Please, explain how to the body stores energy like in the example.
I don't really buy the "stored energy" idea. Unless you're using the stretch reflex, where would the energy come from and how would you "store" it? What would be the mechanism for this storage of energy? A one second pause might not blunt the stretch reflex
completely, but two or three seconds probably would.
You might generate or maintain a high level of tension in preparation for the press, but that's not storing energy. It's just getting or staying tight, which
uses energy.
Today I was running a few sets of cleans with the 36kg KB and after the last set thought I would just press. And this time rather than cheat clean, I did a normal single hand clean and went for a press, and to my surprise the bell went up very quickly. There was no struggle, no slowing down at the sticking point, nothing. I just couldn't understand why.
Here's my hypothesis:
1. Cleaning the bell and catching it in the rack had a disinhibiting effect on your nervous system. Swinging the bell around and tensing up to catch it, especially for multiple reps, lets your nervous know you can handle the weight. It tells your nervous system, "I've got this; this weight is not a threat to me." I often do this as a minimalist warmup for presses. Just a few cleans with the target weight always makes the press feel light. I hypothesize that the ballistic nature of the clean (vs. a cheat clean), helps disinhibit the nervous system because you have to reflexively generate the tension to catch the bell. Before your nervous system can register that the bell is heavy and interpret it as a threat, you've already caught it. And then doing a couple of more reps reinforces the message.
A lot of the skill of strength is in generating the neural drive to create the tension to lift the weight. When you fail on a lift, it's often partly because your nervous system perceives a threatening tension overload and shuts down the muscular contraction as a protective measure. The more you can mitigate that threat response, the less inhibited you are from generating tension and expressing strength.
2. Doing a ballistic clean and catching the bell in the rack forces you to reflexively and immediately generate the tension to support the bell. With a slower cheat clean, you can be less tight until you remove the assisting hand and all of sudden the bell is pinning your arm down and you have to ramp up the tension to initiate the press.
When doing a ballistic clean before a press, I find it makes a big difference if I keep my arm down as long as possible as my hips extend and then get the bell to float so I can quickly get my hand under the bell to catch it in the rack. So my arm is loose and quick in getting under the bell, and then suddenly tightens to catch the bell like a stiff spring. If my clean is too slow and lazy, and if I pull with my arm instead of keeping it down and using hip drive to ballistically launch the bell, and if I catch the bell by absorbing the force against my body instead of having my arm "spring loaded," the press is a lot harder.
This might be what people mean by "storing energy" from the clean, so it might be a semantic difference more than a substantive one. However, I don't believe it is a matter of "storing" anything, but just a technique for tricking your body into generating more tension. Then it's a matter of maintaining that tension and not losing it. But, again, generating and not losing tension both use up energy, they don't store it.