Power Clean vs Squat Clean for Athletics

The Olympic lifts (snatch and clean & jerk) and their variations belong in most any strength and conditioning program. Given the demands on athletes to move explosively and powerfully, using movements that must be done explosively/powerfully and which stimulate improved performance in these respects should be a no-brainer. The Olympic lifts and their variations have a number of benefits over some of their alternatives, including ease of progressive overload, minimal space and equipment requirements, ability to easily adjust intensities to create different stimuli (lower weight for higher reps, higher weight for fewer reps, moderate weight for higher peak power output, heavier weight for more strength focus, etc.), plus they're pretty darn effective¹. However, strength and conditioning professionals often disagree about the application of the "full" lifts (by which I mean a snatch or clean in which the athlete receives the bar in a full squat, aka a "squat clean" or "squat snatch") vs the power variations of the lifts (in which the athlete receives the bar with hips above parallel, in a partial squat position). 

Sidebar: Henceforth, I'm going to call a clean in which the athlete receives the bar below parallel a "squat clean." 
I've encountered a number of people who take issue with this nomenclature, so let me clarify. If you are one of these people that can't help but say, "oh, you mean a clean" whenever someone refers to it as a squat clean, please stop, because you're annoying and wrong. "Squat clean" is an accurate and specific term, and people who make a big stink about it and assert that the squat clean is "actually just called a clean, you uneducated swine" are a) technically incorrect, and b) needlessly argumentative, and probably just reflexively hate all things associated with or popularized by Crossfit (such as the term "squat clean") because the internet told them to. 
A "clean" involves bringing the barbell from the floor to the shoulders in one pulling movement and then standing up with it. Regardless of how low the hips are when the athlete catches the bar, it is a clean. "Clean" is a general term. If you want to specify where the bar is caught, you use modifiers such as "power" or "squat." In the sport of weightlifting, the competition lift is called the "clean & jerk" because it doesn't matter whether athletes catch the bar in the power position or in a full squat. Squat clean = squat clean. Clean = squat clean, power clean, etc. Cool? Cool.

Before I go any further, I want to mention that before anyone is allowed to contend which variation is better for athletes, two things should be kept in mind.
First, regardless of which variation an athlete performs, good form should be top priority. In the long run, a clean that looks like a limbo performance gone awry will not be doing much for strength, power production, or not having a broken spine, regardless of which variation is performed. Don't be that guy/gal.
Second, if athletes are consistently doing some variation of the Olympic lifts (and doing them with good form), they are 90% of the way there. The rest is only minutiae, and is far less important than doing them at all and doing them well.

But, I like talking about minutiae, and so here we are.

When comparing the power clean with the squat clean, I assert that for athletes–specifically, athletes who are not performing the Olympic lifts as part of their sport (namely, weightlifters, Crossfitters, GRID athletes)–the power variation of the clean is superior. There are a few reasons for this.

1. The power clean is easier to learn and coach.
The squat clean is considerably more technical and difficult to perform than the power clean. The timing, accuracy, speed, mobility, and guts required to pull oneself from a position of full extension to a deep squat in a fraction of a second in order to receive a heavy barbell on the shoulders requires a huge amount of talent and practice. While these attributes–timing, accuracy, speed, mobility, and guts–are all hallmarks of talented athletes, the time and energy spent teaching a linebacker or a point guard the specifics of how to perform a squat clean safely and with heavy loads will generally be better spent training other more sport-specific aspects of performance. The power clean, while certainly not the most simple of movements, is like a scaled down version of the clean in respect to its learning curve. A properly executed power clean will certainly challenge timing, accuracy, speed, and to some degree mobility and guts, but to a much lesser extent. There is also a larger margin of error in the power clean, meaning that small mistakes or inefficiencies in technique will not be as potentially detrimental to the athlete or the training stimulus. A bar caught an inch in front of an athlete's center of gravity in the power clean will be fairly easy to correct for with a quick step; a bar caught in inch out front in the rock bottom of the catch of a squat clean will not be so forgiving. So, while athletes who are already proficient in performing the squat clean could certainly benefit from including it in their training, athletes who are inexperienced with the Olympic lifts will be better off sticking to the power clean. 

2. The power clean involves more of an active deceleration component (in a position that is common in sports). This is a point that doesn't get nearly as much attention as the others, but I believe is a primary benefit of the power clean over the squat clean for application to sports. In the power clean, because the bar must be caught with hips above parallel, the athlete must quickly and actively resist the downward acceleration of the bar using his/her legs, hips, and trunk. If the athlete does not actively resist against the bar, it will drive him/her down into a deep squat (and, if the athlete did not have a braced torso, the bar would subsequently drop to the floor). While the squat clean does involve some active deceleration, much of the deceleration occurs because the athlete drops to a rock-bottom squat–to end range. Here, as the athlete catches the bar, their trunk is actively involved in resisting the bar's downward acceleration (the athlete must brace his/her trunk to stay upright and keep the bar on the shoulders), but the primary resistance from the structures of the legs and hips come from those structures being in end range. 
In the video below, note the forceful deceleration of the bar in the catch of the power clean.

In addition to requiring more of an active deceleration, particularly from the legs and hips, the positions in which the athlete must quickly and forcefully decelerate the bar in the power clean closely mimic common positions in most sports–hitting a baseball, tackling, shoulder checking, driving against a lineman, jumping, landing, breaking a tackle, taking a hit, throwing a punch, etc. All share similar positions to the catch of the power clean. On the other hand, the position in which an athlete catches the bar in the squat clean, while sometimes seen in sports (close approximations to the deep squat positions may be regularly seen in wrestling, grappling, occasionally in American football), is far less common. 

3. The power clean produces higher peak power. 
Unfortunately, I could not find a study comparing power output in the power clean vs. the squat clean in trained athletes. (If such a study does exist, someone let me know, please. If not, maybe I know what I'll be doing for my graduate thesis now.) However, there are a number of studies examining peak and average power output at various loads for the power clean. From these studies, we find that peak power occurs somewhere around 60-90% of power clean 1-rm (with results seeming to lean towards the 70-80% range)^{2 3}. While this doesn't give us a direct comparison of power output in the squat clean vs. power clean, it does tell us that light loads (<60%) and very heavy loads (>90%) in the power clean produce lower peak power. Because the squat clean allows heavier weights to be moved than the power clean, and because the bar velocity is slower and the distance the bar travels is shorter in the squat clean, we can reasonably conclude that peak power output will be lower in the squat clean than the power clean. The speed at which the bar must be moved in the power clean (in order to pull it high enough to be caught with hips above parallel), along with the relatively heavy loads that can be used make the power clean an excellent candidate for developing power.

The squat clean is an excellent exercise, and those who are already proficient in this movement would be well-served to include it in their training on a regular basis alongside the power version of the lift. However, given that most athletes don't enter a high school or college strength and conditioning program already competent in performing the full Olympic lifts, and given the power clean's superior carry-over to most sport applications, the power clean is a better choice for athletes whose sport does not include the performance of the Olympic lifts.

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Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of swole.

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1 TRICOLI, V.; et al (2005). SHORT-TERM EFFECTS ON LOWER-BODY FUNCTIONAL POWER DEVELOPMENT: WEIGHTLIFTING VS. VERTICAL JUMP TRAINING PROGRAMS. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (Allen Press Publishing Services Inc.), 19(2), 433-437.^↩
2 COMFORT, P., FLETCHER, C., & MCMAHON, J.J. (2012). DETERMINATION OF OPTIMAL LOADING DURING THE POWER CLEAN, IN COLLEGIATE ATHLETES. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins), 26(11), 2970-2974.^↩
3 MCBRIDE, J.M., HAINES, T.L., & KIRBY, T.J. (2011). EFFECT OF LOADING ON PEAK POWER OF THE BAR, BODY, AND SYSTEM DURING POWER CELANS, SQUATS, AND JUMP SQUATS. Journal of Sports Sciences, 29(11), 1215-1221.^↩