Then came tournament weekend, and I could not, for the life of me, finish a double leg or a high crotch.

What is that? If I knew the technique and could drill it well, why didn’t it work when I competed?

Subscribe now

The Drill Lied

I didn’t fail because I didn’t know the technique. I failed because I never learned to solve the problem the drill was meant to address.

In a drill, my partner gave me the straight arm coach told me to post. I didn't make him post. I knew it was coming eventually so I waited. If he didn't, he wouldn't be a 'good partner.' Once I was in on the leg, he didn't meaningfully try to get his legs back, he only did enough so it wasn't completely dead. Then he fell when he was supposed to fall. I ran through a memorized sequence and it looked clean. It was more of a dance than a wrestling move.

A match isn’t that. A match is a guy who doesn’t want to fall. He doesn’t post just because, he threw his leg back with all his might, fighting with everything he has. It looks nothing like the drill.

The drill rehearsed the choreography. It didn’t rehearse the problem. The problem of getting him to post, preventing him from getting his leg back, getting him to his hip.

The drill made me feel like I was improving. I was tired, it was “working,” coach said “great rep.” Then after losing the match, I’d think, why the hell can’t I get to the shot I drill day in day out?

The answer was that I hadn’t drilled it a thousand times. I’d drilled the compliant dance version of it a thousand times. The real version, the live one I needed in that match, I’d barely drilled at all.

You Can’t Get Good At Math By Doing 1+1

You don’t get good at math by doing 1+1 over and over. Once you know the answer, doing it again isn’t practice, it’s just repetition. You get better by moving to problems that actually challenge you.

Wrestling is the same. If every rep is clean, nothing is being learned. You’re rehearsing something you already know. The first rep with no defense may be helpful for learning the basic mechanics, but once you know how to do that, the ante must be raised. If not, you’re still solving 1+1 when you need to move to the next difficulty.

Learning requires struggle. It has to feel hard. It has to take time. You have to fail and find a new way.

Clean drilling skips all of that.

Clean Practice Is For The Coach

There’s a reality coaches don’t want to contend with.

A practice that looks clean feels good to run. The kids look sharp. The technique looks crisp. You feel like a good coach. Parents, admin, and athletes feel good. They watch it and think everything is gravy. We're doing great.

Then when those kids lose in competition, you’ve got cover. “I taught it right. They executed it wrong.”

That’s your ego. It’s not coaching. The room looked good for you, not for them. It didn’t prepare them for the reality of competition. You prioritized everyone’s feelings about practice rather than looking to solve the problem.

If your room looks like a highlight reel every day, your kids are not being prepared for the chaos and intensity of the match.

Raise The Ante

The fix isn’t to throw kids into open ended live on day one. They have to understand the position, tasks, and goals from a position first. The first time a kid shoots and tries to finish a high crotch, it’ll be ugly. That’s fine.

“But what about kids who’ve never done the move?” This is reasonable. They may need some exposure to the basic mechanics first. They need to have the physical capability to execute the move at all. So show them the position. Let them do a few reps to feel it. This means minutes, not multiple practices. As soon as they can execute the movement, even sloppily, it’s time to add realism through resistance.

Coaches tend to go the wrong way at this point. They hear “more resistance” and jump straight to live wrestling. Start in high C, ready, go. That’s better than clean dead drilling, but it’s a blunt instrument. Live wrestling asks the kid to solve every problem at once. He might spend the whole 30-second go nowhere near the position you wanted him to work on.

This is where games are sharper. A game gives the kid a specific task, in a specific position, with a specific win condition, against full resistance. He’s solving one problem, directed by a knowledgable coach, not the whole sport at once.

The job of the coach is to make it harder. Not make it cleaner or smoother, harder to execute. This creates a doable challenge that invites learning.

The cleanest version of this I’ve seen comes from Greg Souders, a BJJ coach who teaches using the Constraint-Led Approach (CLA), a method where you build skill through games with specific tasks and constraints instead of through compliant drilling.

Start the rep close to the finish, with full resistance. For the Hi-C, start standing, chest to leg with a lock on the leg. The kid has to solve the problem of the finish: put him on his hip and get the takedown against a guy who won’t fall willingly. It’s probably the easiest Hi-C finish problem to solve.

After this, back the rep up a step. Now he is on a knee, and has to get to his feet to get to that finish position against resistance, then solve it again. Now it’s harder because you’re stacking problems.

Then start extended in the high crotch and solve the same problem.

Zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, until he’s running the whole thing front to back. The added benefit of this is that the partner is engaged, they are working their defense and developing skills just as the offensive athlete is.

This is what develops skill. When we put them at the end of the Hi-C with a partner fighting live, they had to figure it out. Different kids find different answers. Dump, knee slide, lift, run down the double leg, crack down. That’s the point.

Now they have answers that work for them, against resistance, in the position they actually end up in.

Live wrestling still has a place. It’s the final test. But it’s not where the learning happens.

What To Do Monday

Pick one position your kids drill clean and fail in matches. Single leg finish, front headlock, getting to your feet on bottom, whatever it is.

Put them at the end of it. Full resistance. Give them a task that you know means success if they do it. Let them figure it out.

It will look ugly and that’s the point. Ugly is where the learning is. Clean is the lie that feeds your ego.

Leave a comment

I work for Beat the Streets Chicago, the largest wrestling club in the world. We’ll serve 2500 kids this year and we’re always trying to grow.

That means we need to recruit.

I used to be a college coach. I’ve written about how recruiting broke me and made me quit that job. But I recruit now and it’s one of my favorite things.

The difference? Demo days.

I go to local Chicago elementary schools, take over their PE class, and lead anywhere from 25 to 100 kids through a practice. Kindergarten to 8th grade. Underfunded CPS schools to the nicest private schools in the city. It’s been successful and, honestly, fun.

This framework works for any sport that isn’t mainstream. BJJ, wrestling, rugby, fencing, table tennis doesn’t matter. The sport changes, the principles don’t.

I’ll show you my framework.

How This Applies to You

Club coaches: Follow this as written. This is built for you.

Non wrestling coaches: The framework works the same. Just swap wrestling for your sport.

High school coaches: Your program is only as good as the youth program feeding it. You don't have to run demos yourself, but taking an active interest is meaningful. The high school head coach is revered in most communities. Showing face at youth practices, helping with recruiting, or even just being present at a demo day goes a long way. You can also just pass this article along to your youth coaches and let them run with it.

Parents and volunteers: Your biggest value is the warm intro. A parent who can connect a coach directly to a school admin is worth more than any cold email. Use your relationships.

If you’re in a rural or small area: You have fewer schools to work with but easier access. Just don’t mess it up. If you turn off one school, that might be a quarter of your base.

Getting In the Door

Start with PE teachers if you can find their emails. Then assistant principals and principals.

Better yet, if you have a kid in your club, ask their parents to make a direct connection to someone at the school. Ideally via text. A warm intro beats a cold email every time.

Don’t stop at schools. Reach out to local football teams. The seasons mix well and football kids are ripe for wrestling. Build a real connection with those coaches.

Also reach out to local jiu jitsu schools, especially the competitive ones. The instructors usually idolize wrestling and are happy when their kids learn it too.

Follow up at least three times before you quit. People aren’t offended. Things slip through the cracks. Your persistence shows dedication and they respect that.

Before the Demo Day

Checklist:

• Confirm date and time

• Confirm age group

• Confirm number of kids

• Confirm number and size of mats (try to get at least 40 gymnastics mat rectangles so you can fit 80 kids at once)

• Make calendar invite for yourself and their admin

• Print flyers

• Ask your contact’s t-shirt size

• Bring t-shirt as a thank you

• Bring a whistle (a loud one, you’ll need it)

The Demo Day Practice

One hour is ideal, but even 30 minutes works. Same format, just cut the times in half.

The Goal

Two things: have fun and show interest.

That’s it. You’re not trying to teach wrestling. You’re trying to make kids think wrestling is awesome.

The Story You’re Telling

Wrestling is fun. It’s for everyone.

The Structure

1. Talk: Why Wrestling is Cool (5-10 minutes max)

Keep this short. Kids are here to move, not listen.

Hit these points:

1. Wrestling is good for everyone. Physical: strength, balance, coordination. Mental: toughness that transfers to everything, academics, sports, social situations.

2. Wrestling is fair. “Who’s ever played a team sport and lost because of a teammate? Me too. Wrestling stops that.” One on one, weight class, age group. No excuses.

3. It’s for everyone. Boys, girls, big, small, skinny, short. Women’s wrestling is the fastest growing sport in the world. No matter your size, shape, speed, or intelligence, you can use your attributes to your advantage.

   1. Anthony Robles, an amputee, was the best college wrestler in the United States. Wrestling is the only sport where that’s possible.

2. Games (25-30 minutes)

Split into multiple groups. Run 45-second goes for 2 groups, 30-second goes for 4 groups.

Games that have worked for me:

• Toe tag (stomp on their toe, score a point)

• Knee tag (touch their knee, score a point)

• Heel tag (touch their heel, score a point)

• Pushup fights (both kids head to head in pushup position, pull at arms to make them fall)

• Double unders (lock your hands with double unders, score a point)

Find a partner. Play 4-5 games. Keep it moving.

3. Demo Advanced Moves (10 minutes)

Use a volunteer to throw around. Make the kids excited.

Show what a takedown is. Get on your knees behind them. “This is a demonstration of control. If we were in a fight, he would be unable to hurt me from here.”

Frame it like this: “Wrestling is like an RPG video game where you get to pick your skills and level them up.” Then explain the moves as options they get to choose based on what they like and who they are.

• Lower body attacks for kids who are fast and explosive:

  • Single leg to big backtrip,

  • Double leg (make sure to lift the kid off their feet)

• Upper body attacks for kids who are strong but slower:

  • Headlock

  • Lateral drop

4. Teach One Basic Technique (10 minutes)

If I have time and a good group, I teach a quick standing blast double. Keep the steps simple and call each one out:

• Step 1: Step between the legs

• Step 2: Forehead on the chest

• Step 3: Hands behind the knees

• Step 4: Push with your head, pull with your arms

Let them try it a few times. Don’t over-coach. Keep it fun.

5. Close: Talk About Your Program (5 minutes)

Cover what you offer: upcoming season, pricing, transportation if available, quality of coaching. Explain why they should be interested, make them know that the fun they had today is only the beginning.

After the Demo Day

1. Send a thank you email.

   1. Attach the flyer again.

   2. Ask if they can put it in the school newsletter.

   3. Ask the teacher to send an email to every parent of the kids that attended

2. See if you can host an in-person or virtual parent Q&A. Kids come back from school excited, parents are confused and have questions. Be a face they can ask about injuries, if girls can wrestle, skin infections, singlets, etc.

3. Track everything: number of kids at the demo, number who registered from that school, dates you reached out and visited, notes. This data tells you what’s working.

4. Do it every year. Build the relationship. The second visit is easier than the first. The third is easier than the second.

Do’s and Don’ts

Do:

• Text or call instead of email when possible

• Document everything and track your stats

• Keep the practice fun. You’re not emphasizing how hard the sport is.

• Play games. Demonstrate exciting things.

• Reach out to sports teams, not just schools. Athletic kids often become your best wrestlers.

Don’t:

• Yap. They’re here to move and have fun, not hear you talk.

• Be bossy about how games should be played. This is about fun, not perfection. You want them to leave thinking “wrestling is awesome” even if they barely did anything that looks like wrestling.

• Let anyone get hurt. If someone does, the school will never let you back in.

This system works. I’ve done it dozens of times across every type of school in Chicago.

The key is simple: make it easy for schools to say yes, make it fun for kids to try, and follow up so families actually sign up.

Wrestling sells itself once kids get on the mat. Your job is just to get them there.

Leave a comment

They struggle because they don’t understand the small positional rules that make those steps work.

Fix the rule, and every technique in that position improves. You’re not adding moves. You’re tightening the ideas your moves depend on.

Here are six positional rules I wish I understood earlier. They apply to anyone past the true beginner stage.

Subscribe now

1. Collar Ties: Shrug Before You Clear

Athletes get stuck in collar ties all the time. Opponent squeezing, stalling, slowing you down.

The usual fix is to find another clearing technique. More steps. More patterns.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is the grip is already locked in before you try to clear it.

Here’s what works: shrug your shoulders before you clear.

Shrugging makes your neck smaller. It weakens their grip before it tightens. Notice which arm they like to collar tie with and shrug that shoulder in anticipation for it.

Watch how Tanner Sloan actively shrug his shoulder right before he passes the elbow

Now rolling inside, elbow passes, and Russian ties all work better. Not because you learned a new technique. Because you weakened their position first.

I’ve watched wrestlers who spent years frustrated with their opponents grips immediately feel their clears get easier. Their matches open up. They can reengage to their preferred ties and attacks.

Don’t just teach the technique. Teach what weakens the tie first.

2. Handfighting: Earn the Right to Pressure

Athletes pressure forward without inside position and get snapped down. With force.

Pressure without structure is an invitation to get your head smashed to the mat.

Here’s the rule: keep your head in the pocket (forehead in the neck between the jaw and the trap) with hands inside and your elbows tight. Don’t drive forward until you have that.

If you press without structure, your legs will be attacked.

If you press with structure, they must react by pushing back or fighting with their hands. That reaction creates the shot, snap, or just a mistake from your opponent.

Outside tie attacks are the exception, more on that next.

Watch Brent Metcalf win inside position on the edge and force reactions that lead to a nice leg attack.

3. Ties: Elbows Decide Who Owns the Tie

I had a kid last year who won inside position with his hands and got his head in the pocket consistently. He was a good handfighter. He knew what he wanted. He followed rule 2 and thought he was safe.

He’d get the ties he wanted then try to pressure and get ducked or slid by. Hard. Over and over.

He couldn’t figure out why it was happening. He had inside position, why was he being scored on so easily?

The problem wasn’t his head position or his tie. It was his elbows.

Here’s what most people miss: you can win the tie and still lose the position.

If your elbows drift away from your body and your opponent’s stay tight, it’s not your tie anymore. Your underhook becomes their overhook, your collar tie becomes their elbow tie, and then ‘your’ tie becomes their attack.

This applies to everything. Collar ties, underhooks, Russians, wrist control. Doesn’t matter. If your elbows are loose and theirs are tight, they own it.

The rule is simple: keep your elbows closer to your hips than your opponent keeps theirs. That’s it.

Once this kid understood that, the ducks stopped and he could pressure freely. Not because he added a new technique, because he stopped giving away the position he’d already won.

Watch Kaid Brock, one of the kings of elbow attacks take advantage of his opponent’s drifting elbow to hit his slideby.

Ties aren’t static. You don’t just get them and hold them. You have to maintain structure or they collapse.

If you lose the elbow distance battle, you immediately feel vulnerable to attacks. You feel it instantly.

4. Arm Drags: Chest to Back or It’s Not a Drag

Athletes try to drag, go deltoid to deltoid, and spin in circles or worse, they get redragged.

They think a tight grip on the arm is the point. It’s not.

Your goal is chest to their shoulder blade.

The Russians really understand this. Watch the way Magomedov chases the shoulder blade with his chest and how it leads to immediate takedowns.

If you don’t get around the corner and connect chest to back, the drag isn’t finished. The moment chest connects to back, the fight changes. You’re in rear standing. You can still lose that position, but the drag did its job.

Drags become immediately more effective. The redrag gets nullified. You get more real back exposure and leg attacks even if you don’t finish rear standing.

5. Single Leg Finishes on the Mat: Shoulder Behind the Hamstring

Athletes run the corner on their single and get whizzered hard. Sometimes traditional, sometimes the dreaded shin whizzer.

They’re chasing the angle and ignoring shoulder position. Running the corner isn’t about angle. It’s about killing the whizzer.

Here’s the rule: trace your shoulder along their thigh to the back of their hamstring.

If your shoulder stays glued behind the hamstring, the whizzer has no strength.

Watch here the way Burroughs’ opponents whizzer immediately melts the moment his shoulder gets to his hamstring and he can easily transition to better finishing position.

If your shoulder drifts in front of the thigh, the whizzer will retain its strength and stop your finish.

When you weaken the whizzer, your finish is there right away because their ability to put weight on you disappears. Finish rates improve rapidly.

Just running the corner and getting an angle doesn’t finish singles. Shoulder position does.

6. Downblocking: Fists to the Mat

Athletes sprawl and try to push on shoulders to defend shots.

Here’s the problem: They miss the shoulders and their hands slide over the back and their opponent is deep on their legs.

They’re trying to block the person, not the path.

Here’s what works: meet them where they want to go. Get your arms to the mat right in front of where your legs were.

Watch Parco immediately stop his opponents shot by keeping his hands low and strong, there’s no reaching and he can immediately transition to counter offense.

These straight, strong arms are your shields. They stop your opponent from getting a lock on your leg.

Offense stops getting in deep on your legs. You stop shots before they become problems.

The Bigger Point

These aren’t just tips. They’re examples of something deeper.

Every technique you’ve ever learned depends on a small positional rule like this. Most people skip that part.

They memorize steps. They collect moves. Then they wonder why nothing works when the position changes even a little.

Find the rule the technique depends on, then figure out how to accomplish it. Once you see the rule, you stop forcing yourself into bad positions or needing things to be perfect. You just have a task you need to accomplish.

You start recognizing what’s happening in real time. That’s when wrestling gets easier.

Not because you learned more moves, but because you started seeing what makes the moves work.

Most people are learning techniques. Good wrestlers are learning the rules underneath them.

That’s the difference.

Leave a comment

Run games. Let kids figure it out. Don’t coach.

That’s not what good live games look like. Especially with kids.

If your wrestlers are doing bad wrestling inside your games, that isn’t proof games don’t work.

It’s proof your design is poor. I’ve messed all of this up at some point.

The mistake youth coaches make is blaming kids for bad decisions when the game rewards those decisions.

If belly-down leg locks is the easiest way to win your game, kids will belly down.

That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a rule problem.

With rookies, you can’t assume wrestling literacy. They don’t understand the positions, the urgency. They don’t understand danger. Some don’t even understand why being on their back matters.

You have to build that literacy.

Games work. But only if you design tight and adjust fast.

Here’s what actually matters.

Subscribe now

1. Frame the Why Before You Start

Start with the task.

If today is double leg finishes, tell them: the goal is to get the opponent to their hip to get the takedown. That’s the win in the game.

Then connect it to the match. A clean takedown is three points. A strong finish can turn into back points or a pin. Getting them to their hip is the moment that usually leads to those points.

Show them how they’ll get there: off their own shot, off a countershot, off pressure when someone snaps them into their legs.

Then show them what the other kid will try to do: whizzer, sprawl, crossface, belly down, kick out.

Not how to do it. What the fight is about. What counts as winning. Why the rule exists.

Five minutes clarifying the task saves an entire practice built on confusion.

If they can’t tell you the task back in their own words, they’re not ready to play.

2. Use Language Kids Can Feel

Eight-year-olds don’t think in body mechanics.

“Sprawl, get your legs back, grab the elbow, circle behind” is noise.

“Smush” is not.

Smush is one word that does both. Find analogies that work for them. Holding a base is being a rock. Pinning someone is gluing their back to the mat.

The word only works if the win condition reinforces it.

I’ve seen it in matches. Kid gets caught on his legs. He hears “smush.” He gets heavy and stuffs the head.

Not because he memorized steps. Because he knows the task.

If your language is abstract, your game will fail.

Pick words they can picture.

3. Make Winning Match Real Wrestling

Win conditions must mirror match success.

If a kid can win in a way that would lose in competition, your game is bad.

Leg lock example:

If “get a lock” counts as a win, kids will belly down and freeze.

You’ll get mad. They’ll nod. They’ll do it again.

Because the game told them it works.

Fix the rule:

• Maybe they must stay on knees

• Maybe chest connection matters

• Maybe flattening ends the rep

The moment most of your room finds a shortcut that would fail in a match, change the rule. Fast.

Example from my room: I ran a handfighting game where the goal was inside position. It bombed. Inside position was hard to hold and confusing for kids to recognize. So I switched the game. The task was still inside position, but the win condition became single legs or snap downs with no touching a knee. This forced inside position because getting to a single leg or snapping someone without handfighting first is basically impossible if you can’t touch a knee.

And if straight arm pushing dominates handfight games, it’s because your rule rewards them. That’s not their fault.

That’s your design.

Effort issues exist. But most of the time, if the room is drifting, the game is too loose.

Coach frustration is almost always bad rule design.

4. Chase Rep Density

Reps matter more than wins.

Kids will argue a single rep for 30 seconds. That’s wasted learning time.

Call the win. Loud countdown. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Reset.

Tell them straight:

I’d rather you go 5-15 across twenty reps than 5-0 across five reps.

More reps means more decisions. More decisions means more learning.

Tempo keeps their mind on the task instead of their ego.

5. Make It Competitive Enough to Demand Effort

There’s a difference between fun and unserious.

We want kids to have fun with our live games. That’s half the reason live games work so well. We want them smiling but with effort. But if they’re smiling and not trying to win, the constraint is too loose.

Aim for roughly a 50-70% win rate for the position you’re training.

If you’re working on double leg finishes, offense should win about 50-70% of the time.

Watch the first few reps in the room. If 80% or more are won in ways that wouldn’t work in a match, make an adjustment.

Higher than that and the sprawler gives up. Lower than that and it’s too hard for good learning.

Balance keeps both partners engaged.

Effort shows up when the task feels winnable but hard.

Some chaos is necessary for learning. But if it feels like chaos is getting in the way of learning, step in and address the specific issue.

CLA with youth wrestlers is not “let them discover” completely on their own.

It’s shape the discovery tightly.

Rookies don’t have the literacy to build good wrestling from scratch. If you just go live, you’ll get headlocks, chaos, and minimal technique.

You have to constrain them toward solutions that wrestling has already proven work.

Games aren’t plug-and-play. They’re starting points.

The real skill is adjusting on the fly.

If your kids are doing bad wrestling, check your rules before you check their effort.

Leave a comment

It’s changed everything.

How I run practice. How I think about learning. How I feel walking out of the room.

My kids are learning more. They’re moving harder. They’re thinking while they wrestle. Coaches are yelling less. I haven’t lost my voice once this season. Kids are smiling, but they’re also exhausted. That’s a good combination.

And honestly, I’ve had to think about wrestling more. About why things work. About what actually decides positions. That alone has made me a better coach.

I’ve written a lot about this in theory. About why live games work better than drilling. About how linear, prescriptive practices can break down. But now it’s time to show a real example.

Time to show the whole thing, the mess, what learning actually took place.

The Big Ideas Going In

Before practice, I had two simple truths in mind. These were my best guesses at the time of design, not rules written in stone.

Double leg finishes come down to two things:

• Getting your chest back to their leg

• Putting a hip on the mat

Double leg defense comes down to two thing:

• Getting them down to the mat

• Getting their grip off your legs (we call it “smushing” the position)

Those were the invariants as I understood them going into practice.

From that, our goals were clear:

• Sprawl better

• Finish doubles better

• Chain pushing, snapping, and doubles without being told when

No talk about knee slides. No talk about peak-outs. No technique list on the wall.

Just give them the problem and let them try to solve it.

Warmups (And Why I Ditched Running in Circles)

We warmed up until about 9:20.

I’ve completely abandoned the traditional “run in a circle, shuffle, carioca, roll your shoulders” warmup for kids. It’s not doing what we think it’s doing.

These kids don’t need help getting warm. They’ve been sprinting around the gym for ten minutes before practice.

They also don’t need injury-prevention routines meant for people who are more brittle.

I’m not anti-warmup. I’m anti warmups that don’t match the age group or the task.

For developmental ages, warmups are for a few things:

• Coordination

• Explosive strength

• Skill acquisition

So that’s what we did:

• Brief Hop, skip, shuffle

• Animal movements

• Simple plyometrics

• Games like toe tag with head position, heel tag, knee tag

They were moving, faking, reacting, and trying to win against another human being. Which, conveniently, looks a lot like wrestling.

The Live Games (Where the Learning Actually Happened)

From about 9:20 to 10:10, we played live games built around the double leg and the sprawl.

We started tight, advantage to the double legger, and moved backwards.

First game: Knees, double leg, chest already to the leg

• Offense wins by getting a hip, butt, back, or takedown

• Defense wins by smushing the position

Then we stood them up.

Second game: Standing but bent-over double leg (no chest to leg), defense starts with a chest wrap

• Same win conditions

Third game: On knees, bent over (no chest to leg)

• Same win conditions

Then we added a game where kids were constrained to one having inside position and being ear to ear. They could either snap or shoot based on pressure. If you snap, you’re looking to smush. If you shoot, you’re trying to finish. Defense has the opposite win conditions but they’re only reacting.

There were very few prescribed ways to do anything:

• Every rep ended when the problem was solved

• No scrambling for the sake of scrambling in positions we’re not working

• No surviving the clock

Solve it or lose. Immediate feedback. Then reset and go again.

Coaching Without Micromanaging

I didn’t disappear during these live games. I just stopped interrupting every rep.

I watched who was stuck. I watched who was cruising.

If one side had it too easy, we adjusted the game. Usually by changing a starting position.

This kind of practice actually requires more thinking from the coach up front, not less.

The work shifts from cueing technique to designing and adjusting the task.

That’s where the coaching happened. Not yelling cues mid-rep. Not freezing kids every 10 seconds to talk for 30.

Just observing and then adjusting.

The Reflections (Where Things Got Real)

After each game, we stopped for a minute.

Kids were breathing hard anyway. Perfect time to ask questions.

We didn’t lecture them about what works and doesn’t. We just asked:

• Who scored? What worked?

• What changed when it worked versus when it didn’t?

• What came right before the hip hit?

• When did the smush actually lock in?

• What changed when your chest got back to the leg?

• If this was a match, what happens next?

The kids actually answered the questions. Correctly, and without the monotone “yes” that comes from typical rhetorical questions from coaches.

They also learned from each other. The same problems were happening to them over and over, and they were feeling solutions done to them before trying them themselves.

Multiple coaches commented afterward that they were impressed by how quickly kids picked things up without being told what to do.

What Emerged (That We Never “Taught”)

Offensively, kids figured out:

• Standing up and lifting was the most common option

• Knee sliding to get chest back to the leg before they could finish

• Peeking out when knee sliding wasn’t an option

Defensively, kids figured out:

• Stuffing the head loosened the grip on their legs better than reaching back

• Keeping legs back made everything easier

• Being on their knees made it easier for their partner to finish

Not every kid solved it the same way. But every kid found something they could improve immediately.

No one drilled these. No one memorized them. The live games forced them.

All of this came straight out of the reflections. I just attached wrestling language to things they already felt.

What Didn’t Work

The chest wrap wasn’t helpful for these kids. That matters.

Constraints aren’t magic. Some help. Some don’t. This one didn’t.

We also learned that chest to leg wasn’t truly invariant. One kid hit a peak-out from underneath that didn’t require chest to leg at all.

That doesn’t mean the idea was useless. It means our understanding got sharper.

We adjust and move forward.

Where Technique Comes In

After they felt these problems, we clarified some of the hints. We taught:

Inside ties → pressure forward → pressure back → double leg → lift and finish

At that point, the words landed. They had felt the problem already. The technique wasn’t abstract anymore.

Walking Out of Practice

Kids were tired. Kids were smiling. Coaches weren’t hoarse.

And more importantly, kids were smarter than when they walked in.

Not because I explained better. Because the practice forced them to think.

If you want wrestlers who can solve problems under pressure, some version of this kind of practice has to be in the room.

“So it’s just situational live?”

I get why that question comes up. But no. And the difference matters.

What Situational Live Actually Is

Traditionally, situational live looks like this: You start in a position. The coach says go. You wrestle live for 20–30 seconds.

That format has value. I use it. It’s a step up from drilling.

But it isn’t a task based game.

The issue isn’t effort or intensity. It’s how the reps are structured.

In a short situational go that starts in a position, you’re often in that position for less than half the time. The position dissolves, the wrestlers scramble, and the learning target fades into the background. That time isn’t wasted, but it isn’t focused.

Where Games Are Different

The key difference isn’t “games vs live.” It’s win conditions.

In situational live, the position can disappear and the go continues. In a constraint-led game, the rep ends when the task is completed or escaped.

That changes everything.

Instead of hoping the position reappears, you guarantee that every rep is about the same problem. When it’s resolved, you reset and go again. One 30-second situational go can turn into multiple high-quality reps in the exact position you care about.

More decisions.
More feedback.
Less standing around.

Subscribe now

A Standing Single Example

Here’s a simple example we ran recently using a standing single offense and defense.

I kept this one tight on purpose. Clear start, clear win. You can design games with way more freedom, but when you're teaching younger kids a specific position, tighter constraints work better.

Starting Position:

• Offense: Standing single leg

• Defense: Defensive standing single, whizzer in, leg between offense’s legs

Win Condition

• Offense: Stay on your feet and finish - either get to treetop or put them on their hip

• Defense: Deny good scoring positions - drag them down to knees, hips, or back down, escape the lock, or score your own takedown

The rep ended when any one of those things happened.

What followed didn’t require much coaching.

Offensive wrestlers figured out quickly that head position mattered if they wanted to stay up. They learned how to deal with a heavy whizzer by running the pipe, and how/when to get to the treetop single position.

Defensive wrestlers learned how to control the head, create downward pressure, and drag the position where they wanted it. They found ways to break the lock while standing or even kick out and escape the position entirely.

In a five-minute game, kids got close to twenty competitive reps in the same position.

Coaches didn’t micromanage, but they didn’t disappear either. They observed who was stuck and who was cruising. If the rep became too easy for one side, the game was adjusted by tweaking variables like starting position, grips, or constraints added or removed.

We coached by tweaking the game, not stopping every 10 seconds to explain.

The feedback was built into the task. If something didn’t work, wrestlers felt it immediately and adjusted.

Nothing was fake. Everything transferred.

Repetition Without Repetition

Here’s where this gets better.

Once the task was clear, we didn’t change the goal.

We changed the look of the position.

Same problem. Slightly different constraints.

We ran the same game with:

1. The offense forced to start with their head down

2. The defense starting without a whizzer

3. The defense placing their foot outside the offense’s leg instead of between

The win conditions stayed exactly the same.

What changed was how wrestlers had to solve the problem.

Kids figured out different solutions for each variation. They were learning to adjust without realizing it. Same game, different looks. They got smarter without knowing it happened.

The reps feel different.
The learning stacks.

That’s how adaptability gets built without turning practice into chaos.

The Real Takeaway

The point isn’t the standing single.

The point is this: If you want more learning in a specific position, you don’t need longer goes or more cues. You need win conditions that end the rep.

Situational live says, “Start here and wrestle.” Constraint-led games say, “Solve this problem, repeatedly, against resistance.”

Same effort. Same intensity. Very different outcomes.

That’s practice design, not just situational live.

If you enjoyed this, subscribe to get these articles right to your email inbox.

I believed in building muscle memory. Show the technique. Break it down. Say the same cues over and over. If you do that enough, the body will know what to do when it matters.

There’s truth in that, especially with kids.

When wrestlers go to tournaments, they hear familiar words from the corner. Those words come from practice. Repetition helps. Teaching a small number of moves and letting kids feel proficient at them absolutely made me a better youth coach. The idea of over-drilling and under-coaching has real value.

But over time, something didn’t add up.

The Contradiction I Couldn’t Ignore

Even back then, I always said I wanted kids to be problem solvers.

I didn’t want robots. I didn’t want kids who froze the moment something didn’t look exactly like the drill.

But teaching technique as the perfect solution quietly assumes that a perfect solution exists.

It doesn’t.

There are a thousand ways to score a takedown. What works depends on body type, timing, strength, flexibility, and the opponent standing across from you. When I taught one “correct” answer to everyone, I wasn’t building problem solvers. I was building kids who waited to be told what to do.

That gap showed up most clearly in matches. Kids could perform drills cleanly, but hesitated when the position looked slightly different under pressure.

How Games Changed the Frame

Games forced me to change the question.

Instead of asking, “How do I explain this technique better?” I started asking, “What is the actual problem the wrestler is trying to solve?”

There is no perfect technique. There is only a task.

If you’re in a standing single leg, the task is simple: get your opponent to their hip.

How you do that doesn’t matter, as long as it works against resistance. You might trip. You might block with your forearm. You might dump them to their butt. Each solution is better or worse depending on the wrestler.

This doesn’t mean anything goes. Games aren’t free-for-alls. They’re tightly constrained, short, and built around very specific problems. The rules and win conditions limit what’s possible, which is exactly how bad habits are prevented.

That led to a simple shift in how I think about practice:

Instead of telling kids what to do, I design games so the right behavior is the easiest way to win.

What Games Actually Do

Games Create Problem Solvers (Not Chaos)

Games expose kids to problems and let them search for workable solutions, but only inside clear boundaries.

This is called the Constraint-Led Approach (CLA), and it's been studied extensively in sports coaching. The idea is simple: you don't teach by explaining everything upfront. You design constraints (rules, boundaries, win conditions) that guide athletes toward discovering solutions themselves.

They are intentionally non-linear and messy, because learning is messy, awkward, and uncomfortable. You don’t automatically produce clean technique. You learn by feeling variables: defensive reactions, balance changes, timing, pressure. Those variables almost never show up in drilling unless the partner is highly skilled and highly compliant.

Games create early exposure to those variables. Kids learn what the problem feels like before being asked to clean it up.

This is why I use games every single practice, right after warmups. They’re not a reward or a break. They’re the bridge between movement and technique.

Games Reduce the Things Coaches Hate Policing

Games avoid three problems that burn coaches out in big rooms:

• Instruction overload - Kids struggle to remember the 10 steps you explained in your demo. Games reduce talking and increase doing.

• Effort management - Kids compete hard when there’s something to win. Drills require reminders. Games don’t.

• Constant correction - Instead of yelling the instructions over and over when kids don’t do them, you change the rules and let the environment do the teaching.

This doesn’t lower standards. It enforces them without constant verbal control.

Why This Works (A Real-World Analogy)

If you want people to stop speeding on a wide, open road, you have two options:

1. Put up speed limit signs and issue tickets

2. Narrow the road, add a median, and make it feel unsafe to drive fast

The second option works better. This has been studied extensively.

Tickets are reactive. They feel productive, but behavior doesn’t change for long. Environmental design changes behavior automatically.

Coaching works the same way.

Yelling at kids to fix behavior is harder and less effective than creating an environment that naturally produces the behavior you want.

A Wrestling Example

We constantly tell kids to keep their head and chest up on shots.

They don’t.

So instead of yelling louder, you change the environment.

• Start in a standing single leg

• Offense wins by getting to treetop or putting the opponent on their butt

• Defense wins by getting chest on back, clearing the leg, or forcing the opponent to their knees

Now head position matters immediately.

If their opponent gets chest on their back, they lose. So they keep their head up, without being told.

This doesn’t create bad habits because the constraints eliminate bad options. The game narrows the solution space before technique ever enters the picture.

Where Technique Fits (And Why It Lands Better)

Technique still matters. Wrestling as a whole has discovered solutions that work, and ignoring that would be a mistake.

Games don’t replace drilling. They determine when drilling actually makes sense.

The sequence looks like this:

1. Frame the problem - Briefly explain what they’re trying to solve and why it matters.

2. Play the game - Maximize the reps for maximum exposure to the problem.

3. Reflect briefly - What was hard? What worked? What didn’t?

4. Teach the technique - Now the “perfect” technique is clearly a solution to a problem they just felt.

5. Recreate the position at lower intensity - Because the game gave both offense and defense clear tasks, you can ask partners to recreate those roles in controlled sparring, something that’s otherwise very hard to teach young kids.

Kids still adapt the technique to fit themselves. That’s a feature, not a bug. At least now they’re adapting something that actually works.

Why I’m Sticking With This

The biggest change I’ve seen is in matches. It’s happened quickly.

Kids recognize positions faster. They hesitate less. Now, in match, I can yell the win condition from a game and it helps them recognize where they are. They lock in and complete the task they’ve played in games during practice.

On the practice side, I talk less, yell less, and coach effort far less directly, because effort is built into the games.

Kids move more. They compete harder. They learn faster.

What’s Next

In future posts, I’ll share specific game examples, break down why they worked, show how to design games from scratch, help debug games that aren’t producing the behavior you want, and outline simple reflection questions that actually improve learning.

Technique still matters.

Games are how kids learn why it matters, and how to use it when it counts.

If you enjoyed this, subscribe to get these articles right to your email inbox.

If you’ve ever been in that situation, you know the tension. You want high standards. You want kids learning real wrestling. And you don’t want to spend 90 minutes yelling reminders just to keep the room from devolving into chaos.

Here’s what’s helped me keep my head on straight, and the room functioning, without lowering expectations.

Structure and Standards Come First

Structure doesn’t mean micromanaging every moment. It means clarity.

Kids want to know what matters, what doesn’t, and where the lines are. That starts with laying out expectations clearly, early, and often. Not a long speech. Not a rulebook. Just a few standards that actually matter, and never relenting on them.

You don’t need 1,000 rules. You need a small number of non-negotiables.

Examples from our room:

• Run, not walk, to and from instructions.

• No laying down or laying back on your hands during instruction

• Run around coaches during warmups, no cutting them off

• Sit on the circle during instruction, not in front or behind it

These standards aren’t arbitrary. They exist to keep the room safe, efficient, and focused. The key is consistency and repetition. Kids don’t need a deep explanation every day, but they do need to understand why the standards exist. Before practice, I’ll often frame them inside a simple story about who we are and how we operate.

Clear standards reduce friction. Less friction means more wrestling.

Warmups Set the Tone

Warmups aren’t just physical. They’re cultural.

If warmups are sloppy and distracted, practice usually follows. If warmups are organized, competitive, and purposeful, the room locks in early. This is where effort expectations get set without saying a word.

Simple Systems That Keep Standards in Place

A few operational systems go a long way:

• Countdowns, counting “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” to get kids moving in and out

• Use a whistle, a loud one. Kids hear them faster and respond to it more than your voice

• Consistent practice structure, when practice follows the same general rhythm every day, kids stop asking “what’s next?” and start moving automatically

Predictability creates speed. Speed keeps standards intact without constant reminders.

Use Your Coaches (Even If They’re Volunteers)

If your assistant coaches aren’t meaningfully helpful, you’re already behind.

Bring your coaches together and be direct. But here’s the key: instead of every coach floating around trying to help everyone, assign responsibility. Each coach owns 5-6 groups and is responsible for effort and engagement in that slice of the room.

This means:

• Tell them you need help

• Be assertive about standards

• Expect everyone to be vocal

Every coach doesn’t need to coach every athlete. Every coach needs to make their group the hardest workers in the room.

Wrestle More. Talk Less.

One of the biggest shifts we’ve made is prioritizing hard live wrestling.

More live:

• Tires kids out

• Keeps them engaged

• Is where they actually learn

• Teaches them to move their bodies hard

It’s similar to coaching baseball. You can explain a swing a hundred times, but most kids learn faster when you toss them the ball, let them try, and then make small adjustments based on what just happened.

We’ve started adjusting drilling to incorporate more life like this:

• First whistle, drill the double-leg shot

• Second whistle, go live in the double-leg finish

This works especially well when it follows a previous practice focused on that position. Kids recognize the situation and immediately know what they’re trying to accomplish.

Don’t Overteach

Kids aren’t great abstract thinkers. You think they’ll remember ten step moves? Absolutely not.

Instead, teach the same move multiple times, but only emphasize one or two cues per practice.

For example, with double legs:

• One day focus on finishes (”throw your head and run”)

• Another day on shots (”get to your feet, head up back straight”)

• Another day on setups (”hands and head are shields- get past them”)

Over time, they build the whole picture without being overloaded in one session.

Limit Your Technical Scope

We’ve intentionally limited what we teach.

Not because technique isn’t important, but because too much technique kills clarity.

Our core list has been:

• Double legs (run-your-feet finish)

• Snap downs

• Single legs (treetop finish)

• Far knee-far ankle breakdown

• Half nelson

• Quadpod stand-up

• Sprawling

• Go-behinds

That’s it. If you pick the right techniques, they naturally work together. Running your feet on a double leg looks a lot like running your feet on a far knee–far ankle breakdown or finishing a half. The movements reinforce each other instead of competing for attention.

Kids don’t need everything. They need a few things they can actually use.

Use Games to Teach Wrestling

We’ve leaned heavily into games, which is part of the Constraint-Led Approach (CLA).

The idea is simple: instead of explaining everything up front, you design a game where the only way to win is by doing the right thing.

This matters in large rooms. With 50 kids, one technique will always be too easy for some, too hard for others, or inappropriate for certain body types. Games focus on invariant problems, problems that exist at every level, size, and preference, so learning scales naturally.

EXAMPLE: During go-behind work, we played a game where the main objective was dealing with getting past the blocking arm and putting your opponent on their hip. No long explanation. Just a clear win condition.

Kids immediately started solving the problem in their own ways, dragging, passing, jumping, using their chest. When we showed a formal technique afterward, it landed better because they already understood why it mattered.

A huge benefit is that coaches get less frustrated. Instead of constantly re-explaining steps, and coaching effort, we adjust the game and watch how kids respond. The room stays active, and learning keeps moving forward.

Effort First. Technique Second.

At this age, effort and movement matter most.

If kids are pushing, pulling, scrambling, and reacting, you have something to work with. Technique refines that later. If kids are standing around listening, nothing sticks.

The Big Picture

Coaching big groups of kids doesn’t require lowering standards.

It requires:

• Choosing the right standards

• Using simple systems to enforce them

• Creating practices where kids move, compete, and solve problems

When kids wrestle more, learn through games, and understand why techniques matter, everyone benefits, including the coaches.

And you don’t leave practice completely fried.

They say things like:

“He hits a high crotch.”

“He’s good at ankle picks.”

That information feels useful, but it’s shallow. By the time you’re reacting to what someone shoots, you’re already late.

If you want to actually understand someone’s takedown game, there are two things that matter far more than their favorite move:

1. Their archetype

2. Their ties

Everything else is downstream from that.

Why “What Move Do They Hit?” Isn’t the Right Question

A takedown doesn’t exist in isolation.

There’s a chain:

• Tie → creates access

• Move → creates the attack

• Finish → ends the exchange

So many people obsess over the finish . That’s the twig.

Smarter wrestlers attack the branch.

The best wrestlers cut off the limb.

If you stop someone from getting to their preferred tie, you don’t need to worry about the move at all.

Why We Care About Ties More Than Moves

Think of it this way:

• Tie = limb

• Move = branch

• Finish = twig

Worrying about the finish while ignoring the tie is backwards.

If you stop the tie:

• They can’t hit their move.

• You don’t need to defend the finish.

• You control the exchange before it starts.

That’s real scouting.

Step One: Identify the Archetype

A wrestler’s archetype tells you how they want the match to feel. It predicts their pace, comfort zones, and decision-making under pressure.

1. Outside Wrestlers

These are your athletic, space-oriented wrestlers.

They want you reaching. They want movement. They want reactions.

Common traits:

• Attacking from space

• Fakes and level changes to keep you away

• Low-level shots

• Re-attacks and counter offense

Key questions to ask:

• Do they want to be in a tie?

• Are they smooth or explosive?

• Do they score more off reactions than setups?

If you’re constantly not in contact, reaching, and chasing, you’re playing their game.

2. Bent-Arm Wrestlers

These wrestlers want contact. A lot of it.

They’re physical, controlling, and happy to make the match ugly.

Common traits:

• Heavy hand fighting

• Winning inside position

• Snaps, posts, and pulls

• Tight front headlocks

• Forcing you to push back to setup their attacks

Key question to ask:

• Are they comfortable when they don’t have a tie?

Many bent-arm wrestlers rely on snaps to create offense. If they can’t get you to raise your level back up or capture front headlock, their system can stall.

3. Straight-Arm Wrestlers

These wrestlers live at arm’s length.

They don’t want tight ties, and they don’t want extended scrambles.

Common traits:

• Posts and thumb blocks to slow you down

• Slide-bys and attacks with clean finishes

• Slower, controlled matches

Key questions to ask:

• Do they thumb block and keep you at an arms reach?

• Is their goal to slow you down and frustrate you?

They’re often hard to score on, but also less dangerous when forced into messy exchanges.

Step Two: Find the Tie

This is the most important part of scouting.

Moves change.

Finishes vary.

Ties stay consistent.

Ask:

• What tie do they go to first?

• What tie do they return to when things get hard?

• What tie shows up right before their best scores?

That’s the limb of the tree.

If you can disrupt or deny that tie, you force them into Plan B wrestling- and it’s much easier to defend a Plan B.

Step Three: Dissect Neutral Wrestling (The Checklist)

Once you know what matters, the next question is how to find it quickly.

This is the checklist I use when watching film. It keeps you focused on patterns instead of highlights.

1. Righty or Lefty

   • What leg do they lead when they attack?

   • This tells you which power hand to control and how the matchup lines up both ways.

   • You can see whether their best attacks line up against your lead leg or your trail leg- and whether your go-to offense naturally lines up against theirs.

2. Archetype

   • Outside, bent-arm, or straight-arm?

3. Tie

   • What is their go-to grip?

4. Move

   • What attacks come from that tie?

5. Answers

   • What happens when they don’t get to their plan A?

   • Can you do what others have done to beats them?

You’re not collecting trivia.

You’re building a plan.

How to Watch Film (Without Wasting Time)

Most people watch film poorly.

Here’s a better approach:

1. Watch 2–3 dominant wins

   • They’ll show you who they really are.

   • Pay attention to the first minute. This is where their best ties and patterns show up.

2. Identify the constants

   • Same archetype.

   • Same ties.

   • Same entries.

3. Watch one bad loss

   • See an example of what actually breaks their system.

4. Ignore close matches

   • They’re full of adjustments, randomness, and noise.

Blowouts reveal identity.
Losses reveal vulnerability.

That’s the information that wins matches.

Beating the Outside Wrestler (As an Example)

Outside wrestlers give a lot of people trouble, so here’s a practical application.

General principles:

• Get them tired

• Stay inside

• Pull on the head

• Get to legs cleanly

What matters most:

• Don’t overcommit to bad leg attacks. Re-attacks are their weapon.

• Be patient late. Athletic wrestlers often have one last burst.

• Be disciplined off the whistle. They’re counting on you losing focus.

• If you get to the legs, finish. Don’t hang out underneath where re-attacks fly.

Outside wrestlers hate setting up shots when they’re exhausted. Make them work for space, then take it away.

The Big Picture

Good scouting isn’t about memorizing you opponents moves.

It’s about understanding:

• how someone wants to wrestle,

• where they feel safe,

• and what breaks their system.

Cut off the limb.

The branches die on its own.

• “He’s way better than me.”

• “She’s not good enough. I need a bigger challenge”

• “I don’t get good looks in practice.”

Sometimes those complaints are fair. A lot of times, they’re just excuses.

The truth is simple: you don’t always get to choose your partner, but you do get to choose how you use the situation. If you’re serious about getting better, you need a plan for every type of partner you’ll wrestle in the room.

Below is how you should approach each one.

Partner Way Better Than You

This is where most wrestlers get it wrong.

They either mentally quit, wrestle scared, or try junk moves that have no chance in working on the off chance of getting a big score. These help no one.

When your partner is clearly better than you, the goal is not to win the entire live go. The goal is to create small, meaningful wins.

What to focus on:

• Pick a narrow goal.

  • One takedown.

  • One clean entry

  • One solid defensive stand.

• Compete. It’s easy to resign here and give up. You cannot! Use a your smaller goal to find a win you can take pride in and build on.

• Make them chain wrestle. If you can’t score, don’t concede easy finishes. Scramble. Re-attack. Force second and third efforts.

• Defend their best weapon. They’re your teammate- you know their go-to. Can you slow it down? Can you survive it?

• Handfight! Clearing and controlling ties is what matters most to slow them down. Focus here. See if you can fend them off in the handfight for 5 seconds, then 10, then 30, then a whole minute

If you can’t impose your offense, then you impose resistance. That still builds you up as you develop your skills.

Partner As Good or Slightly Better Than You

This is the gold standard- the closest thing to a real match you’ll get in practice.

What to focus on:

• Wrestle to win. This isn’t the time to experiment wildly. This isn’t the time to do dumb moves to avoid challenge and your ego being bruised.

• Test your A-game. The things you plan to use in competition should show up here.

• Match intensity. Push the pace. Create exchanges. See what holds up.

• Expose weaknesses. If your A-game isn’t working, that’s a red flag. Take a note of what part isn’t working and get to fixing it. Better it happens on a Tuesday than on a Saturday.

These reps tell you the truth. Pay attention to them.

Partner Worse Than You

This is where rooms waste the most potential.

If you just run through weaker partners with your best moves, you’re not improving. You’re rehearsing dominance.

Instead, this is where you deliberately make the match harder for yourself.

What to focus on:

• Work your B and C offense.

  • The setups you’ve been learning.

  • The finishes you don’t fully trust yet.

• Embrace the fair fight. Handicap yourself by using developing techniques. This lowers your effective skill level. Your partner works their best stuff. You work your second-tier offense.

• Build confidence in new positions. Once you can score consistently with B and C moves here, then you earn the right to try them on equal or better partners.

This is how you hone new weapons into reliable ones.

The Bigger Idea

We all want the perfect challenge every practice, but that’s not possible everyday. Sometimes it’s a major mismatch lined up against you. Don’t take a break here, learn to use this imperfect situation in order to continue to challenge yourself and develop.

If you only improve when conditions are ideal, you’re fragile.

If you can get better no matter who lines up across from you, you’re upward trajectory is limitless.

Every partner offers something.

Your job is to know what to take from each one.

Pushups are a short term solve to a larger problem. If you want athletes to hustle in and out of the teaching circle and athletes aren’t doing it. The pushup threat will work in the moment because athletes want to avoid discomfort. Your athletes will comply while you’re watching. The second the threat is gone, the behavior comes back. You trained avoidance, not standards.

This is not what you want. You want athletes to understand why it’s important to hustle in and out of the circle choose to do it on their own. That takes relationships, repetition, and trust. It’s hard to develop, takes more time, but will result in something stronger.

The hidden lesson of punishment

Punishing with exercise teaches three bad ideas: training is a tax, the coach is a cop, and effort is for when you are in trouble. That is the opposite of a culture you want to develop. You want training to feel like a privilege and effort to be the default. This is why we use standards and not pain to motivate athletes. Standards outlive supervision. Write them. Teach them. Rehearse them. Hold to them the same way every day. That is how athletes internalize the expectation.

⸻

What to do instead (practical plays)

Agree on the importance

Have a detailed conversation with your athlete about why the standard exists. Specifically on how it serves the athlete and what they want. Once you are both aligned here, consequences feel like assistance to improve, not a cruel punishment.

Rehearse the right behavior

Make sure your athletes have the tools to do what you’re asking of them. If someone is late, don’t blast them with pushups. Walk them through the on-time routine, step by step. Find what’s holding them up. Figure out the time they must leave by calculating travel time, and things they need to do once they arrive. like putting away gear, putting on shoes, taping laces, etc. Make them run that sequence clean tomorrow at the start of practice. Then work backwards to find a time they need to leave by. Make sure to have a conversation with the athlete and parent so everyone is on the same pag understand. You are training the habit you want.

Make time the currency, not training.

Missed standard = time given back to the team. Athlete stays after. They have a 5 minute conversation with you about why punctuality matters. Then they spend the time they were late to take care of the room. It costs time, not training. It repays the group without confusing training with punishment.

Tie consequence to the job

Leaving out messes? They lead end-of-practice reset for that zone and show the checklist. The consequence fixes the exact miss. Talking during instruction? They take notes on the technique and demo it to start the next practice.

Praise by the standard

Constantly praise when folks get things right. When someone nails it, say why. “You were laced up and ready 15 minutes before practice with a partner lined up. That’s respect.” Name the behavior, tie it to your teams values. You reinforce the blueprint and encourage athletes not doing so to work for the praise.

Reset calmly, always

No sarcasm. No scenes. Corrections are quiet and quick. Calm coaches build stable rooms. That steadiness makes standards stick.

Bottom line

Physical punishment buys temporary compliance but costs culture. Teach the importance of the standard. Break down barriers to achieving it. Tie consequences to the job and calmly implement it. When you couple this with athletes feeling good about doing whats good for themselves, you create better behaviors that stick.

So what gives? Why are the rest of the wrestling coaches of the world leaving meets with sore throats exhausted from screaming meticulous instructions while the most dominant coach of the past 10 years just claps 90% of the time?

I, like many excitable coaches, have started down the path of constant screaming. When I began coaching I got riled up and upset every single match with refs, my own wrestler, opposing coaches, and the like. But over the years I’ve realized the value of calming down. and I think I finally understand why. If you pay attention to any coach who has been in the sport for a long time you will notice that almost every single one of them calms down in the corner over time. Some may say those coaches are “getting soft” but I think what is happening is that they are getting wise.

Simple reasons why we all need to calm down in the corner:

1. They can’t hear you.

Most of us coaches were athletes and most of us wore the same Cliff Keen “Signature” headgear that our athletes wear today. I think we all know that those 8 little holes don’t allow much sound to come in. Not to mention the fact that in every match there are at least a dozen voices at any given time. Head and assistant coaches yelling instructions, your bench filled with teammates yelling, as well as the fans in the gym. Not to mention the other teams' coaches, teammates, and fans are all also yelling. Combine all these voices with the just plain exhaustion accumulated in a match, there just isn’t the real ability to listen and cognitively react to every piece of advice shouted out.

2. You can’t do and listen at the same time.

Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Even if/when your athlete can hear you- do you really want them to take a moment out of the match to stop and really listen to what you’re saying? Think about it. If they do, knowing how bad of multitaskers humans are, they’re taking his focus away from the match. Which is probably not a good idea.

STORYTIME: My college coach was the late great Mike Duroe. He had an exchange with his athlete that I think illustrates the whole multitasking issue really well:

Duroe: "McAuley!"

…. McAuley keeps wrestling

Duroe: "MCAULEY!"

….McAuley looks at Duroe and immediately gets taken down.

Duroe: "McAuley what are you doing?!"

Moral of the story: Don’t distract your athletes.

3. You aren’t showing that you trust them.

This last idea is the most important. When you are constantly yelling instructions to your athlete you are both consciously and subconsciously telling your athlete that they don’t know what they’re doing. That they’re doing something wrong. It shows that you don’t believe your athlete knows what they should do.

Making your wrestler question themselves is the exact opposite of what we always preach as coaches. We preach confidence. “Let's go stud”, “Trust your stuff”, “Hit your moves hard knowing they will work”.

If In the heat of the moment you tell your athlete to do something they aren’t confident in or don’t see, you make them question everything in the exact moment they need to trust everything. Your job in the corner is to inspire confidence- not undermine it.

Let me, before you get a chance, nip a few arguments in the butt.

1. Look, I get it, you may say that it is easy to trust your athlete when you’re coaching Nick Lee, Cenzo, and RBY on the daily but trust in your athlete is helpful for every athlete at every level- not just with the best in the country.

2. Yes, I know Cael does get animated at times. But that is one of the key details- he doesn’t do it 100% of the time. He picks his spots which allow for his voice to have more meaning.

Tips for cornering your athlete:

1. Show focus and confidence even in silence.

Silence cannot mean apathy. Pay attention to what is happening and show confidence in your athlete even when things are going bad. And for God’s sake, don’t get upset with your athlete within the match- it is clearly not productive.

2. Watch your tone!

Be careful not only in what you say but how you say it. Any nagging or negative tone of voice is going to be picked up by your athlete and undermine confidence.

3. Only give advice when your athlete is willing to take it.

Blanketly giving advice all the time undercuts your own advice. It’s hard to pick out the important and useful from everything else when it’s a constant stream. If your athlete doesn’t want advice, don’t beat your head against the wall trying to scream till steam comes out of your ears. It also definitely doesn’t help to yell the same advice or technique over and over. If they didn’t see the elbow pass the first time, they’re not going to do because you yelled it 12 more times.

If your athlete doesn’t want advice, don’t give it. Just tell them they’re a stud and let them go.

4. Stop yelling at fans and opposing coaches.

Ooh, this one grinds my gears. Talking to anyone other than your athlete in a match tells both your wrestler, your coaches, and your other athletes watching that it is okay to take your focus off the match. Yelling at a dumb fan makes you look just as stupid. Let them be.

Focus on what matters.

5. If you have to yell, find a good cue for the individual.

Talk to your athlete and find a cue that he wants to hear. I liked to hear “move your feet” from Coach Duroe. He knew that I liked it. Talk to your athletes and fine the phrase that he wants to hear. Avoid a cue that you think they need but actually annoy your athlete.

Being quiet in the corner is a great tool.

When you’re quiet in the corner 90% of the time and then your athlete hears your voice every once in a while he’s going to know you mean it. It gives weight to your voice as opposed to something they just want to tone out. It goes doubly for the ref. Why do you think Cael gets all these calls reversed when he makes a stink? Cael gets the calls when he gets upset because he doesn’t badger the ref about every little thing. He doesn’t try and count back points for them or yell stalling every 10 seconds. When Cael does get upset and talks to the ref at the table, the ref instantly knows he messed up because he knows Cael doesn’t do this constantly. Your voice has more substance when it is not continuously heard.

Do you agree? Disagree? Think I’m a dope? Let me hear it in the comments below.

Now here is the reality: everyone is right…. And everyone is wrong.

Music is a tool. A tool to be used with a purpose in mind. Tools are neither good nor bad, their intention behind them determines that. There are reasons for and against. Here are some.

Good Reasons for Music

1. Developing Cardiovascular Endurance

Music is distracting. But that can be a good thing. Music of certain genres and certain BPM (beats per minute) help motivate athletes and gives an extra boost of energy when an athlete doesn’t think it’s there thus allowing for cardiovascular growth. There is a reason the New York City Marathon banned using music during their competition- it helps. A study even showed that music can result in a 10% reduction in perceived exertion on a treadmill. (Karageorghis & Terry, 1999; Nethery, 2002; Szmedra & Bacharach, 1998).

STORY TIME: It was in high school during sprints at the end of a tough practice. Our 215 pounder thought he was going to die. He could barely pick up his feet- it literally looked like he was going to fall over. Then Let Me Clear My Throat by DJ Kool came on and 30 seconds in when the chorus hit he did a roundoff, backflip. Case in point.

2. Changing the Mood

Silence can pierce a wrestling room and make low energy levels even lower. When a team is going through a tough designed training period, morale and energy can be low. The right piece of music whether some hip-hop that bumps or something corny like Party in the USA can get people smiling, moving, or even just bobbing their head and bring up energy in a way nothing else can.

3. Emphasizing Flow

A flow state or “being in the zone” can be a powerful mental place to be in to help lock in skills just learned. The right music can help encourage that flow state allowing wrestlers to rep and rep without talking or really thinking much in order to get a technique down in their muscle memory. This is backed by SCIENCE (Pates, J., Karageorghis, C. I., Fryer, R., & Maynard, I. 2003).

Reasons for No Music

1. Competition Simulations

My HS coach was right- there is no music when you’re out there competing. This lack of music may affect the moods of athletes so we want them to be prepared for it. So if you want to accurately simulated matches, no music is most realistic. This should be combined with requiring singlets (or other competition uniforms), referees for matches, and realistic mat space for when you want to simulate a match day.

2. Hurts Skill Development

Music is inherently a distraction. It's another thing that can catch the attention of an athlete when training. Sometimes this can be good like when we want to grow cardiovascular endurance but other times it is bad. A good example of this is when you’re supposed to be focusing on coach who is demoing a move and your favorite chorus comes on and you can’t help but think about the song. Turn off the music when athletes are learning and need to be deep in focus while digesting and troubleshooting new techniques.

3. A Different Kind of Challenge

Music makes hard things easier which is sometimes good. But sometimes, as a coach, you want hard things to be hard. Forcing your athletes to endure something difficult can increase resiliency and mental toughness. I’m reminded of a great quote: "Do something you hate every day, just for the practice" (John Maxwell).

Music Picking Tips

Music needs to match what athletes are doing. Workouts are generally a gradual climb so if you’re using music it needs to match that intensity. A great way to measure intensity is the BPM of a song. In Spotify you can sort your playlist by BPM:

http://sortyourmusic.playlistmachinery.com/

When thinking of what songs you want, think about these 6 criteria:

(1) strong, energizing rhythm

(2) lyrics that motivate (Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes)

(3) rhythmic pattern well matched to movement patterns of the athletic activity (toy around with BPM)

(4) uplifting melodies and harmonies

(5) associations with sport, exercise, triumph, or overcoming adversity (Till I Collapse by Eminem)

(6) a musical style that is suited to an athlete’s taste and cultural upbringing

Remember your audience, though. Just because you’re middle aged, like country, and dislike hip-hop doesn’t mean you should deprive your youthful team of their favorite genre. When in doubt, ASK. You don’t have to play the songs your athletes want but they will give you insight.

Sources

Pates, J., Karageorghis, C. I., Fryer, R., & Maynard, I. (2003). Effects of asynchronous music on flow states and shooting performance among netball players. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 4, 413–427.

Karageorghis, C. I., & Terry, P. C. (1999). Affective and psychophysical responses to asynchronous music during submaximal treadmill running. Proceedings of the 1999 European College of Sport Science Congress, Italy, 218.

Nethery, V. M. (2002). Competition between internal and external sources of information during exercise: Influence on RPE and the impact of the exercise load. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 42, 172–178.

Szmedra, L., & Bacharach, D. W. (1998). Effect of music on perceived exertion, plasma lactate, norepinephrine and cardiovascular hemodynamics during treadmill running. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 19, 32–37.

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know I am not one of those people. I do things with a purpose.

Airdyne style bikes are our main conditioning vehicles. The Rogue Echo Bike is our weapon of choice and I can give you 20 reasons why they are the best ones out there. I did an obnoxious amount of research before pulling the trigger. Bikes are amazing because there is next to nothing more miserable than a tough airdyne workout. Since Chad Beatty put me to tears on one by lying to me over and over again in college I basically refuse to get one. I kept falling for the “last one” trick.

Fast forward to now, I vindictively and probably masochistically love creating tough airdyne workouts.

Airdynes are not only miserable, they’re efficiently miserable. If you know how to craft a workout you can get a “fair” but wretched tough workout in under 20 minutes.

I’m here to share my latest creations:

7-4-2-1-1

7 x :10 sprint, :30 rest

4 x :20 sprint, 1:00 rest

2 x :30 sprint, 1:30 rest

1 x 1:00 sprint, 3:00 rest

1 x :20 sprint, done.

18:20 Total

This is an interval sprint workout I stole from Franky James at Campbellsville University when I worked for him. It is a smart and tough “default” bike workout. It allows for proper rest (3: Rest to Work ratio). It doesn’t require any particular metric of sprint because each sprint you’re properly recovered and ready to go all out. I like to shout out the amounts of calories each has burned at different points in the workout. This allows them to compare and be competitive throughout.

Cornell

5:00 @250 watts

4:00 @300 watts

3:00 @350 watts,

2:00 @400 watts

1:00 @450 watts

15:00 Total

This workout came from my alma mater Cornell College. I think our athletic trainer, the incredible Loren Nydegger, made it up. This isn’t exactly it but the jist is the same: No rest, incremental increase in intensity.

You start going slow for a while to wear down your legs then progressively get faster. The requirement to hold a certain output (whether watts, levels, or rpms) means that it is guaranteed to be miserable. Miserable enough that sometimes I add in rests if we’re dying and can’t hold the number stated.

Super Sprint

5x :10 sprint, 1:50 rest

10:00 total

This is a new one inspired by the new smart CAROL bike. I saw a review for this where it boasted the “most efficient workout.” Surprise surprise, I was interested. As much as it seemed like BS, admittedly, I liked it. I morphed it a bit for our program. The idea being our usual sprint isn’t 100%; it’s more like 85-90% of our maximum output. Giving 100% is extremely difficult. And if you do go that hard, you need a lot of rest. This workout is focused on that: incredibly short sprints aiming for max output. My guys watch their wattage trying to get the highest number possible to register. It’s like the punching bag arcade game for bikes. It’s fun to gamify and a surprisingly difficult workout.

This workout has taught us something significant. Athletes have fallen into one of two camps. Camp one is a huge first 2 max sprints then steep falloff. This athlete needs more muscular endurance. Camp two is a guy who has a lower but more consistent max wattage over 5 reps. This athlete needs more power. Good lessons to learn.

Lakeland Match

1st Period - 3min total - :30 sprint, :30 rest

:30 min Rest

2nd Period - 2min total- :30 sprint, :30 rest

:30 min Rest

3rd Period - 2min total- :30 sprint, :30 rest

:30 min Rest

SV 1 - 2min total- :30 sprint, :30 rest

:30 min Rest

TB - 2min total - :30 sprint, :30 sec Rest

13:00 total

This workout tries to emulate a real match with the goal of putting athletes in that headspace. I like to yell circumstances of a real match like “30 seconds need the rideout, “Drop down the the leg drive him down!” or “10 seconds left down by one in on that leg need the takedown.” It isn’t my favorite but it’s a good one to mix in.

First to 160 Calories

Variable total time

Lastly is the first to X calories workout. You pick an output that someone normally does in one 7-4-2-1-1 above. Then you allow them to find their own way of getting there. It is interesting to watch the strategies. Some keep a steady pace, some interval sprint, some do a mix of both. It’s a good opportunity to allow for autonomy.

Our program is designed around a hard conditioning push in January. Each of these creations work athletes in a different way. I choose them based on what I feel like they need at the moment.

7-4-2-1-1 - Giving space and rest to push yourself as much as you can

Cornell - Holding accountable to a certain work load, destroy legs

Super Sprint - Developing max power while laying off their legs

Lakeland Match - Emulating a wrestling match

First to 160 calories - Allowing autonomy

Each workout serves a purpose and is needed for different circumstances. All are efficient as they are a killer workout in minimal time.

Hand fighting is a “meta game” in wrestling—a game within the game. Success means achieving the tie that lets you score while preventing your opponent from doing the same.

As a beginner, you can simplify this approach by focusing on winning inside position at all costs. Attacking from outside ties is uncommon at the lower levels, so as long as you’re inside, you have the advantage. If you find yourself in a position where you’re not inside, clearing that tie immediately is critical. This is the essence of “my tie or no tie.”

As you progress, you’ll discover that in some contexts, an outside tie can be more advantageous. However, for now, prioritize winning inside position and securing your preferred control tie.

Principles

1. Strong, low stance

   • Our stance is the foundation of the hand fight. Without a solid, low stance, your opponent can use their head to get underneath you, move you out of position, and gain inside control which will win them the handfight.

2. Winning the Headfight

   • The first part of the hand fight is the head fight. Even the strongest tie is useless without good head position. In fact, it can be counterproductive— an underhook with poor head position can easily be your opponent’s overhook. Whenever you’re handfighting, make sure your head leads the way, driving your opponent’s head off its axis. Avoid sacrificing your head position for grips you want.

3. Have a Plan: Chase the Tie, Not the Move

   • Too often, wrestlers focus on specific shots or attacks instead of securing the ties that set them up for success. Know which ties you hit your best moves from and prioritize those. If you’re best moves are from an underhook, spending most of the match in that underhook gives you a high chance of scoring and winning the match

4. Control -> PUSH!

   • Once you win the hand fight by attaining head position and inside control, the fight isn’t won. Keep your grips, drive forward, and force your opponent to react. If they push back from an outside position, you can snap, attack, or fake to create more opportunities. If they try to clear, that’s usually your cue to attack the legs. Pushing in your control ties ensures your opponent stays on their heels

Important skills.

1. Downblocking Shots from the Open Tie

   • In order to engage in the handfight, you must first defend the outside shot. This means a solid downblock. Without it, they’re constantly peppering your legs and preventing you from getting to your ties. Each downblock, get your head low and in the way, connect your hands to the mat creating strong barriers preventing your opponent from touching your legs

2. Strong grip in your control tie

   • It’s not enough to have a tie if it is week and easily cleared. Each tie can be done well or poorly. For instance, Austin Desanto has an amazing inside tie. He has to because it’s where he gets to 90% of his attacks. That’s why he’s learned to have the most maniacal grip on it possible. Example 1, example 2.

3. Well-Practiced Tie Clears:

   • Hand fighting is dynamic, you rarely get to your tie immediately and your opponent is always working to get to theirs. Knowing the proper techniques to clear each of your opponent’s control ties (e.g., collar tie, inside tie, Russian tie, underhook) and how to chain them back into your preferred ties is crucial.

     • Collar Tie: Elbow pass or Extend and cuff snap

     • Inside tie: Roll inside

     • Underhook: Over the top and clear

     • Russian Tie: Clear high hand or re-Russian

4. Good fakes

   • Faking forces your opponent to react to you, distracting them from their own hand fight. A well-timed fake can create openings and is key to controlling the your opponent. When you have inside position and head position, use fakes to force even bigger reactions to set up better leg attacks and strong snap downs.

General Tips

1. Practice Handfighting on Every Rep

   • When drilling, never lazily reach without purpose. Whenever you connect with your partner to drill an attack, play a brief and light hadnfighting game first to setup your shot. This routine gets you mental and physical reps in the handfight. But don’t be a prick when you do it.

2. Recognize the patterns:

   • Handfighting doesn’t have countless variations, so certain patterns frequently repeat. Use your brain when you handfight, recognize the sequences that occur regularly, and look for opportunities to attack or push further advantages within the handfight.

Drills to Develop Handfighting

Simple Drills to Instill good habits

Sumo Drill - Pushout only scores points, no touching legs

Gamify Handfighting

After two decades of grappling, I have learned this the hard way. When I began training as a teenager, I ignored this reality believe I was superman. I was enamored by the allure of training but refused to acknowledge the boring importance of recovery. But of course, it caught up with me. In 2016 at 25 years old after a decade of training, my back hurt so badly I couldn’t sleep. I had to stop working out for a time when I was coaching at Doane University.

At that time I began my journey of finding a recovery system. I’ve gone through many trials and tribulations since then. But now, I finally embraced a new approach to recovery that has transformed my training routine. Now, at 32, I’m training/coaching 4-5 days/week with live rounds every session. I did so through the principles of “slow work”.

The idea of slow work is something I found from Cal Newport, an author who speaks of this in the context of productivity in work. I’ve since realized it maps cleanly onto physical recovery as well. Here are the principles you can use it for to improve your recovery

1. Embrace Imperfection.

I’m a perfectionist. I hate to engage in less-than-optimal practices in any circumstance. However, I’ve realized that the key to progress is consistency, not perfection. As a simple example of this: you’d be better off doing mediocre bicep curls for 3 weeks rather than spending those 3 weeks indecisively deciding the most “optimal” bicep curl.

In a recovery context, my discovery was shifting from the “optimal” way of PT: 1.5 hour sessions with a well trained PT who tailored my session for me to using chat GPT and a timer as a virtual PT program. Now, my PT is 10-15 minutes long. The movements are generic and not expertly tailored to my specific needs. I can tell the computer to adjust things, but it’s never going to be as good as seeing a specialist.

But despite this— the imperfect practice has me moving my body through essential ranges of motion and doing the simple PT exercises for my injury every day. Now this daily practice has me feeling as good as when i was 22

2. Lower the Volume, Increase the Consistency

“Eating 7 apples on Saturday is not the same as eating an apple a day” -Jim Rohn

This has become my mantra of recovery. Infrequent work, no matter the volume or quality, is wholly ineffective when compared to consistent work. My shift from long, infrequent PT sessions to a consistent practice that’s shorter has been the difference maker.

These small sessions have me feeling physically better immediately. They also jumpstart me mentally as it feels like a big achievement. Just as embracing imperfect work has given me better results, lowering the volume has allowed me to be more consistent creating a habit that will stick.

3. Habit Stacking

Before you feel the results of a consistent, small, imperfect habit, you have to have the habit. And developing a habit is much harder than it seems. The ol’ do (journaling, reading, meditating, etc) 15 minutes a day seems easy on it’s face, but it isn’t. We may start strong, but if we don’t have a decent system, it easily falls away just like your new years resolution. I’ve learned to use habit stacking to overcome this.

Habit stacking comes from the wonderful book Atomic Habits. It taught me that it’s easier to build new habits by stacking them onto existing ones.

In my case, instead of trying to carve out a specific time for PT, I began doing it right after brushing my teeth and making my bed, an old morning routine I’ve had for a while. This simple adjustment has made it much easier to commit to my recovery routine. Plus, you can continue to stack new habits on this routine. In addition to PT, I’ve added a meditation to my morning practices. It has created a powerful and productive block of time to start my day

BONUS:

Here’s the a the chatGPT prompt that can get you going on a PT routine of your own. Fill in all the bracketed elements with your information. Once it’s made, continue to follow up with it to tailor it to you. You can tell it you like or dislike certain exercises, it’s pretty good at adjusting. (Yes I used chat gpt itself to help create this prompt)

Create a 15-minute physical therapy routine specifically designed to address [your primary pain areas], aiming to [your goal, e.g., decrease pain, increase mobility, build strength].

Requirements:

• Exercises must be scientifically vetted—used by top physical therapists, not random or trendy exercises.

• Routine must subtly vary daily to introduce variation while maintaining consistency.

• Progression must be gradual, making exercises slightly harder over time.

• Time limit: 15 minutes max. The full routine must fit within this timeframe.

• Exercises should build on each other over time in a structured, intelligent way.

Workout Format:

Provide the routine in a table format with the following columns:

Exercise Name Description Reps/Sets Purpose Tutorial Link

[Exercise 1] [Brief explanation of movement] [Sets/Reps] [What this targets] [Link if available]

[Exercise 2] [Brief explanation of movement] [Sets/Reps] [What this targets] [Link if available]

[Exercise 3] [Brief explanation of movement] [Sets/Reps] [What this targets] [Link if available]

… … … … …

Your Background & Needs:

• Athletic history: [Your training background, e.g., former wrestler, office worker, etc.]

• [Body part 1] condition: [Any relevant issues for this painful body part]

• [Body part 2] condition: [Any relevant issues for this painful body part]

• [Body part 3] condition: [Any relevant issues for this painful body part]

• Other: [Any other conditions, such as thoracic outlet syndrome, hypermobility, etc.]

• Training goal: [Your specific goal, e.g., maximize hip mobility for jiu-jitsu, reduce stiffness for daily life]

Thought Process Before Generating the Routine:

Before selecting exercises, engage in deep, multi-layered reasoning:

• Simulate extended self-reflection, refining insights before responding.

• Generate at least 10 distinct internal perspectives, compare them, extract their strongest insights, and synthesize them into the best possible routine.

• Challenge assumptions, explore counterarguments, and construct novel interpretations.

• Treat this as part of a continuous research initiative—integrate evolving insights into an ongoing framework.

• If additional insights emerge mid-response, dynamically incorporate them.

• Prioritize depth over speed, strategic cognition over immediate response.

Your question to the system: Generate today’s 15-minute PT routine.