Bearhugger wrote:hurrmat1 wrote: Lacking strength and the proper kind of conditioning is holding the best of WV's best back from achieving more advancement in these bigger, tougher tournaments.
Many folks think if Wrestler A knows 8 techniques and doesn't win, then he needs to go learn 8 more techniques. I agree that knowing 16 techniques is better, but the real key is fixing the individual so they can win more with the 8 techniques they already know.
I see kids that can't get up off the mat due to their lack of physical strength. I see a kid who has everything to get in on a double leg but lacks the upper body strength to hang onto his opponents legs. He misses a lot of takedowns because of this.
I am far from an expert at anything, the opinions that I express are from watching as a parent and attempting to coach. I think Hurrmat or Bearhugger is right but I think success is a puzzle of parts including technique, strength, speed, flexibility, explosiveness, conditioning, experience, and plain ole mental toughness, all with a little mean streak mixed in. He is right when he says the real key is fixing the individual but then I lose him when he seems to criticize a focus on technique. In his example adding 8 new techniques may be exactly what that particular wrestler needs. Or it may be that his technique is fine but he is weak and we need to focus on increasing strength, so the time devoted to the new techniques would be better used in the weight room. Or he may be too slow. Or he may be so stiff that a lack of flexibility cost him a match. Or he may have simply need more experience as he ran into his first west coast kid and didn't know that they're usually is terrible on bottom but dangerous on their feet/ his first Pennsylvania kid who smiled when our kid chose bottom because the 0-0 match just turned into a pin as he barred the hell out of our kid. I don't think it was what hurrmat/bearhugger was saying but if someone misreads his posts and chooses to only focus on strength, the good national kids will embarrass you on the mat. Similarly, focus only on technique and you can't finish many of your moves, the strong kids will crush you. matofficial made me smile when he mentioned the beach body kids who were kitten weak, everyone except those wrestlers who get intimidated by physique beats the beach bodies. Unrelated comment but maybe someone with a exercise phys or medical background can explain, why is it that the very fit looking beachbody types seem to die in the 3rd period, maybe even faster than the fat kids?
Experience has been discussed on this thread. Some of the people believe that it is far better to go to a camp than it is to go 0-4 at Fargo. For the person who said that they should spend the $ grand on a camp instead of Fargo, I disagree. Going to a camp is helpful if it is part of a
SYSTEM (Miron, Jordan, Purler, Clark are the four that immediately come to mind who teach a system but there are many others), if you are going to a random camp hoping to get better by learning high flying/low percentage moves then you are wasting your money. More to the point, if you are going to a camp and your school or club team does not drill the stuff being taught, or your parents are not writing down/filming so that it can be correctly drilled at home, then you are absolutely wasting your money.
Reading the middle school boards I saw two of Dr. Welker's columns referenced about club or school and it made me go back and read them. Dr. Welker has probably forgotten more about wrestling than I will ever know. I email him from time to time with questions or comments. As I read those ones I remembered this column and I think it speaks to many of the comments on here about Fargo vs weight lifting vs camps. Several years ago he penned this column about national tournaments versus camps. He sent it to me to see what I thought. I emailed him and we discussed the pros and the cons and I told him I thought it came off a little extreme. Sure enough he posted it and it made some people mad. I think what he was missing in his column and what some of these posts are missing is balance. You have to find time for technique, strength, speed, flexibility, explosiveness, and conditioning. Figure out what you need work on and give that part of the game more attention. You have to go out of your comfort zone whether that is to Fargo or to Ironman and get your butt kicked to get some experience.
Going to Fargo was very beneficial for my son. The guys who did not win it received huge benefits from Fargo, namely it kept them in the wrestling room for the spring and summer whereas they would not have been in the room as often otherwise, they were learning new stuff so it kept them from getting bored/burned out, it got them exposed to college coaches, it showed them another level exists outside of the borders of this state and that is nothing to be scared of, it is something to be excited about and shoot for, those good kids are no different than our West Virginia kids, our kids can and should be that good too. It also developed relationships with kids from other teams and with other coaches. My son has a great relationship with the coaches at Parkersburg South. Thanks to Fargo he enjoys a very close relationship with coaches at PHS, Huntington & Musselman.
http://www.wvmat.com/welker/competition.htm
