get an athlete back to snatching and cleaning for a couple of weeks to see whether anything changed. If it did, great, we move on to the next thing. If not, we change the constraint and go again.
The classics aren’t going anywhere, and neither is the time you spend practising them. Variations are how we help the right lifter find the right position faster.
So, good variation or gimmick?
Ask what it’s for, and how it comes back to the lift. If there’s a good answer, do it. If there isn’t, skip it, no matter how impressive it looks.
At Melbourne West Barbell Club, every exercise in your program has a reason, and we’re happy to explain it. Your first session is free. (LINK)
