The Fundamentals Are Key to Wrestling Well
When it comes to wrestling, younger wrestlers always want to be shown the “cool” moves. Often times these are the more flashy throws and pins. These moves aren’t high percentage moves though and more often than not a wrestler will get into trouble when hitting them.
The fundamentals are what win wrestling matches. When you watch higher level matches you will find that all of the top guys do are fundamental moves. In fact most of these guys will only work on the fundamentals. The fundamental moves work because they are referred to as high percentage moves. Meaning, they will work most of the time that you hit them.
The problem lies with explaining what the fundamentals are. This can be tricky because there is no universal code to wrestling fundamentals. There are some things that wrestlers should be taught and should work on though.
The very first thing that wrestlers should be taught is a proper stance. This includes how to move around in your stance and how to make sure that stay in position at all times. If you do not have a solid stance then you run the risk of getting picked apart by your opponent.
Knowing how to correctly defend attacks using your hands, elbows, and sprawls are also important. When wrestlers start off they tend to defend shots taken on them by pushing their hips into their opponents. This is something that they will not want to do, they will want to sprawl backwards and get their hips away from their opponent.
Having one good attack is very important. These attacks should be a high percentage move such as a single leg or double leg shot. Since every wrestler is different, how they hit the move will be different, but they will need to be able to have one “go to” move. A “go to” move is a move that they can almost always hit. It is their bread and butter move and they should drill this move until they are blue in the face.
They will also need to make sure that their stand up is solid. A stand up is used to get out form underneath the top wrestler. When a wrestler has a solid stand up then he is almost impossible to keep down. This can be detrimental to his opponent.
Finally, a wrestler should have a good foundation with one way to control the bottom man. Most wrestlers chose either to be a wrist rider, a leg rider or a tilt specialist. All of them have their pro’s and con’s. The key here is to make sure that what ever they do, they drill it often and they have a solid base for it.
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