Physical Fitness for Wrestling

Builder Your Stamina for Wrestling

Wrestling matches can be won or lost just on the difference between the level of stamina of the athletes. I cannot stress the importance of cardiovascular training in a complete wrestling programme. Not only would building your stamina help you win matches, it will also enable you to enjoy wrestling more. I have seen many students drop out of wrestling just because they were not prepared for the intensity of a wrestling match.

The good news is that most young people should be able to obtain the level of cardiovascular fitness that is required for wrestling. It is just a matter of devoting the effort to it. We expect and want all students to maintain some form of aerobic fitness programme, even if they are not on any athletic teams. This could be an exercise period of one half hour three or four times a week. The exercise session might consist of jogging, cycling, callisthenics, or using the stationary machines in the fitness room.

You might be surprised to know that the wrestler does not actually have to spend more time on a cardiovascular programme than the average person does. The difference is that wrestlers must be more focused on the requirements of their sport and adjust their routines accordingly. A wrestling match requires considerable stamina, but the match will very its intensity throughout. Therefore, the wrestler must build both aerobic and anaerobic power.

Cardiovascular Programme for Wrestlers

Before you start in on the wrestling cardiovascular programme, you should be well into a general aerobic fitness programme. This would mean that you regularly carryout aerobic exercise periods for about one half hour, three or four times per week. If you are not at this level, then you have work to do.

You could be using any exercise method described above for your aerobic programme but, for simplicity, I am going to use jogging as an example.
Well before the wrestling season starts in the fall, you should be able to maintain a continuous jog for 30 minutes. If this is difficult for you, then you should work up to it by breaking up your jog into intervals of walking and jogging. With each workout, you should reduce the amount of walking and increase the amount of jogging. You should eventually be able to sustain a continuous jog at a brisk pace for 30 minutes.

Once you are at this level, you can begin a more intense programme suitable for wrestling. Let us assume that you have access to an outdoor school track. You start your workout by jogging the track at an easy comfortable pace as you would for a general aerobic fitness workout. You would maintain this pace for about five minutes. After that, you then use a cyclical training method, (also called interval training) which means that you would vary the intensity of the workout at certain intervals. On a straight leg of the track, burst into a sprint for about fifty metres. Then, slow down to your jogging pace for about 150 metres. Burst into another sprint for another fifty metres, then jog another 150 metres, and so on for about fifteen to twenty minutes. If necessary, break the pattern by jogging the one full lap if you require more recovery time. This type of cyclical training can build more stamina faster than just a straight jog. You can finish your workout with a light jog for about five minutes.

If you do not have access to a track, you can apply this principle to jogging in your own neighbourhood. You can, for example, use lampposts as markers for your sprints.

This is just one example of how you can use cyclical training to build your stamina for wrestling. You can apply this same principle to other methods of cardiovascular training. As your stamina increases, you can change the lengths of the intervals of your sprints. You can occasionally do 100 metre sprints followed by 100 metre jogs.

You can try a variety of exercise routines that use the same principle.