Wrestling made easy

The purpose of this blog post is to provide a short report of the Dynamo Wrestling [1] Concepts four-month course. I will try to analyze the concepts and principles which were explored during the course, describe the training methods that were used, and share our conclusions.

DYNAMO WRESTLING CONCEPTS – WHAT?
Dynamo Wrestling Concepts is the teaching and training methodology we use at the Göteborg Dynamo Club to provide students that have no wrestling background with a good understanding of wrestling concepts and principles and a firm grasp of basic technical skills (throws & takedowns) and tactical options (arm-drag, duck-under, slide-by etc) within a relatively short amount of time. The basic idea behind this program is to teach wrestling skills mostly through open drills and games, with as little technical instruction as possible.

The Dynamo Wrestling Concepts course was held for the first time during the period September-December 2011.

DYNAMO WRESTLING CONCEPTS – WHY?
A question you might come up at this point is “why bother teaching wrestling to the students of a Russian Martial Art Club?” The reasons are actually numerous – let try to explain a few:
First and foremost, we commonly describe our work at the Dynamo as ‘one human body – one set of movement skills – endless possibilities of application’. It is of the utmost importance for practitioners to understand that the same set of power generation movements that they learned during the entry level training at the Dynamo, and then applied during a three-month fist fighting course, was applicable with practically no modifications at all in the wrestling course.

Another reason we consider wrestling important: it is an excellent teaching tool for understanding the mechanics and experiencing the kinesthetic sensation of an ‘ideal throw’. In my experience, about 90% of the throwing techniques I have learned in various martial arts over the years follow the same set of biomechanical guidelines and when executed correctly, give the thrower the same - very specific - ‘feeling’. In modern Russian Martial Art, throws are often performed and demonstrated through small joint manipulations or with minimal contact, so the subtle technical nuances can become very complex. Practitioners often become overwhelmed by complexity so they never actually get to ‘sort out’ what makes a throwing technique successful. Wrestling provides the simplest possible context in which the guidelines of throwing techniques can be implemented with very direct actions that make the application of forces obvious and easy to understand. Once the student has acquired the feeling of a good throw through simple means, it is natural to progress to more sophisticated applications. The opposite (progressing from the complex to the simple) makes for a very bad educational approach.

Wrestling provides with some of the most typical applications of what in judo is known as ‘the push-pull principle’, i.e. changing direction of attack when the opponent resists in one direction. This principle is tremendously important for any type of martial art practice because, in combination with rhythmic and continuous movement for power generation, it provides a way to understand and experience the sometimes mystical and hard-to-grasp concept of ‘flow’. Thus, wrestling promotes flow – simple as that.

Finally, wrestling drills are an excellent way to develop muscular strength and aerobic/anaerobic conditioning.

Charles and Henrik demonstrating wrestling flow/soft work. Neither of them has any wrestling experience besides approximately sixty hours of training in the Dynamo Wrestling Concepts

DYNAMO WRESTLING CONCEPTS – HOW?
In the process of first explaining the contextual logic behind every wrestling technique before proceeding to develop specific skills (explaining the ‘why’ before the ‘how’), here are the steps we followed:

1. We described the main task of the activity of wrestling in the simplest way possible, i.e. ‘to bring the opponent off his feet and depending on the context (sport wrestling or restraint and control tactics), either on his back or on his face.
2. We described the task of ‘throwing an opponent down’ in terms of simple physics: we explained the concepts of center of mass and base of support and how an object topples over if the projection of its center of mass falls outside the base of support.
3. We explained how, by placing the opponent’s weight on one of his legs, his movement and power generation become restricted, plus a number of options for throws present themselves: we can either apply force in three directions to move his body so that his center of mass moves outside his base of support, or we can attack his supporting leg (either with our hands or our legs) to remove support from underneath him.  This way the main task of wrestling is reduced to a much simpler one – to apply force on the body of the opponent so that his weight is supported by one leg only. This task definition is nothing else than what the founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano, was referring to as ‘kuzushi’ or ‘unbalancing’, but in my experience, students understand what they must do much better when asked to “bring their opponent’s weight over one leg”, than when asked to ‘unbalance the opponent’.
4. After defining our task in the simplest terms possible, we proceeded in discovering the means to achieve it – our question was:  “how and where do we apply force on the opponent’s body in order to bring his weight over one leg?” At this point the main wrestling grips were introduced: the elbow-collar tie-up, the underhook and the biceps tie-up. Although the grips were specifically demonstrated, a ‘game’ could have been used instead where students are asked to push and pull their partners around the mat, so that the most effective ways to grip and apply force would eventually present themselves. I decided that, at this point, ‘re-inventing the wheel’ could have been constructive, but not time-efficient. The drill we used instead asked of the students to combine the power generation movements they learned during their entry-level training with the force application points dictated by the basic wrestling grips to move their partners forwards and backwards, left and right, or in a spinning movement. The conclusion reached was that it is relatively easy to bring the opponent’s weight over one leg by moving him to one direction, then suddenly switching towards another. The first version of the drill was performed using only one of the basic grips each time. Gradually the drill became more complex with the students switching from one grip to another.
5. The next step was to discover ways to attack the opponent once his weight had been brought over one leg. In this step, the concept of ‘hyperfunction’, from Aleksander Retuinskih’s ROSS system was introduced, and a small number of specific force applications were presented. Finally we practiced various rhythmical footwork drills that helped seamlessly connect the power generation movements from the breaking of balance, to entering, to performing the throwing technique. All these new elements were inserted in the previous pushing and pulling drill, thus resulting in something that started looking like… well, wrestling!
6. Finally we ended our exploration by introducing ‘fighting for grips’ in the upper body, since specific grips offer a positional advantage that allows us to bring the opponent’s weight on one leg without him being able to resist (for example, if we manage to position ourselves to his side or his back). The pummeling drill (and pummeling contest drill) was introduced at this point and a small number of specific attacks demonstrated.

DYNAMO WRESTLING CONCEPTS – RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS
As I said at the beginning, the Dynamo Wrestling Concepts program was implemented for a limited period of time, since the goal of the Dynamo Club is not to train wrestlers, but to develop all-around combat skills through training underlying fundamentals (‘the essentials’) that are as generally applicable as possible. We prefer not to allow students to acquire stylistic habits, but rather develop the ability to understand the needs of various contexts and adapt to them.

In this sense, there were significant aspects that although  included in our training, did not receive special mention – an example might be the idea of defending against having one’s weight brought over one leg and counterattacking by redirecting the opponent’s force. The current plan is to revisit those aspects in the future.

Based on my experience after training in martial arts for over two decades, the results were quite impressive – students with absolutely no wrestling experience whatsoever were able to execute throws in a dynamic environment (against fully resisting partners) that I wasn’t able to after two years of judo training. The embedded Youtube video features two members of the Dynamo, Charles and Henrik practicing wrestling soft work, and might give you a sample of what was achieved in a very short amount of time. All in all, I believe there is tremendous potential in teaching wrestling (and any other combat sport or fighting style, for that matter) using a constructivist approach.

I would be very interested to any feedback and suggestions the readers of this blog might have, so you’re welcome to leave your comments or send me an e-mail.

[1] I am using here the term 'wrestling' with its broadest possible meaning: that of competing against an opponent from a standing position, with the goal of throwing each other down, without the use of strikes. I am not referring to the Olympic sport of wrestling or any other specific style of wrestling with or without a jacket. I am also not referring to submission wrestling.

A great big thanks to Vadim Kolganov, SAMBO Master of Sport (http://www.dynamosambo.co.uk) for his valuable insights and feedback regarding wrestling tactics techniques and training methods, and Luis Preto (http://www.pretomartialarts.com), whose book Fencing Martial Arts: How to Sequence the Teaching of Techniques and Tactics provided great insight on how to construct a basic curriculum.