High School Wrestling: What Elite Wrestlers Know That You Don’t

Many fighters focus on learning new moves. We are very focused on movements in the United States when it comes to wrestling. However, wrestling is about more than just knowing moves. Some wrestlers know the seven basic wrestling skills: stance, movement, level change, penetration, step back, back arc, and lift. But, elite fighters know certain concepts that you may not be familiar with. If you’re familiar with all of these concepts, great. On the other hand, if your wrestling isn’t as successful as you’d like it to be, hopefully you can employ some of the following concepts to improve.

Posture and posture maintenance

Stance is one of the seven basic wrestling skills. It’s probably the first concept you learn in wrestling. What constitutes good posture? Proper stance allows you freedom of movement as well as the ability to protect yourself from your opponent’s offensive attempts.

You don’t want to be in too upright a posture. You don’t want to look like the plastic wrestler you see standing on top of the trophies. Your opponent shouldn’t be able to read your jersey. Usually you want to fight head to head. Your stance should be quite low. You want to be like a coiled spring or sprinter ready to explode on your shot. He usually moves back and forth in a lead leg stance and in circles with a square stance.

Olympian John Smith talks about keeping your elbows in your pockets. He just says that you usually want your elbows tight to protect yourself. Also, you should not stretch, lunge, or trip. Sometimes you can just approach your opponent in good stance and wait for him to reach up and make contact first. Or, you can circle and stalk your opponent until you’re face-to-face, then catch up with your opponent. Then, as former NCAA champion Tom Brands would say, you’ll want to get heavy hands, get into a dominant head position, and move your feet.

Olympian Dan Gable talks about turning your body into a block. Your arms are not easy to grab because they are close to you. His head is tucked into his shoulders so his head is not easy to grab.

As you move forward or backward in your stance, you should continue with your lead leg or power leg forward so that you are always ready to shoot when the opportunity presents itself. Good posture maintenance is important. Ideally, your shooting hand should be free and protecting your lead leg.

Manual fight and movement of your opponent

What is hand wrestling? Hand wrestling is a bit of a misnomer. It’s kind of a misleading term. You don’t want to go out and start grabbing hands and wrists and slapping your opponent.

Says former NCAA champion Daryl Weber, “Manual wrestling is basically knowing where you want to be, where you have the best chance to score, forcing it on your opponent, and also knowing how to unbind your opponent and get back on your feet.” where do you want”. You are comfortable.

Unfortunately, many wrestlers put on a neck and elbow tie and just dance with each other. Or, wrestlers grab with their hands but don’t move their feet. You need to move your opponent. You have to push and pull and spin and really commit to it.

Elite wrestlers like Cory Cooperman and Bill Zadick will tell you that both your hands and feet need to move. When your hands move, your feet should move.

The Purler brothers will tell you that good hand wrestling creates movement that helps you throw an opponent off balance and set up attacks.

Another benefit of proper hand wrestling can be tiring out your opponent. You can wear down your neck, back, and hamstrings. You can really take it out. A lot of wrestlers just don’t want to work that hard. If you can’t take your opponent down in the first period, you can get a takedown in the second or third period by wearing down your opponent with the right hand early in the match.

You also need to learn how to properly spread out, block down, and shoot again.

angles

When it comes to finding angles, Daryl Weber says, “The higher the competition, the tougher the competition, the more important it becomes. You don’t want to be just shooting straight at your opponents. That works a lot of the time, but as you You compete against better competitors who know how to react, who have strong hips and good balance, knowing how to find angles will be important.”

Henry Cejudo, Damion Hahn, and several other elite fighters have stated that wrestling is all about angles. For example, it is important to learn how to execute a simple sweep and actually cut the corner.

Drilling

Punching is one of the best ways to improve your wrestling skill. The rehearsal and repetition of moves and techniques is generally not as fun as live wrestling, but it is extremely important.

When you practice moves over and over again, your body remembers how to do it so you don’t even have to think about it during a match. Drilling allows you to perfect different movements and techniques. Don’t just practice a setup and finish over and over again. Practice various set-ups and finishes. Know how to handle the different positions and situations that can arise during a match.

You can also get a very good workout with hard exercises. Hard drilling can work just as well for getting fit as live wrestling. But drilling has the advantage of being able to really sharpen your skills.

Former NCAA champion Cary Kolat says that punching is the main component of elite wrestlers. He says that live wrestling was a small part of his training and that 70% to 80% of his training revolved around exercise practices. He says, “I got better training with drilling than I did with live wrestling.”

Piercing can allow you to find ways to get out of bad positions, which is extremely important.

Former NCAA All-American Jason Nase says, “Because you’re going to get stuck. You’re going to get stuck on shots. You’re going to get buried. It’s going to happen. Not everyone makes good shots all the time.” .You” are going to have problems that you have to fight. I mean, that’s the sport. What do you do when you are in a bad position? How do you go from good to bad quickly? That’s what makes the difference in games. “

chain fight

Chain fighting is just what the name suggests. It is joining movements in a chain. It is the ability to flow or move smoothly from one technique or move on to the next.

Sometimes we see wrestling in bits and pieces. We think about setups, takedowns, defending, driving and other segments of the match. We look for a takedown and get stopped and then get back on our feet and start again. Or, we get the takedown and then start thinking about another piece, like mounting. But ideally, we should flow from one wrestling piece to the next.

Musical notes and patterns don’t mean much until they come together to form a complete, seamless song. Good dancers flow smoothly from one step to the next. They have fluidity and grace. All the techniques and movements you know should not be considered as separate parts. Ideally, each part of your fight should seamlessly link to the next.

Former world champion John Smith states, “We put two things together. That’s chain wrestling, that’s fluid wrestling. You can take this as far as you want. When you talk about chain wrestling, it can be endless until the guy is in his back and pin him and raise your hand. That sequence of moves leads you to dominate your opponent, leads you to never leave your opponent behind. That’s exactly what you want.”

Former NCAA Champion Terry Brands states, “It’s endless. That’s what we love about wrestling. We just have to have that mindset that they’re not chunks. That’s not how it works. That’s why guys they have problems. That’s why the guys fight.”

Brands says that sometimes wrestlers are so excited to get that first takedown and so unsure of their abilities that it’s a relief to get that first takedown. So, we relax a bit. Or, maybe a fighter just never learned how to chain fight. He gets a takedown, lets his opponent get to base on him, and then starts fighting again instead of going from a takedown to a walk or pin combination.

After a takedown we need to keep up the pressure and reach out for an arm or maybe we could be looking for a Turkish or Navy trip.

Or maybe our initial takedown is blocked, but we auto-transition to a new offensive move and still end up scoring. Maybe I throw a single leg and get stopped, but then I immediately peek out and still turn around to score my two points.

Chain wrestling is also important at the bottom. If my sit-out stops, maybe I can transition to a stand-up and get out of there.

Leverage and being bad

Sometimes leverage is a big key to making a move work well. Run a half nelson or arm bar straight over the top instead of the traditional way and see what happens. Grab your opponent’s chin with a half nelson so it’s really tight. Make your opponent uncomfortable and they will either move in any direction you want or just give up. Former NCAA champion Wade Schalles covered numerous opponents during his career and knows a lot about leverage and making opponents uncomfortable.

Former NCAA champion Zack Esposito describes the top position, saying, “You know what? Wrestling isn’t a tickle contest. It hurts like a mother when a guy puts both his legs on you. So why not?” Why don’t we give him a little strength in the shoulders?”

He also states, “Because that’s what the top is. It’s fucking bad. You’re bad off the top. Because if you’re not bad off the top, you won’t be able to ride. The best riders were the baddest.”

He goes on to say, “When I get a doll, I’ll try to break your shoulder. That’s the way it is.”

You can learn a lot from Wade Schalles, Gene Mills, Zack Espositio, Ben Askren and other elite fighters about leverage and using legal awkwardness to convert an opponent.

conclusion

These are just a few examples of the knowledge elite fighters have that you may not have. I hope you are already doing many of these things. If not, start incorporating these concepts into your wrestling and you will see many improvements.

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