What is this exercise for and what does it work out?

I was just curious what this is called. I will describe it the best I can lol. It starts with a barbell on the ground, the person squats down and picks it up, then throws it ( hands still holding on to it) mid body, then tosses it ( hands still holding on) above their head, and then back down. Really fast, throwing motions. Thanks!

Sounds like a clean and jerk???

like this?

http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/OlympicLifts/PowerCleanJerk.html

sounds like a shoulder breaker.

Yes thank you!!! It was the clean and jerk video..but they were doing it a tad differently. What is that good for?

Is it called something else when you dont move one leg in front of the other? The people doing these at the gym the other day were doing it a lot faster, and legs werent going forward

Could have been the clean and press

ohhh yes thats it! It is so interesting to watch. Thank you for taking the time to reply

Not a problem

Not moving legs with the lift for the overhead part is either a push press (dip slightly at the knees, start press as you extend to full leg lockout, which gives a boost on the press part and allows more weight to be handled), or, a power jerk, which is where you dip slightly at the knees and then rise up to stand erect for the overhead press part, but as the bar starts to move upward quickly on rising, you dip back under it again ala the "jerk" part of the movement so that there's less actual shoulder/triceps pressing done to get under the bar. Not a great explanation, but should show a bit of difference between the two. Push pressing is usually a slower movement much like any regular overhead press, where the jerk is intended to be done split-second, extremely fast and athletic, not a "brute strength" type of lift but one that's far more technical.

So, a clean (power clean, to be precise) and push press looks something like this:

...And a clean and power jerk looks like this:

The speed and technique of the overhead lifting part being the difference, as in competition, a jerk will be disqualified if the bar does not go to full lockout at arm's length overhead in one fluid motion with no slowdown. Now that the boring technical part is out of the way....

The power clean part will work everything that it does when deadlifting (hamstrings, glutes, lower back, middle back, upper back), the overhead part will be for shoulders, triceps (primarily with push pressing or strict overhead pressing with no dip before the press) and core stability via the abs and obliques.

That about sums it up!

thanks!! great explanation