Building Speed for Wrestling

My second oldest kid is 15 and a high school junior varsity wrestler. He’ll wrestle in the 171 pound weight class next season, which will be his second season.

He’s stronger than most of his opponents, has good endurance, plays the mind game well, and is rapidly improving his technical skills. The one area he feels he needs to build is his speed, his reaction time. He told me that he feels that most of the matches he lost last season were because the other guy was faster than he was on the mat.

For those of you with wrestling experience or general knowledge of this subject, what exercises or sports can my boy do in the off-season to enhance his speed? He’s doing some kind of workout program called P90X that he feels is helping, but I wonder what else he can do?

Cheers,

Tomas

He should watch Vision Quest once a week! :thumbsup:

He feels that P90X is helping? Interesting, but if he feels it works…

I’m no expert in speed but if it were me, I would be doing a jump squat workout to build explosive ability into the legs.

Ideally he has access to a mat and one or more practice partners during the off season. In my experience the best prep for a wrestler is mat time. If you son wants to quicken his moves on the mat, I would suggest repetitious drills that practice 2-3 moves in sequence. Wrestler’s with quick reaction time are universally reacting instinctively, and aggressively. They are using moves they know so well, there is no thinking involved. Just pure, aggressive action.

youtube.com/watch?v=olpmZTFo … r_embedded
youtube.com/watch?v=TVwAJzU3 … r_embedded
youtube.com/watch?v=qf0eKJfT … r_embedded

[quote=“Formosa Fitness”]He feels that P90X is helping? Interesting, but if he feels it works…

I’m no expert in speed but if it were me, I would be doing a jump squat workout to build explosive ability into the legs.[/quote]

He’s doing it with some buddies of his. I think his target is greater strength, which has always been his advantage in sports.

He did mention that he is doing a lot of squats. I’ll pass along your tip to make sure he’s doing the right kind.

[quote=“HooknSinker”]Ideally he has access to a mat and one or more practice partners during the off season. In my experience the best prep for a wrestler is mat time. If you son wants to quicken his moves on the mat, I would suggest repetitious drills that practice 2-3 moves in sequence. Wrestler’s with quick reaction time are universally reacting instinctively, and aggressively. They are using moves they know so well, there is no thinking involved. Just pure, aggressive action.

youtube.com/watch?v=olpmZTFo … r_embedded
youtube.com/watch?v=TVwAJzU3 … r_embedded
youtube.com/watch?v=qf0eKJfT … r_embedded[/quote]

Thanks for this. I’ll pass along those links and your message to him. I think it is tough to get mat time right now, but he could do some workouts with his wrestling buddies in the off season. He’s a really nice kid, but knows when he should be aggressive and isn’t afraid to go after it on the mat.

His second season, already stronger than most. Simply put, the best thing he can do is get more mat time. It is not always easy - help him brainstorm to find a way.

He could look at participating in as many freestyle tournaments as possible during off season. He may need to do some searching to find them. Tournaments = mat time. If he is very serious, and you want to spend some money, there are some great wrestling camps on offer over the summer. Again, mat time. If he’s ambitious, identify the camps that the best HS wrestlers go to, and go to them. I’m guessing these are likely in Iowa or Oklahoma.

During high school Dan Gable had a mat in his basement. He used to invite the neighborhood kids over and challenge them. Mat time.

Visualization exercises are also very helpful. After mat time, visualization probably adds more quickness than simple conditioning or weight training. Too much strength and conditioning, without the mat time, can actually lead one to be slower and more methodical. One begins to think and move more like a weightlifter or runner, than a wrestler.

HooknSinker’s right: by far the best thing that will improve your boy’s wrestling skills is more wrestling. I wrestled from grade 7 until college and every so often a big football player or weightlifter would join a practice, thinking he’s going to throw around a few wrestlers and every time he got tied in a knot within moments and was begging for mercy, at the hands of a substantially lighter wrestler. What people sometimes don’t fully understand is that wrestling is 99% skill and, as hooknsinker correctly noted, so much repetition of moves and sequences of moves that they become purely instinctive.

Strength and power are important. Weightlifting off season can’t hurt. Endurance matters a lot too. If he wants to be a good wrestler he must run, bike and/or swim regularly so he’ll still have wind left at the end of a match, when he’s totally exhausted and wanting to quit. But neither running nor weightlifting makes half as much difference as practice wrestling. And speed? Well, the only speed that matters is being able to execute wrestling moves quickly and well.

If he’s only got a year or two under his belt, but he’s strong and determined, he’ll undoubtedly beat some opponents, but will run into other opponents with several years more experience and they should beat him most of the time. Hopefully that will just inspire him to work harder, because the more he works at it and the longer he sticks with it the more he’ll win, naturally.

Hooknsinker’s right about wrestling camp, but I don’t think he would have to go to Iowa or Oklahoma (a couple of the best states for wrestling). There are lots of outstanding wrestlers in other states, too, such as NY, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, etc. In high school, I attended wrestling camp two summers in a row at Clarion U, in Pennsylvania.
clariongoldeneagles.com/auto … f/2010camp
That was a great program (30 years ago) and definitely helped, but I’m sure there are lots of other good summer programs. For example, I’d bet U of Oregon puts on a good program:
goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml … CLID=32998

But hopefully he can find a way to work on his skills at home. If he/you can find a way to clear out one room, somehow (pile the unused furniture in the corner, etc), and cover the floor with the cheap foam mats from B&Q, that will suffice. Then he can practice shooting take downs, doing standups, etc. Of course it would be far better with a partner, but even alone may help if he sticks with it.

Jiayou.