I don’t rate the power clean as a strength exercise. some athletes become obsessed with it. I mean i could get an extra 10kg purely due to neural adaption which would translate to nothing more than to power clean more.
It’s pretty easy to tell if i’ve improved, weights that used to be heavy are no longer as heavy. I think it was an interview that Leonid Tarenenko did, said he never went more than about 240kg in training. And if it was good enough for him to go 90% and be the best at clean and jerk ever (notice i didn’t say the strongest ever), it’ good enough for anyone else.
Who are your athletes? Your a weightlifting coach arent you?
By neural adaptation I assume you mean specific improvements in inter/intra muscular coordination as opposed to a general increases in rate coding (motor unit recruitment). THe more advanced the lifter the less adaptation is generated by the former anyway. So if you go from 140 to 150 then you HAVE got stronger!! (not just better at that specific exercise)
I agree there are better exercises available to increase maximum strength than cleans however you have to factor in the cost in CNS fatigue and time efficiency. Cleans hit a higher percentage of the body’s motor units, eliminate the need for other less complex exercises and have less CNS cost.
It certainly worked for Jonathan Edwards…