@Steve W. I'm curious: If you try to avoid involving the biceps, how do you bend your arm to bring the bell closer to your body? I other words, how do you turn a swing into a clean if you don't pull with your bent arm?
I'm answering to myself that it can be more of a shoulder pull, similar to a barbell clean, but not sure.
Well, of course you have to actively bend your arm to get the KB into the rack. But the bell should basically be floating/weightless at that point.
One cue I use when I find myself pulling with my arms is "arms down!" This reminds me to keep my straight arms locked down to my torso while I finish my hip and knee extension. It's a little counterintuitive to think arms DOWN, when I'm trying to drive the bells UP, but that connection with the torso (with straight arms) is what transfers the power. The expression in Olympic weightlifting is, "When the arms bend, the power ends."
When the connection and timing is right, the bells floats up as I bend my arms to get my hands underneath the handles and brace to catch the bells in the rack. My upper arm stays pretty much pinned to my torso the whole time (a common drill to to clean with a magazine pinned between the upper arm and the torso). I try to keep the bells on a fairly vertical path into the rack so I can just bring my hands underneath quickly while they are not supporting any weight and catch the bells. If the bells swing out too much in front, then you have to reel them in toward you at the top. If the bells are moving toward you, you have to brake that momentum with your arms and/or by the bells slamming against you (this can actually causing bruising, tenderness and skin redness on the upper arm where the body of the bell hits--one guess how I discovered this).
Basically the idea is to clean the bells so they float straight up into the rack and you don't have to pull them in toward you.
On the drop, I make space to drop the bells in a close to vertical path by leaning back away from the bells and dropping the bells DOWN, with the upper arms still pinned my torso, instead of casting the bells out away from me. If you don't lean away from the bells to make space, you have no leverage to sweep the bells into the back swing; the bells just kind of fall straight down and jerk on your arms abruptly. With ligher bells, you can get away with standing straight up and casting bells out in front of you on the drop. With heavy bells, it's asking for trouble.
