REMINDER: Excel Wrestling Camp – July 1-3

Excel Wrestling is returning to Hawaii for it’s annual training camp, Thursday July 1st – Saturday July 3rd at Punahou School (Forrest Hall).

Steve Knight has been a member of 2 US Olympic Freestyle Wrestling Coaching Staffs, was the 1992 Pan-Am Games Champion, and a Big-12 champion for Iowa State.  He’s come to Hawaii every summer for the past eight years and has been influential to a number of teams, including Lahainaluna and Punahou.

Wrestlers of all abilities are welcome but those that have a solid grasp of the fundamentals will get the most out of the camp.

Sessions times
5-8pm Thurs and Fri (July 1-2)
Sat 9-11am and 1-3pm  (July 3)

Showers will be available and recommended between Saturday’s sessions. Bring your own lunch and drinks.

You can register online at the Excel Wrestling site.

You can also download a flier here and check out the Excel Wrestling site here.

Teaching Takedowns

Here are a few random tips for teaching takedowns that we’ve learned over the years and incorporated into our practices:

Face of a Clock
This is a tip we learned from Steve Knight at Excel Wrestling. When teaching takedowns, we teach attacks to zones based on the face of clock. For example, when facing him, your opponent’s left leg is 5 o’clock, his right is 7 o’clock, his left shoulder (for a duck-under, for example) is 1 o’clock, etc. Besides simplifying communication with our wrestlers, the other benefit is that the wrestlers can choose their favorite technique to the particular attack zone.

If one wrestler likes a high-crotch to 5 o’clock, but another prefers a sweep single, it doesn’t matter when we’re drilling or competing. When we practice, we simply drill “5 o’clock attack” and the wrestler chooses the technique they’re most comfortable with. This lets us accommodate different styles while still having the whole team working on (more or less) the same thing.

Left & Right Doesn’t Matter
Back when I was wrestling, we always drilled every technique to both sides. It seems many coaches at the advanced level have abandoned this and we have too. A wrestler certainly needs attacks to all attack zones, but his 5 o’clock and 7 o’clock attacks don’t both need to be the same skill. In fact, there are some good reasons why they shouldn’t be the same skill. This also applies to pinning combinations and escapes. A wrestler should develop the skills that best suits their style and comfort level. It doesn’t matter that that the left side and right side moves are different.

Teach the Finish First
This is something Matt picked up from Terry Steiner at one of his Hawaii clinics. Conventional wisdom has been to teach setup-penetration-finish, in that order. Terry contends that when a takedown is countered (at all levels), the attacker is usually stuck working for the finish. Since this is the phase of the takedown where a wrestler is likely to spend most of his time, we should emphasize it as we develop his skills. At the beginning of the year, when we start reviewing our fundamental takedowns, we first teach what a good finish position looks & feels like, and do all of our drilling starting from that position. Later on, we back up and start drilling setups & penetrations. Our ability to finish takedowns dramatically improved when we adopted this teaching sequence.

I’m sure others have come across some great tips for teaching takedowns. Please comment below and share your ideas!

HIADA Decisions on Wrestling & Judo

From Paul Honda at the Star Advertiser:

Wrestling

1. Maintain the start dates but insert an additional week to the Winter Sports Season. Adjust each of the winter state tournament weeks to one

Committee: 28-0-1 passed

APPROVED 85-0-4

The rest of the results can be found here:

2. Change the over-hydrated disqualification rule to a reading of 1.000 on the refractometer and allow a wrestler who is disqualified with over-hydration to maintain his/her three opportunities to certify.

Committee: 28-0-1 passed

APPROVED 85-1-4

3. As amended: If a defensive wrestler in a nearfall situation signals with the “tap-out” gesture and the match is stopped because of the signal, then the wrestler will default the match, except if the tappet gesture is due to an illegal hold on the part of the offensive wrestler

Committee: 28-0-1 passed

APPROVED 85-0-4

Judo

1. To restore the HHSAA judo tournament to 16-person brackets

Committee: 17-10-2 passed

APPROVED 54-30-5

2. As amended: This recommendation would add to the list of Flagrant Hanskumake and would disqualify a contestant from competition, medals and points. Performance of reckless actions, i.e. intentionally kicking, slapping, shoving which could or does cause injury or intimidation would be regarded as flagrant hanskumake.

Committee: 28-0-1 passed

APPROVED 86-0-4

The rest of the results can be found here:

http://www.hawaiiprepworld.com/air-riflery/2010-hiada-voting-results/

Is Hawaii Killing High School Wrestling?

A couple weeks ago, The Open Mat ran an interesting article titled “Who is to Blame, the Slow Death of College Wrestling” and it got me thinking: are we slowly killing high school wrestling in Hawaii?

On the surface, things don’t look too bad here. Participation is decent (if uneven), the caliber of wrestling is solid, and there’s a widespread youth program. The popularity of MMA has also helped get new youngsters into the game (not to mention their moms and dads) and that bodes well for future turnout.

But under the surface, there are systemic forces that threaten to undermine the viability of Hawaii’s high school wrestling. At its most basic, the powers that be (HHSAA and the leagues) should have a simple objective: make it as easy as possible for the kids that are interested in wrestling to get on the mat safely. But instead we have a weight monitoring system run amok; a redundant system that burdens already thin coaching staffs and doesn’t necessarily add to the safety of the athletes. We have a governing body that intentionally chooses not to follow NFHS weight classes, and now we’re (proposing) shortening the season once again and worse, moving it almost a month earlier which will make it harder still for football athletes to come out for wrestling, not to mention potentially impacting the safety of the athletes.

There are some things that are certainly beyond our control – most notably, budget cuts and a poor economy which makes it even harder to find coaches able to dedicate the immense amount of time a wrestling program requires. But instead of finding ways to help our wrestling programs, we seem to be trying even harder to find ways to derail wrestling in Hawaii. We find “solutions” to the problems we face by treating them as administrative problems, not as issues that have real impact on real student-athletes.

We need to find ways to help coaches with their workload, not add to it. And we need to make it easier for athletes to wrestle, not harder. I don’t have a solution for our challenges – believe me, I wish I did. But I wanted to raise this issue with our community, to start a dialog (and likely, debate) about finding constructive solutions going forward.

So what do you think?

REMINDER: Iolani Clinic June 7-11, 2010

You can still register for the upcoming Iolani Clinic.

Lead Clinician: Brian Smith, Head Coach, University of Missouri
Three-time All-Big Ten wrestler and four-time letterman at Michigan State

• 13 All-Americans and 2 National Champions  have come through Coach Smith’s program
• University of Missouri has finished in the top-15 at the NCAA Championships for six straight years, placing as high as 2nd.

The format of the Iolani Clinic includes (see registration for for detailed agenda):

• Intense work on developing the skills of age group wrestlers
• Instruction on core strength development
• Live competition between the campers

Fee: $225 per wrestler. Team price (6+ wrestlers) is $200/wrestler.
Walk-in registration will be accepted on Monday only.

Download the registration form here.