“The importance of off-season wrestling” (Part 2 of 2)
By Ben Askren
Now that I’ve given you a look at what my training was like, I will try to give you a jumpstart by showing you
all of your options up front. If you are anywhere near the Milwaukee area ringers is a great club and you would
gain valuable experience from going. Here is a link to there website http://www.ringerswrestling.com . If you are
around the Madison area, Troy Steiner is running a great club called advance, again I would encourage you to
attend, a link to his website is http://www.advancewrestling.com
If you between Milwaukee and Madison, why not attend both? The more wrestling the merrier. If you live in the
northern part of the state a good option is Northern Exposure. I believe it is based out of Merrill and run by Cadet
national team coach Scott "Arnie" Arneson. Although I have never been there, I have heard very good things
about it. Another option, if you don’t want to join a club, would be the WWF “regional training sites”.
The “RTC’s” are a very good idea. However, they are under utilized by many wrestlers in the state who
could benefit. This goes back to my idea of gathering the best competition to train with, if everyone goes
to the ones close to them, you will get some pretty tough kids in the room and remember “iron sharpens iron”.
The website for RTC’s is http://www.wiwrestling.com/news2002/skeds/wwf/RTC.htm . Don’t be afraid to
attend. All of them have good coaches in charge.
Another possible option is the Milwaukee North Central YMCA, Ben Tomes, the coach at Milwaukee Custer,
started this a few years back and it has been very successful. A lot of good kids form the Milwaukee area go
there and wrestle. Plus a bunch of tough old timers attend. If my memory serves me correctly, the schedule
is weeknights starting sometime in March and running through the summer. If you want to go to camps, every
major university has them, and I would like to recommend the Missouri tiger style camps. They are put on by
the University of Missouri and are held In Columbia, MO. More information can be found at The Wrestling
Mall website http://www.thewrestlingmall.com/uploads/CampBrochures/br125/
I would also recommend the Wisconsin Wrestling Federation Junior National or Cadet National camps. Info
may be found at http://www.wiwrestling.com/WWF/Main.htm
If you decide to lift weights, most high schools have a decent weight room, and if your school doesn’t,
then “hit the floor” and start doing pushups. If you want to do some conditioning, I like elliptical machines
and aerodynes, but if those aren’t available, put your running shoes on and hit the road. Now, come next
season, there shouldn’t be any reason why you didn’t train your butt off over the summer to get ready to
dominate at state.
Training can be fun sometimes, however I find it very difficult to stay motivated to train if I can’t compete.
I love to compete. I love to compete against the best people. Although I hate losing, it is always a part of the
game when you try to find the best competition. You can’t learn to like it, but sometimes (not all the time) you
have to accept it.
My most memorable example was Junior Duals my sophomore year. I went 3 wins-7 losses. I thought I was a
stud going down there. I mean, I whipped everyone in Wisconsin so why not? I got beat bad sometimes, but
I never got "teched" or pinned and always kept coming at the end of matches. I wrestled two 4-time state
champs and I went after them. In my mind, I didn’t give them any respect. You can’t, or you lose before the
match has started. That is enough rambling on other topics. I will write about those later. Let’s get back to
off-season tournaments.
There are a lot (not as many as there should be after season) of little round robin tournaments. I never really
went to them, however I would like to see better numbers there, because it is a good learning experience.
I believe you can find a lot of those on the wiwrestling.com website. Also, the Illinois Wrestling Federation
runs a series of folkstyle tournaments from spring into summer, almost every weekend for about 3 months.
I went to a few of them with other wrestlers from the North Central YMCA. The tournaments in Illinois are
fun and provide a good change in competition. I believe a complete schedule of these can be found on the
IKWF web page. < http://www.ikwf.org/start.htm >
I always liked going to the bigger tournaments, because, as I have said “the better the competition, the more
the fun”. A good place to get started is the State Greco and Freestyle Tournaments. I always got about 8
solid matches in at both of these tournaments. I rode along with Chris Borchardt and his dad Dale, to a lot
of the tournaments when I was younger. I understand, many people don’t like to wrestle Greco, but give it
a try. Greco is fun and who knows, you might learn something. Greco helped me out a lot, even though in
folkstyle I never wrestled upper body. I knew I could, if I wanted to, which just made everything else more solid.
After that you might want to try the Junior Regional competition. We are lucky to have one of them right
here in Wisconsin. It is in La Crosse, for those of you who haven’t heard. You wrestle there and may get
8 matches in each style against real good quality competition. If you just go to those three tournaments, you
could get over 30 matches. That gives you a whole extra season of wrestling experience.
Other options, for those of you who like to compete more, are FILA Cadet and Junior World team trials.
FILA Cadets is ages 15-17 and held in Evanston, Illinois, just a short drive from Wisconsin. University
Nationals are also wrestled alongside the FILA cadet tournament. It is fun to watch the top college guys go at it.
FILA Juniors are held in Chattanooga, TN, which is also driving distance (I believe 10 hours). FILA
Juniors is for ages 17-20. Most wrestlers there are younger colleges guys, so this tournament gives you
a good look at the next level.
Also, USA wrestling holds regional national tournaments all across the nation. So if your family likes traveling,
it would be fun to stop by and wrestle. My family always took our vacation to Las Vegas to wrestle at the
Western Regional, held along side the US open. Not only is the US Open a blast to watch, the Western
regional is probably the toughest tournament in the nation next to Junior Nationals. Last year my Western
Regional bracket had the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th place kids from my Junior National bracket.
It is a real battle.
If you are good enough to win the State Freestyle or State Greco Tournament you get the chance to be on the
Junior Duals team. Don’t miss this opportunity! It was my favorite tournament of the year and a great
experience. There are 10 mats set up and 32 of the best teams in the nation going at it for 5 days straight.
It is just awesome.
To wrap up the year, wrestle at Junior Nationals. Junior Nationals is by far the toughest tourney in the nation.
If you are good enough to stay in a few rounds, you will get 10-12 matches against nothing less than studs.
If you are a high school state runner up and you think you are tough, you might just go “2 matches and out”
like I did my freshman year. Then you’ll see where you really are and how far you really have to go to reach
your goals.
All the information for the USA wrestling tournaments can be found at http://www.themat.com , go to the
tournaments section and then to the USA wrestling section. I believe it lists them by month. I wrestled
100+ matches every “off season”, which is 400 matches in 4 years, which is equal to10 additional high
school seasons. Think how much tougher that made me. Saying all of this, I realize I was fortunate enough
to have a family that loved wrestling and didn’t mind driving through the night to go and wrestle at a big tourney.
I know all of you might not have the resources needed to make it everywhere I did, but try your best to get
everywhere you can and wrestle as many matches as possible. IT WILL MAKE YOU BETTER.
I hope I have outlined a good plan for the off-season that will help you improve. I don’t really expect many
of you to do what I did in the off-season, but any wrestling you do will make you better. The recipe for
success is easy. Practice more, wrestle more matches and get better.
So like I told my high school team one time; “We just got our “butts” kicked and I didn’t like it. I work
hard and I want to win. You guys haven’t been putting in the time. So if you want to keep getting your
“butts” kicked, keep doing what your doing. If not, you can come with me, bust your “butt” and be a
champion. The choice is yours.”
So now the choice is yours. I have given you all the weapons to succeed. If you want to be in the
stands at the Kohl Center, keep doing what you are doing. If you want to dominate your opponent in
the finals, get working. Have fun this summer.
Coming in April: Next Topic by Ben Askren: “Mental Toughness”
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