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

Posture and posture maintenance

Posture is one of the seven basic skills of wrestling. It’s probably the first concept you learn in wrestling. What constitutes good posture? Proper posture 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 too upright. You don’t want to look like the plastic wrestler you see on top of the trophies. Your opponent shouldn’t be able to read your shirt. Usually you want to fight head to head. Your posture should be quite low. You want to be like a coil spring or sprinter ready to explode in your shot. Typically, you move back and forth in a forward leg stance and in circles with a square stance.

Olympian John Smith talks about keeping his elbows in his pockets. He’s just saying that in general, you need to keep your elbows tight to protect yourself. Also, you must not reach, jump, or trip. Sometimes you can just approach your opponent in good posture and wait for him to reach and make contact first. Or you can circle and stalk your opponent until you are face to face and then catch up with your opponent. Then, as former NCAA Champion Tom Brands would say, you need to lean on heavy hands, get into the dominant head position, and move your feet.

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

When moving forward or backward in your stance, you should continue forward leg or power leg forward to always be ready to shoot when the opportunity presents itself. It is important to maintain good posture. Ideally, your shooting hand should be free and protect your lead leg.

Hand fighting and moving your opponent

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

Former NCAA Champion Daryl Weber says: “Hand-wrestling is basically knowing where you want to be, where you have the best chance to score, forcing your opponent, and also knowing how to get rid of your opponent’s ties and come back. where you are. you’re comfortable. “

Unfortunately, many wrestlers put their necks and elbow pads on and just dance with each other. Or the wrestlers grab with their hands but do not move their feet. You need to move your opponent. You need to push and pull and roll and really commit to it.

Elite fighters like Cory Cooperman and Bill Zadick will tell you that your hands and feet need to be on the move. When your hands move, your feet must move.

The Purler brothers will tell you that a good hand fight creates movement that helps you throw an opponent off balance and prepare attacks.

Another benefit of proper manual fighting can be tiresome to your opponent. It can wear down your neck, back, and hamstrings. You can really get it out. Many fighters just don’t want to work that hard. If you can’t take down your opponent in the first period, you may get a takedown in the second or third period by exhausting your opponent with the proper hand-fighting early in the match.

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

Anglos

When it comes to finding angles, Daryl Weber states: “The higher the competition, the tougher the competition gets, the more important this becomes. You don’t want to shoot your opponents directly. That works a lot, but as you compete Against better competitors who know how to react, who have strong hips and good balance, it will be important to know how to find angles. “

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

Drilling

Piercing is one of the best ways to improve your wrestling skill. Rehearsing and repeating movements and techniques is generally not as fun as live wrestling, but it is extremely important.

When you exercise it 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. Piercing allows you to perfect different movements and techniques. Don’t just practice setting and finishing over and over again. Practice various assemblies and finishes. Know how to handle the different positions and situations that may arise during a match.

You can also do a very good workout with intense exercises. Intense piercing can work just as well to get you in shape as live wrestling. However, piercing has the advantage of being able to really sharpen your skills.

NCAA training champion Cary Kolat says that punching is the main component of elite fighters. 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 a better workout with punching than ever with live wrestling.”

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

Jason Nase, former NCAA All-American, 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 takes good shots all the time. You are going to have troubles that you will have to fight. I mean, that’s the sport. What do you do when you’re in a bad position? How do you go from good to bad quickly? matches. “

Chain fight

Chain Fight is just what the name suggests. It is putting movements together in a chain. It is the ability to flow or seamlessly transition from one technique or move on to the next.

Sometimes we see wrestling in pieces. We think about mounts, takedowns, defense, driving, and other segments of the match. We fire for a takedown and stop and then we stand up and start again. Or, we get the teardown and then start thinking about another part how to mount. But, ideally, we should move from one fight to another.

Musical notes and patterns don’t mean much until they are put together to form a complete, seamless song. Good dancers flow smoothly from step to step. They have fluidity and grace. All the techniques and movements that you know should not be considered separate parts. Ideally, each piece of your fight should tie into the next in a fluid way.

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

Former NCAA Champion Terry Brands says, “It’s endless. That’s what we love about wrestling. We just have to have this non-snippet mentality. That’s not how it works. That’s why guys have problems. That’s why guys fight. “

Brands says that sometimes fighters are so excited about the first takedown and so unsure of their abilities that it’s a relief to get that first takedown. So, we leave it a bit. Or maybe a wrestler has simply never learned to chain fight. You get a takedown, let your opponent get to your base, and then start 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 for an arm or maybe we may be looking for a Turkish or Naval ride.

Or maybe our opening takedown is blocked, but we automatically move on to a new offensive move and still end up scoring. Maybe I shot for one leg and they stopped me, but then I took a look and still turned around to score my two points.

Chain fighting is also important at the bottom. If my sitting stops, maybe I can transition to a stop and escape from there.

Leverage and being bad

Sometimes leverage is a great key to a successful move. Run a half nelson or an arm bar directly over the top instead of the traditional way and see what happens. Grab your opponent’s chin with a half nelson to make it really tight. Make your opponent uncomfortable and he will move in whatever 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 awkward.

Former NCAA Champion Zack Esposito describes the top position, saying, “You know what? Wrestling is not a tickle competition. It hurts like a mother when a guy sticks two legs into you. So why not? do we give him a tug on the shoulders? ” “

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

He goes on to say, “When I have a doll, I’ll try to break its shoulder. That’s how 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.

Conclution

These are just a few examples of the knowledge elite fighters have that you may not have. Hopefully, you are already doing a lot of these things. If not, start incorporating these concepts into your fight and you will see a great improvement.

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