A continuing series on “Body of a Champion”

by Brendon Lowe

How much worth would you give a home computer that was built in the 1980’s? Back when computer monitors where green with white pixels, the printing paper came in one long perforated stack, and everything was run through DOS (how many of you even know what DOS is?). What about video games? Atari was state of the art at one time. Box shaped blobs jutting across your screen while you shot at them using a simple one-button joystick.

This was all entertaining and practical at one point in time, but technology and research have done amazing things since then. Gaming system resolution presents an almost realistic portrayal of the wildest scenarios possible. We are to the point that technology from twenty years ago is archaic and primordial. So, why does the technology of training our athletes remain in the 1980’s?

The lack of knowledge and the fear of change will be the downfall of any athlete’s training. Most high school wrestlers rely on the knowledge of their coach to make them stronger, faster, and more agile. The problem with this is that the coaches are training their wrestlers the same way that they where trained back in high school. They take the “if it worked for me, then it’ll work for you” mentality. There is nothing wrong with this view… if you want to be a mediocre athlete.

The 80’s began an in depth reformation of strength training that continues today, but the techniques used then are still being used predominantly in high schools today. There is very little organization or logic behind these routines. Bodybuilding became big in the 80’s and formed the “gold standard” as to how athletes should train. The basic three sets of ten workouts is the leading choice of routines that I have seen in high schools all over the country. Even I was guilty of doing almost every exercise in three sets of ten in high school. This was until I began to study what training really is.

There is nothing wrong with training like a bodybuilder… if you are a bodybuilder. I sometimes refer to the gains in muscle size from these routines as gaining “fake muscle.” (Note: I do not mean to offend any bodybuilders, please read on for clarification) If you wanted to make a balloon stronger, would you fill it up with more air to make it bigger? No, you would have to add more rubber to the balloon itself. The workouts done by bodybuilders do not make the muscle stronger; per se, but rather make the muscles bigger by increasing the “fluid” inside the muscles. Bodybuilders do not need stronger muscles, although they will see increases in strength from training, they merely need bigger muscles.

A wrestler doesn’t need bigger muscles on the mat, except to impress the ladies with a ripped physique. They need muscles that will perform optimally for the sport of wrestling. Wrestling uses almost every aspect of athletic abilities including strength, speed, agility, power, balance, flexibility, and endurance. Each of these components must be trained independently and in conjunction with each other at different times throughout the macrocycle (this was covered in last month’s article. For this you must determine the training goals for each workout and then determine that days activities accordingly.

Your body must be trained in a way that replicates the activities that it will face during competition. This does not mean that your lifts in the weight room should mimic the identical motions of wrestling, but rather that the actions of the muscles should be the same. Much of wrestling is explosive, and so the rate of force development is crucial. Use actions that cause your muscles to contract at high rates of speed such as the power clean. I have found that doing deadlifts, at 85% of one rep max, as fast as possible, for sets of three are highly advantageous for getting high amplitude on a reverse body lock in Greco.

At the other end of the activity spectrum is endurance, which scares off many prospective wrestlers. I don’t know how many high school athletes that I’ve tried to recruit for the wrestling team have said, “I hear that they have to do a lot of running,” or “I can’t handle all that running.” Again, this is from the experience of coaches caught in the dark age of sports performance. A wrestler will find very little benefit from running more than approximately three miles. If you are one of those “crazy” people such as my wife (college cross-country and track runners) that thinks that it’s fun to go out and run five to ten miles at a time, go out and enjoy yourself. I on the other hand find it mundane and boring, yet I would run about five mile every day over the summer because I believed it would make me better. When it came down to it, that running did very little for my wrestling endurance. I was doing something that I didn’t like and getting no benefit from it.

Using periodization described last month, begin to organize your training to include all seven aspects of performance. Determine what your training goal is for each microcycle and pick your routines according to those goals. Don’t get caught up with the way it used to be done, and always search for a better way to optimize your performance. Think about this, why would you just do squats to prepare for a deadlift competition? You’ll see results, but it makes more sense to do deadlifts.

This month’s exercise: Blob holds

1. Find two hex-dumbbells of the same weight.
2. Set them up so that one head is on the floor and the other head is pointed towards the ceiling.
3. Grasp the top of the dumbbells, one in each hand, and stand up.
4. Hold the dumbbells in this position as long as possible.