It is pre-season. You may have worked out all summer or maybe you didn’t. The point is you want to get in shape before the first practice. You want others to play catch up to you but how do you do it?
Wrestling requires specific muscle groups and specific cardio. Wrestling is an aerobic and anaerobic sport. Meaning it requires your lungs and your muscles. It is a long distance and a sport. So I will break down here how to get both of you systems ready for wrestling.
Step 1- Running Habit
If you have not gone running in a long time, it is more important to start a habit instead of trying to get speed or distance. Speed and distance will come with a habit. To get a habit, you have to make it easy. Put in a calendar that you will run. Chose morning or evening. Put in 10 minutes and leave your shoes by the door and your running clothes out. Create a running play list and find an ap that records your runs so you can track how far you go and see how you improve.
Then when you wake up, go for a five minute run in one direction and when you come back, that’s 10 minutes. This should be about a mile. The next day make it six so that now you will have 12 minutes which should be at least a mile and a half. Every day keep on adding a minute until you are at a 20-30 minute run.
To make the runs more anaerobic, add a sprint at the end, or up a hill. I like to sprint from light-pole to light-pole to make it more fun.
Do at least 3-5 runs a week. Your cardio is gone after three days so make sure you never have more than two days without a run.
Now that you are doing a 20-30 minute run, use an ap on your phone to gauge your distance and speed. Set goals.
Step 2- Lifting
Wrestlers are not body builders. Wrestling uses very specific muscles, you want those muscles to have strength, not bulk. You want your tendons to be strong. You want to have muscles that are lean so they use less oxygen and make you less tired. How do you do this?
First, you want to make sure that you work the right muscles. The muscles you need are not bench press/push muscles, that’s for football. What you need are the holding and pulling muscles for holds and throws. You need good strong core and strong legs. So leg press, leg curls, quads. You also can do rowing, lat pulls. Everything that has to do with the biceps, triceps, strong wrists and forearms. So lots of lawnmowers and free weights.
How you lift those weights is just as important as which muscles. Some people want to get definition and size. But size is a problem in wrestling because bulk takes up water, and energy. People with bulk are often not as strong as they look and get tired faster. They are also slow. So how do you lift while still keeping strength and saving energy? Pyramids of low weight high rep.
Starting with almost no weight and adding five pounds while doing five to ten reps and going up to 20 or 50 pounds doesn’t sound like much, but once you are back at five, you will feel gassed. These are great ways to get the tendons to get stronger, to build lean muscle and to create fast twitch muscle. Save the big weights for the off season, focus on large reps and low to medium weight for the pre-season.
Henry-Wrestling 