Chain Drills

I’ve always felt that taking time to hit the road/track during practice sessions was largely a waste of time. Conditioning is clearly important but after all, we’re a wrestling team, not a cross country team. Matt learned a great tip from Gene Mills for increasing physical intensity/conditioning, while still wrestling: Chain Drills.

It’s so simple, I wish we had started doing it earlier. Basically, one wrestler hits  a move, the other wrestler hits a follow up move, and they start over again. For example, the first wrestler hits a high-crotch & finishes to the mat. The pair immediately gets set in referee’s position, with the guy who drilled the takedown in top position. Bottom man hits a stand-up, scores the escape, then hits his own high-crotch. This can be made to work for both takedowns and matwork.

We drill this by time (1 or 2 minute sets), rather than by reps. Besides drilling the moves, it also reinforces chain wrestling and of course, is pretty close to live wrestling from a conditioning standpoint.

Now, the next level (which we haven’t tackled in our practices yet) is to structure the entire practice around this type of activity. Over the years, Coach Gary Mayabb of Staley HS and Team Missouri (and one of the best high school coaches in the country) has been very generous to Team Hawaii and allowed them to practice with Team Missouri ahead of the Cadet/Junior Nationals in July. Coach Mayab bases an entire practice around this concept of constant, constructive activity. It makes for a great workout.

Quick Iterations Keep it Interesting

Unless you’ve got the personality (and the skills) of Mean Gene Mills, it can sometimes be hard to keep your wrestlers’ attention when teaching. This is a tip we picked up from Sammy Chagolla when he came to do a clinic for us.

Rather than explain a move (especially a complicated one) from beginning to end and trying to cover all the key points at once, do a quick demo of the move, highlight the most important things, then cut the wrestlers loose for a few reps. Since you didn’t cover everything, they’ll probably make a lot of mistakes or get stuck on one point or another. That’s OK. Let them drill a few reps, then bring the group back in, emphasize just one or two teaching points, then send them back for more reps. You can end up doing this five or six times (or more) but it doesn’t take any more time than teaching the “normal” way and helps keep the wrestlers engaged.

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!