Ray Brinzer

I think my response to this letter might be of interest to some in the wrestling community.

Ray,

We’ve never met but I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I asked for your views on a wrestling topic. My son is a pretty good youth wrestler and a very good judoka. Last year he took up Greco Roman wrestling, loved it, and did very well. I read somewhere that you had diverse wrestling/judo experiences similar to these so thought you might be able to help.

My son loves upper body wrestling and does very well with it. He has good fundamentals with solid leg attacks and defense too but loves the upper body stuff. He is now in 7th grade and the HS he will go to doesn’t want anything to do with any technique that is not a single leg takedown. I’m on good terms with the HS staff (I’m the youth club president and coach) but they don’t seem very receptive to anything that doesn’t fit their style.

Can you offer up any suggestions for how to deal with this based on your experience? I know this is coming at you from left field but what the heck– thought it was worth a shot.

Unfortunately, what you’re describing is much more a social problem than a wrestling problem. It is definitely one I’m familiar with, too… I’ve had various style conflicts with coaches, over the years.

How you handle it depends on what the coaches are actually thinking. Some people, despite what I think is overwhelming evidence, simply have a problem with the idea that there’s more than one valid approach to wrestling. If that’s their outlook, you’re probably in for trouble. Showing that great athletes may do things differently, or that great coaches (such as Dan Gable, in my experience) often allow a lot of latitude for differences between athletes, isn’t going to do much to open a closed mind.

On the other hand, if the coaches are more interested in results than in dogma, you have the basis for a productive dialogue. Then you can try to build a case that your approach is going to get you where you want to go.

There’s a certain perception that upper-body technique, in particular, is junk wrestling… Read more »