Training Tips #6
The Preparation Phase
Mike DeRoehn Head Coach
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
deroehnm@uwosh.edu

In the high school season, this would begin somewhere in early-mid January and continue through the first week of February. Once we hit February, we get into the Competition Phase, which I’ll discuss in an upcoming article. During the Preparation Phase, your intensity level should start to increase while your training time decreases. Rather than drawing out your practice for two hours, your training should be about an hour and a half. Keep in mind the entire practice should be fast and explosive. Although not rushed, the pace of the practice should be getting faster, with a focused effort on getting the most out of your time in the room.

During this training phase, I try to split the practice into thirds and communicate to the athletes that the practice will be short and hard. The first part consists of warm up/stretch, shadow drill basic skills, and warm up drilling of your best/favorite techniques. This half hour should be the time that you are preparing your mind/body for the rigors of the remaining practice. Focus on drilling in motion, clearing his arms/creating openings and hitting “crisp” shots. As you drill, visualize your upcoming opponent and see yourself crushing him with your best stuff.

In the second tier of practice, you can work on mistakes that were made or areas that require improvement. Your coach probably will be pointing out certain positions where the team is getting beat as a whole. Pay close attention during this time, and work hard to improve as you will most likely meet up with past opponents during the state qualifying events. I recommend wrestling live situations out of these positions as well. If you have a good partner, have them give you the right “feel” so you can make these as realistic as possible and really improve.

As you enter the last third of practice, you should be getting in more live/conditioning. Ideally you will be able to mix it up each day with different types of live goes. Some days you should get in 6 minute matches and focus on dominating your opponent the entire match. Other days you should be getting in short goes where you need to score or wrestling some shark baits in groups of 4. No matter the situation, wrestle like a mad man during live. Don’t let people score on you just because it’s practice. You will need to be dominant at the end of the year to really win the big one so you should do the same in the room. Put yourself in different situations that require you to overcome adversity and/or stressful situations. Examples of this would be neutral-down by two, bottom-down by 2, top-up by one with 20 seconds to go, must pin, etc.

In regards to conditioning, you should always end with some burn out exercises. It doesn’t need to be a marathon session, but hard intense exercises such as sprints, monkey rolls, squat thrusts, and drilling. One of my favorite drills here is called attacks/min drill. One guy drills certain attacks and gets in as many as he can in one minute using good technique, not being sloppy. His partner keeps track of how many he does and then needs to beat that number during his minute. If not, then he does 25 push ups. When coaching on this drill, I like to pick a guy in the room that I know has an intense work ethic and make him set the pace. If he hits 15 doubles in one minute, then the entire team needs to blast out at least 16 or we’re pushing the floor. In college wrestling, this is called “a game”. What a blast!

Don’t forget your running or lifting during the Preparation phase. I know I just focused a lot on actual wrestling sessions, but you need to be sure to still fit these in. Running should change from distance to interval running and/or sprints. Refer to previous articles for ideas on interval training. Lifting should gradually change from power lifts to circuit training. There should be 10-12 stations that you rotate through for a minute each using lower weight and cranking out higher reps. Get in as many reps as you can at each station during that minute. This will help to maintain muscle mass, build muscular endurance, and can also increase your heart rate for some light cardio.

Keep training intensely through the remainder of the season. Stay focused on your goals when things start to get stale or aren’t going your way. You only get one chance to wrestle so have fun and make the most of it. See you on the mats!