The devil is in the details.

Have your lifts stalled?  Do you have a weak link in your chain somewhere?  Well here is a short and sweet talk about some accessory lifts for you to improve performance.

Romanian Dead Lift:

This one will light up the hamstrings.  And lets be honest with the high bar back squat, front squat, snatch, and clean and jerk being the quad dominating lifts they are, your hamstrings might have been left behind somewhere.  Time for you to catch up.  Just once a week do 3x5 of these as heavy as possible (preferably around 100% of your max clean weight).

 Really squeeze the Lats back while doing this lift to keep the weight close.  If done correctly the next day you hamstrings and lats should be pretty angry with you.  That means you are doing it right.  Again 1 time a week at your 1rm clean weight for 3x5.


Front Squats:

Front squats are an awesome way to develop the mid to upper back and core.  Make sure to do these without a belt for maximum accessory muscle development.  Make sure to keep the reps low in front squat work.  Never more than 5 reps at a time.  Fatigue breaks down form very quickly.  My favorite is 2 or 3 rep sets for 3-5 sets.  (3x3 or 5x2).  Keep the weight in the 85-90% range.

Pendlay Rows:

What better person to teach you the Pendlay Row than Glen Pendlay.  Just skip ahead to about 2:20 and he finally makes the lifter do the stupid lift.  The first 2:20 he is talking about the name and other nonsense that doesn't really matter when lifting stuff off the ground.
Anyways, onto programming these.  keep it to 3-5 sets of 5 reps.  Keep it as heavy as possible (here on out referred to as AHAP).  Awesome full back exercise.  Make sure not to cheat it and increase the back angle.
You should stay parallel to the ground through whole exercise.


The GHD (glute ham developer):

If this machine doesn't create that little sick feeling in the bottom of your stomach when thinking about it then you have
a: never used it or
b: never used it correctly
And in case you don't know it is those two machines in the corner of the gym that most people stay away from because us "functional exercisers" are too good for a stupid exercise machine. (In truth you probably just don't know how to use it and are scared of embarrassing yourself).

There are three awesome exercises for developing your "core".

1. Sit ups.  Go through a full range of motion.  Go slow.  Do not cheat  kip this machine.
2. back extensions: think of this as the opposite of a sit up.  You are intentionally bring the back down into full flexion, then raising it into full extension.  again no cheating  kipping or swinging.  Any time you are intentionally flexing/extending the spinal erectors you don't want to overload them. Here is Matt Chan doing an awesome demo

So just do what he does.
3. Finally hip extensions:  With these you are keeping the spine stable (not flexing like with the back extension) and bending at the waist.  Then you are extending at the hips to bring the back angle above parallel.  Here you go, the video explains it better than me. The first half of the video is sit ups, the second half is hip extensions.

With all three exercises on the GHD keep it around 3 sets of 10 reps.  (3x10).  Do it after your main work for the day.

Okay Jason, all of these exercises are awesome, but when do I do them? How do I program them into my already awesome routine?

Well I am glad you asked.  There are two ways you can do accessory lifts.  You can do one or two after your main workout, or you can dedicate 1 day/week to doing only accessory lifts. 

Option 1:

Day 1: snatch, Jerk from blocks, Squats,  RDL, pendlay row

Day 2: Clean, push press, Squats.  GHD work

Day 3: snatch, Clean and Jerk, Front squat. 

Option 2: 

Day 1: Snatch, Clean and jerk, Squats

Day 2: Snatch Clean and Jerk, Squats

Day 3: RDL, GHD, Front Squats, Pendlay Row.

Either way is about the same amount of volume.  If you consistently go heavy on your accessory work I guarantee gains in the next few weeks.   Never stop training the technique but never forget to go heavy too.  

I will leave you with some runner up exercises that are also awesome for lifting or just being awesome in general.:

Weighted Strict pull ups.

Snatch and Clean 1st pulls

snatch and clean from blocks (above and below the knee)

weighted box jumps (this isn't your rapid fire crossfit box jump either, step down damnit). Alright, you have been on the internet long enough today.  Go outside and lift something over your head.