Wrestling

Training Bodybuilding
1

I know the way my wrestling team sucks.

I want to write something up about how much it sucks, and I’m wondering if you guys have any info to help me.

Here’s how we train:

Jog 30-60 minutes on slightly inclined stairs (like stairs at a movie theater)
—we can’t have water while running—

Stretch

Military Snake (like pushups) with a few laps on the stairs in between.

if you finish first, you have some time for water, otherwise you get no water
(i usually go last so i can go as fast as possible w/o bumping into people, and i never get water)

Drills (practice technique)
(very tiring, they don’t allow you to stop, lower back pain is common for me)

Wrestle other team members

Calisthenics (25 pushups, 25 situps, 25 neck exercises, etc. then 20 pushups, situps, neck exercises, then 15, 10, etc. till 0)

we don’t even do the calisthenics fast, because we do calisthenics like this…

captain: down
us: 1
captain: down
us: 2
captain: down
us: 3
etc.

which means it’s not even fast enough to be considered plyometrics

Suicides on a basketball court
(this is not everyday, but happens when the coach thinks we didn’t push ourselves enough)

We do this Monday, Tuesday, Thurs, and Friday, with matches on Wednesday and Saturday. And because we have to keep a certain weight class, people are on a diet while they do this type of training. (talk about ****ing up your metabolism)

can anyone give me some scientific reasoning as to why this is clearly a bad training method? (e.g. we’re doing way too much endurance work, etc. etc.)

i’ve got about 6 pages of info so far, thanks for your help

2

forgot to include, wrestling practice lasts 2.5 hours and no weight lifting is done (unless you do it yourself, but everyone is too tired and needs to finish homework and stuff)

3

Vintor,

Sorry I have to cut this short, but I dont have a ton of time right now.

Way to much low-gear endurance work. Do you wrestle for 60 minutes straight at a slow pace? High intensity, short burst is where its at.

It doesnt look like there is any real strength and power training(you hit the nail on the head with the way you guys are doing cals). I know some coaches shy away from weight training in season for various reasons, but that is usually a sign of ignorance.

Rather than listen to me rattle on forever, try to get your hands on Martin Rooney’s book Training for Warriors. Its available at elitefts.com and amazon.com(but its backordered there i think). Im nearly finished with it and it presents the most clear cut and effective system for training combat athletes(wrestling qualifies for sure) I have ever seen.

Of course, I wager you will have no luck
convincing your coaches to change there ways. With that in mind, retool you diet and make sure it is really dialed in. Get as many quality calories as you can(as long as you stay somewhere near your weight class) and get as much sleep as possible. You guys will quickly be very overtrained, if you are not there already and the only variable you may be able to control in all of this is your recovery.

good luck

4

I figure your not a high schooler and as such I think we should all be disappointed with your coaches choice of training methods. Does he not realize that the new rule changes favor more explosive wrestlers? I just finished at a tournament at UofC and I would say more than 75% of the matches ended at the four minute mark. I watched very technically sound wrestlers who normally out work there opponents and wear them out getting overpowered. Focus on the anaerobic alactic and lactic systems during training are now far more important to the wrestler with a base of conditioning then in the past. What program are you at?

5

Vintor, I feel your pain as I had a similar experience in highschool.

Here’s my take on a practice. I’ve garned this information through 9 years of experience, several seminars, camps, clubs as well as talking to friend who wrestled at top colleges.

Warm ups should be about 10 mins. Mix it up and make it fun by doing tumbling, low rep calisthenics with light jogging mixed in or even games like ultimate football.
The idea is to break a sweat but don’t overlook the fact that it doesn’t cost anything to try to make it an enjoyable experience, it can only help.

15-20 stretching out the Neck, wrists, shoulders, calfs, hamstings, lower back glutes, and hip flexors. This should help a great deal with your lower back pain.

45 mins of partner drilling. Drilling is argueabley the most important part of practice because technique is king. After training under a former Soviet National Champion, I learned that their philosophy was to concentrate the bulk of their work on drilling technique. This will help build endurance which is very specialized.

30-45 minutes live wrestling. Get in groups of 3’s and have one person in the middle wrestle one man for two minutes, then the next person comes in and they wrestle for two minutes. After that, the man in the middle comes out and someone wrestles for two 2 minute rounds.

End up practice with more stretching.

What it looks like your team needs to do is hack away the unessential like the slow running, the ponderous calisthenics and the “conditioning.” You need to focus purely on what will improve your performance on the mat. After losing a match would you ever think, “Damn, I should done more bear crawls and then I would have one.” Hell no!! Losses come from being out-wrestled or outlasted because of poor conditioning. As my one coach used to say, “Keep it wrestling.”

I really hope this helps and if you have anymore questions, just post them.
You may even want to consider holding more than one practice per day say around 7 pm.
I realize that time is needed to do homework so this is what one of our local successful highschool would do.

They meet after school for a mandatory study session in the library. Anyone who fooled around was punished with mat mopping for weeks or cleaning everyone’s headgear. This would last about 60 minutes. Practice at 3:30 till 5. Rest, have a little something to eat and rehydrate and come back for a pure technique session, meaning light warm up and stretching and drilling for about an hour.

Kendall Cross was a Olympic Champion and in his seminar he talked about the 3 o’clock rule. This rule states that every wrestler in the country in is doing exactly what you’re doing at 3 o’clock; they’re drilling, wrestling live, and getting better. There’s nothing special about working out at three in the afternoon. What is special is what you do in the hours before and after. That type of work is what makes champions and I agree.

Best of luck.

6

[quote]elitehuman wrote:
Does he not realize that the new rule changes favor more explosive wrestlers?[/quote]

What’s the new rule?

7

New rules, the person who is more offensive will get rewarded more + scoring first is a big advantage

8

K thing is tho, wrestling is always:

  1. Technique
  2. Conditioning
  3. Power

Techniques and drills should make up the bulk of your day the rest should be used as conditioning do a circuit to start off your practice and get you warmed up. Example: Do 1km run and every 100m stop and do 15push ups and 15sit ups. As for the actual lifting get athletes to do that on their own time. I am a wrestler myself so if u wanna talk more just lemme know.

9

I also had a similar experience while wrestling in high school, but this was over 25 years ago!!! Your coaches are using ancient training principles and need to be fired.

10

Heh, can you just sort of use the “training” as active recovery?

I mean, do real and appropriate workouts on your own and simply put in the time but not the energy on what you have described above.

The coach might bust your balls, but as long as he lets you wrestle, what do you care.

The odds of him listening to you and reworking the system are pretty damned low, even if he is a ignoramus. Ignorami rule the world and they don’t listen to anybody, espeically a young pup with new ideas, get used to it.

11

Sounds a lot like what I did in high school wrestling. the thing you have to remember is that your coach is probably doind what his high school coach did with his team, probably 15-20 years ago or more.

Basically, the most inportant thing you need to do is focus on your technique. the drills portion of training needs to be all out. keep good position, etc.

if your lower back “hurts” it means that it is probably not strong enough. I know the feeling, that burning in the lower back muscles. keep pushing yourself, especially when you start to feel that burn. it will help you to adapt and be able to train longer and perfect your technique.

all those calistenics kinda suck, but i think they have a strengthening effect of connective tissue or something.

when you do your running for practice, do it interval style. (fast paced for a few seconds then slooooow jog.)

make sure you are doing super low volume lifting with as much weight as you can lift. this will keep or add strength and prevent overtraining.

12

Also, a shake after practice would help. Of course, if you have to make the next day you may not be able to. Try to sneak them in when you can.

13

Unfortunatley such scenarios are common in wrestling practices. Alot of coaches just like to make their athletes do things that are hard and tiring.

When I was a Jr high wrestling coach one thing we concentrated on was intervals of 5 minutes. If you wrestle varsity you should be doing intervals of 6-7 minutes. This mimics a wrestling match. Doing things such as stance motion, skipping rope, pushups, squat thrusts, sprints, sprawls, shadow shoots, etc. Mixing up activites and intensities during the interval. These is similar to type of energy and effort used in a wrestling match.

But I m glad you are thinking logically in this. Good luck this season dude. If you have any questions lemme know.

14

it’s ok if i take info from this site w/o proper citations?

i’m just going to give this to some wrestlers and MAYBE the coach to show them, i’m not writing it for school, just for my own leisure

i remember chris shugart saying that some magazine ripped articles off t-nation and that he would’ve given the articles if they asked… so i’m asking

15

You can use my advice, I hope it helps.

16

My personal opinion is that if you take any info from a published writing (article, book, magazine) and presenting it you should cite your sources, no matter how formal or informal the presentation is. Anytime I give advice or bring up a subject not of my own idea I will cite it or atleast mention where I got it and who said it. That is an ethical choice and out of respect to the author. Besides that it gives your argument more weight and you will gain more respect yourself. I feel confident in saying any of the posts on here given as advice were given out of the kindness of our hearts and would not fall under that rule. But that may just be my opinion. Anybody else agree?