Wisconsin Wrestling Live Articles

This is the first article of an ongoing series of articles about wrestling techniques. As the articles go on I will include video to aid in the explanations, but I felt it was important to pass on what I have learned regarding wrestling technique over my 15-year career in the sport.

First off, I want to start by saying that there are way too many specific techniques and variations that no single person can teach you everything you need to know to be a champion. You need to seek out anyone and everyone and pick and choose those techniques that best fit your style to be successful. But never try to imitate another wrestler in style and technique. Every single person is different and no single style will work for everyone. So develop your own style and then choose the techniques that best work for you.

 That being said, I want to focu this first article at the beginning. In terms of technique on the feet, what are the three first moves that any wrestler is taught? Of course, they are the single leg, the high-crotch, and the double leg. These are probably the three highest percentage moves at all levels. This means that these three moves are the ones that score more points than any others on the feet. This is why they are taught first. No wrestler will ever be complete without these three moves.

     But most coaches make a huge mistake when teaching a beginner wrestler by first teaching the single and high-crotch. Although these are probably higher percentage moves than the double, they are also more complicated because of the number of defenses to them. In addition, the double leg is a higher percentage move for younger wrestlers (up to age 12 or 13. This is because young wrestlers have a much more difficult time defendin a leg attack when both legs are secured.

Therefore, always begin with the double and perfect it before anything else. If you, or your young wrestler is under the age of 13, focus an entire week to nothing but the double leg, and watch the incredible leap in success the following Saturday. And here is what you need to teach:

1. Set up. For young kids, and often even older kids, the easiest setup is often the most successful. Simply take a step back. The natural reaction of your opponent will be to step towards you. As he is stepping, while the foot is in the air, you go to step 2. Don’t worry about hands, or pops or chops or anything else. Nine time out of ten, kids do not defend attacks correctly with their hands and rely solely on the sprawl. Adding any other setup which includes using their hands will only lead to complication and ineffective results.
2. As the opponents foot is stepping towards you, change levels and take the penetration step. Now, it ia extremely important that this penetration step is done correctly, and 99 of wrestlers do not do it right. If you are right handed, you should be leading with the right foot in your stance (never use a square stance. ever!). You are going to step with that same right foot and attack with the the right arm and shoulder on the penetration. In the case of the double, you left hand is also reaching out to snag the other leg.
3. Penetrate through your opponent, reachine both arms out to snag behind the knees of each of his legs. Now, this is vital for success. You must have a singular thought in your mind as you are taking that penetration step. Either drive him off the mat or drive him to the ground for the takedown. There can be absolutely no other results. You cannot stop driving unless you go off the mat and hear the whistle or you get the takedown. Stopping penetration means he can counter and win.
4. When I was young they used to teach to penetrate with the right foot and then continue driving and step with the left and then right and so on. We used to practice by taking penetration steps from one end of the wrestling room to the other. If you are doing this, STOP! This is teaching incorrect and unrealistic technique. It will never happen that way in a match, so don’t teach it. In addition, there is no resistence, so you are teaching them to penetrate with their body position too upright. In w real match, that upright penetration will get immediately stopped because it does not have enough inertia force behind it. I believe one of the best ways to teach driving penetration is to have a partner stand on a towel. The attacking wrestler then takes his shot. The partner leans in with one leg slightly in front in order to counter-act the force of the drive. Then the attcking wrestler gets on his toes, buries his shoulder and drives his partner across the mat, as he slides on the towel. This is much more realistic and will teach them the proper way to drive.
5. Finish by going for the fall. Every single technique must be “finished”. One of the biggest mistakes (besides learning moves only as “pieces” instead of “wholes” and stopping half way through them) is that wrestlers learn moves as individual techniques rather than series. When you finish the double and the opponent falls to the ground, you cannot “stop the technique” there. You must immediately jump to a half, or a body lock, or a head-lock. It doesn;t matter what, but a takedown should always, always, always be immediately followed with a hard attempt to pin.

So summarizing:

- step back and wait for the opponent to step forward
- as he steps, change levels and take the penetration step with a singular thought: drive to the ground or drive off the mat, no other possibilities exist.
- drive from your toes like a defensive line-backer driving through to get a sack, on your toes using your legs. The legs NEVER stop moving
- as your opponent falls to the mat, immediately jump into a pinning combination

The last step?  Get you hand raised!

The season is coming to a close and the freestyle season is beginning, and many ask, “what sould I do if I want to do better next year?” Should you continue competing throughout the freestyle season, or should you take a break and come back again freash next fall? Maybe you should spend the spring and summer focussed on strength training. Maybe you should attend camps and clinics to learn new technique. What really is the best thing to do in spring and summer to become a champion?

Well, when I was in kids wrestling, there was no “folk style” season. My season began in February and ended in July. I usually then took a break until September or October and then simply had daily “practices” and “workouts” until it began again in February the following year. In high school, I would end my high school season and almost immediately begin freestyle and greco-roman competition. Maybe I might take a week or two off completely, but most likely I would still go out for a jog or do some weuight lifting.

I would try to attend at least 2 camps and maybe 2 or 3 clinics every single year. I felt it was absolutely vital to my success to try and learn as much about the technique of wrestling as I could. Maybe I wouldn’t use everything I learned, although most of it I actually was able to add to my abilities through effective visualization and drilling, but it would also show me all the possibilities out there so that I could be prepared for almost anything when I got on the mat with any opponent.

I learned early on that it was possible to win the vast majority of matches simply by knowing techniques that your opponents did not know, or did not know well enough. If they were unfaniliar with the technique, it was unlikely they would be able to effectively counter it. I recall that before my junior year in high school, I obtained a video on the “half-nelson series”.  Now, I know EXACTLY what you are thinking… Half-nelson?

Yes, I learned the half-nelson when I was 8 years old. In fact, it was the first move I ever learned. But this was a whole new series of how to use leverage and angles to effectively apply the half-nelson at a higher level. I worked on the series throughout the off-season, and when the season started, I began using it in my matches. One-by-one I was able to score and pin opponent after opponent with a simple half nelson because no one had ever seen it applied in this way. No one knew how to effectively counter it.

This is a huge avantage that you can gain over your competition in the off season. I highly suggest camps, clinics, training videos, books, or whatever you can do to increase your knowledge of wrestling techniques while in the off season. But this is not enough by a long shot. In my opinion, off season competition is vital for anyone who wished great improvement and success. Does this mean you can’t be a State Champion without wrestling freestyle? No. It has been done and will be done again. Will your chances by 100 times higher if you wrestle freestyle? There is no question. I cannot think of a single wrestler that was on the first string with me at the Univeristy of Wisconsin, nor one single wrestler that was first string in any division I school that did not wrestle freestyle in the “off season”. Competition makes you better. Period!

Finally, what about the other stuff, like drilling and weight lifting. This is what I did on MY real off season. In that time from August to about October, I spent my time increasing muscle mass, keeping in good condition with nice easy 3 or 4 mile jogs, and drilling. Most of the drilling I did was through visualization, which is a whole other topic for another post, but I would also drill against an invisible opponent on our mats in our garage, or even get with my buddies maybe once a week to drill and go over the new techniques we had learned.

 Bottom line, champions are not champions from November to February. I never stopped wrestling. I stopped competing for a while. Maybe slowed down. I would take the pressure off by just having nice easy practices, or just lay down on a lawn chair while getting a tan and visualize for an hour or so. But I always had one simple thing nagging me in the back of my mind:

While I am drilling these new techniqes, or visualizing, or lifting weights, or going to camps… While I am doing all these things, my opponents are eating ice cream and playing video games. And when next season comes, I will be the one getting my hand raised, and they will be wondering why they weren’t able to compete with me.

 Even to this day, some 15 years after my last competition, I smile when I think about that. If you are smiling too, then you know the answers to the questions I raised at the start of this post.

Be the Champion, and everyone will be dumbfounded trying to figure out how the heck you did it.  Good Luck!

Nothing in life is free! I am sure we have all heard this expression as well as a hundred more just like it. The point is that if you want something you need to work for it, but there is much more underlining this statement than just hard work. 

In order to achieve anything in life, you need to take risks. When I was a kid, like most energetic boys, I used to love to climb trees. Directly behind my house was a large Maple tree, which was my favorite to climb. Around the base of the tree, my mother has placed a pile of shale stones as decoration. I remember vividly when I was about 8 years old, climbing and swinging on the branches of the big Maple, like i had done a hundred times before, when suddenly the branch I was holding on to snapped. I began to tumble down the tree. I frantically grasped at branches trying to stop the fall, but somehow I flipped upside down and was rushing head-first into the pile of rocks below. Incredibly, on the last branch of the tree my legs caught and I hung, swinging upside down about 3 feet from the rocks.

Of course I simply swung back up and immediately climbed right back up to the spot to see the branch that had snapped and marvel at my ability to catch myself by my legs upside down! My point here is that in order to climb trees, you have to risk a major fall. No one ever makes it to the top without totally risking falling to the very bottom.

Anything you want in life that is worth having requires an equal level of risk. If you want to be rich, then you have to risk going bankrupt. If you want to be a famous actor, then you have risk being a nobody. And if you want to be a champion, then you have to totally risk not achieving that champion level.

True champions never have fear of this risk. They know the risk is there and they understand what it means, but they do not fear it. The reason they do not fear the risk, is because they do not see the risk as a possibility to fail. If a champion starts a business and the business goes bankrupt, a true champion will never say that the business failed. rather, he will say that the business did not achieve success this time, but next time he will succeed. The only way a champion ever feels like a failure is if he quits or if he feels he did not give it everything he had. Since neither of those will ever happen, regardless of the outcome of the risk taken, a champion can never fail.

So, whatever it is you want in your sport or in your life, never hesitate even for a second because of the risk. Everything has risk. And great accomplishments require great risks. But no matter what the result, whether you make it to the top or fall on your head, you can never fail if you think like a champion.