The BIG conditioning mistake you are making with your wrestlers

The BIG conditioning mistake you are making with your wrestlers

One of the simplest and most effective conditioning tools is good old fashioned sprints.  But whether your wrestlers are running them on the road, the track, the wrestling room, or even on an air dyne bike, what they are doing is equally important to how they are doing their sprint work.

The big mistake you are making as a coach?

Not enough rest between goes.

Now I know this sounds counter intuitive, but by forcing too quick of a turnaround between sprints, even a seasoned athlete is unable to recover enough to “sprint”.  Sprint work is an incredible tool to build power and improve speed, but without adequate revery time in between, that explosive burst becomes just busy work.

What should be sprint work turns into stressful anaerobic bouts of lessening intensity.

That’s not to say that doing interval work is bad, but if you want to increase absolute speed and power production, your wrestler needs to sprint at maximum effort for a relatively short distance, with a long rest or active recovery in between.

A good work:rest ratio should be anywhere from 1:5  for shorter bursts to 1:10 for longer sprints. So for short sprints that go across the mats lasting roughly 5 seconds, you still need 50 seconds of recovery time (or one sprint per minute).  A 100 yard sprint on the football field that takes 13 seconds will need 2+ minutes of recovery.  That can seem like a lot of “wasted” time, so you may want to program light stance motion, upper body bands or other prehab work for active recovery during the break.

Your wrestler is already getting plenty of “interval” work during wrestling practice (actually wrestling).  Doing circuit training with low rest or going for a tough interval run are both great ideas and should have a place in the training plan.  But when it comes to getting faster and more explosive, nothing beats true sprint work - just make sure sprint sessions are structured properly so your wrestler can give 100% and reap the benefits.

My favorite air dyne sprint workout:

10 second sprint/50 seconds active rest or stance motion x 10 rounds*

*if trading off with a partner, one wrestler does their bike sprint at the top of each minute, where as the other wrestler sprints from :30-:40 of each minute.  This allows each wrestler roughly 5 seconds to get off the bike, :30 of light stance motion and then another 5 seconds to get back on the bike to begin their sprint. If staying on the bike (not trading off with a partner), the wrestler can simply pedal light for the entire :50.

Need a structured program to follow? I have advanced and home training programs for youth wrestlers.  All programs have technique videos for every single exercise - no guess work!  Download the Coach Myers S&C App HERE  www.coachmyersstrength.com