Bo Bassett Wrestles Too Much

[BaldAt23]

In the past year he wrestled a full high school schedule, 3 world championships, and will go straight into a D1 NCAA season. This is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. He needs to wrestle less frequently or he is going to peak around 23 years old and have a ton of nagging injuries. Just my two cents, from someone who is a big fan. 

[jackwebster]

What's his injury history? 

[MPhillips]

3 minutes ago, jackwebster said:

What's his injury history? 

Never heard of any.

[BruceyB]

51 minutes ago, BaldAt23 said:

In the past year he wrestled a full high school schedule, 3 world championships, and will go straight into a D1 NCAA season. This is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. He needs to wrestle less frequently or he is going to peak around 23 years old and have a ton of nagging injuries. Just my two cents, from someone who is a big fan. 

How many of those matches were competitive? Less than 10?

One thing that I don't understand is when people talk about guys competing "too much." Maybe wrestling practice is completely different now than it was during my high school/college experience, but a good warm-up and a single match was a lot easier than a typical practice. 

[BaldAt23]

32 minutes ago, jackwebster said:

What's his injury history? 

I'm not aware of any 

 

8 minutes ago, BruceyB said:

How many of those matches were competitive? Less than 10?

One thing that I don't understand is when people talk about guys competing "too much." Maybe wrestling practice is completely different now than it was during my high school/college experience, but a good warm-up and a single match was a lot easier than a typical practice. 

How many matches were competitive in that time period? Depends how you define competitive, but significantly more than 10 in my eyes. And non-competitive matches still add mileage, although not as much.

Practice is definitely different now, people are not practicing nearly as rigorously as they were before. But even so, when you're competing this much you're definitely practicing more than the next guy, so that adds to the argument. 

[BruceyB]

1 minute ago, BaldAt23 said:

I'm not aware of any 

 

How many matches were competitive in that time period? Depends how you define competitive, but significantly more than 10 in my eyes. And non-competitive matches still add mileage, although not as much.

Practice is definitely different now, people are not practicing nearly as rigorously as they were before. But even so, when you're competing this much you're definitely practicing more than the next guy, so that adds to the argument. 

Competitive in where Bo actually has to respect and respond to what his opponent is doing during the match. Catch and release, early techs, early pins, matches where he is dictating where all of the wrestling takes place is generally going to be, all of these are relatively easy both mentally and physically. I will just have to 100% disagree that non-competitive matches add mileage, or at least I will say that they don't add enough to have any meaningful impact on a wrestlers long-term health. 

Generally speaking, wrestling practice is harder than wrestling matches. You wouldn't be able to be in good wrestling shape if your practices were easier than a match. Ask any wrestler what the hardest thing they have done in the sport is, and I doubt a single one of them will talk about an actual competition. Hill sprints, buddy carries, circuits, extended live goes, the list goes on. There are so many things that come to mind when I think about the hardest things I've done in wrestling, and none of them were an actual competition.

If you said that wrestlers today as a whole are spending too much time on the mat and had evidence that it's detrimental to their health and the duration of their careers, I'd listen. But almost all of the top guys are on the mat 6 if not 7 days a week, and I'd believe that has a much bigger impact on how a body holds up than competition itself.

I'm sure there are examples, but I don't know of anyone that has been injury plagued and the general consensus is that they just competed too much.

[BaldAt23]

7 minutes ago, BruceyB said:

I'm sure there are examples, but I don't know of anyone that has been injury plagued and the general consensus is that they just competed too much.

Many big names have had their careers derailed by injuries, and I would bet that a lot of them are from overall mileage. Yianni is a good recent example. Snyder has had one of the longest careers in the countries history and he has wrestled 88 matches in the past 5 years. That is less than Bassett has wrestled in the past year. There's a reason he has had a long career. 

[BruceyB]

2 minutes ago, BaldAt23 said:

Many big names have had their careers derailed by injuries, and I would bet that a lot of them are from overall mileage. Yianni is a good recent example. Snyder has had one of the longest careers in the countries history and he has wrestled 88 matches in the past 5 years. That is less than Bassett has wrestled in the past year. There's a reason he has had a long career. 

Many big names? Who? Yianni had concussion issues and then a heart issue.. I don't really see how that could be his body breaking down from competition.

And comparing the schedule of a fresh 20 year old Bo Bassett who is entering college to a 30 year old veteran who has been competing at World and Olympic competitions since 2015 is completely pointless. Bo will probably wrestle about 25 college matches this year plus whatever get gets during the freestyle season. If he is still getting 50+ matches a year when he's 25 we can begin to talk.

[Truzzcat]

My view is that the biggest detriment to guys bodies is competition that involves a weight cuts. I constitue a weight cut as its tuesday I weigh in Friday and my weight is still 147 after practice. I would be shocked if Bo cut more than 1-2lbs during the high school season 65kg may be a bit more of a pull and 141 could be hard. Ultimately I think bo was blessed with a body that can withstand a lot. Keegan has been hurt most of the summer and I think you can argue that Melvins trajectory has been a bit flatter the last 12-18 months and he has also had injuries I would assume they all do the same amount of work in a given 24 hours or were up until a few months ago.

[BruceyB]

3 minutes ago, Truzzcat said:

My view is that the biggest detriment to guys bodies is competition that involves a weight cuts.

I would agree with this, and I think the detriment grows as you age. When you're younger, your body just does it's thing and you can deprive it of nutrients and the calories it needs and still feel relatively fine. Once you start getting older, you just can't get away with the same routine without it taking a much larger toll on how you feel. I would suspect it was how their aging bodies recovered from the cut that made 74kg so difficult for Burroughs and Dake and not necessarily that the cut got harder or worse.

Frequently pulling notable weight for competition is a separate conversation than simply competing in my mind though. Especially in the case of Bo where he has generally wrestled close to his walk-around weight or wrestled up in weight for high school competition.

I'm also probably just biased because for me, I "enjoyed" putting in the work at practice and was always a really hard worker, but I was always excited for competitions and loved tournaments where I would get to wrestle several matches in a day. Weeks with no actual competition and 6 days of practice were the absolute worst for me.

[Hammerlock3]

Braxton Amos is the cautionary tale for this in my mind.

But Bassett is only like 17 I think so he's fine.

[BruceyB]

26 minutes ago, Hammerlock3 said:

Braxton Amos is the cautionary tale for this in my mind.

Because he wrestled Greco and Freestyle at the age-group level..?

[Truzzcat]

1 hour ago, BruceyB said:

I would agree with this, and I think the detriment grows as you age. When you're younger, your body just does it's thing and you can deprive it of nutrients and the calories it needs and still feel relatively fine. Once you start getting older, you just can't get away with the same routine without it taking a much larger toll on how you feel. I would suspect it was how their aging bodies recovered from the cut that made 74kg so difficult for Burroughs and Dake and not necessarily that the cut got harder or worse.

Frequently pulling notable weight for competition is a separate conversation than simply competing in my mind though. Especially in the case of Bo where he has generally wrestled close to his walk-around weight or wrestled up in weight for high school competition.

I'm also probably just biased because for me, I "enjoyed" putting in the work at practice and was always a really hard worker, but I was always excited for competitions and loved tournaments where I would get to wrestle several matches in a day. Weeks with no actual competition and 6 days of practice were the absolute worst for me.

I completely agree on the competing front being far less taxing than practice if you remove the weight cutting variable.

[Hammerlock3]

8 minutes ago, BruceyB said:

Because he wrestled Greco and Freestyle at the age-group level..?

Yeah I just remember thinking he never stopped wrestling, obviously this is closer to when Gabe Dean went to Junior worlds and later said he just wasn't able to transition effectively back to folk very quickly (in the burnt sense not the technical sense), so that thought was in my head when Amos did both styles and proceeded to absolutely....whelm everyone.

But now that I look on it he's only been on 3 world teams, so I'm probably just holding on to an old idea....certainly if that was a mistakes he should have gotten over it by now.  

Edited Saturday at 07:04 PM by Hammerlock3

[BruceyB]

19 minutes ago, Hammerlock3 said:

Yeah I just remember thinking he never stopped wrestling, obviously this is closer to when Gabe Dean went to Junior worlds and later said he just wasn't able to transition effectively back to folk very quickly (in the burnt sense not the technical sense), so that thought was in my head when Amos did both styles and proceeded to absolutely....whelm everyone.

But now that I look on it he's only been on 3 world teams, so I'm probably just holding on to an old idea....certainly if that was a mistakes he should have gotten over it by now.  

Yeah, I feel like that was for a fairly short window. I also felt the same way about Snyder competing so much when he was young, and it's worked out to the complete opposite effect for him. I tend to just believe that more than anything, some people are born with bodies that unfortunately are more vulnerable to injury than others. Combine a bodies natural durability and the crapshoot that is injury luck, and you're going to get people that are frequently injured despite wrestling limited schedules and other guys who compete constantly but never seem to get hurt. 

[Truzzcat]

2 hours ago, BruceyB said:

Yeah, I feel like that was for a fairly short window. I also felt the same way about Snyder competing so much when he was young, and it's worked out to the complete opposite effect for him. I tend to just believe that more than anything, some people are born with bodies that unfortunately are more vulnerable to injury than others. Combine a bodies natural durability and the crapshoot that is injury luck, and you're going to get people that are frequently injured despite wrestling limited schedules and other guys who compete constantly but never seem to get hurt. 

Bringing this back to weight cutting, Snyder may have cut for 197 one season but I do not think he ever really cut weight. I do not know that I would have assumed Braxton cut weight until he was all of 260 this last year. 

[Hammerlock3]

23 minutes ago, Truzzcat said:

Bringing this back to weight cutting, Snyder may have cut for 197 one season but I do not think he ever really cut weight. I do not know that I would have assumed Braxton cut weight until he was all of 260 this last year. 

Snyder really cut to make 97. I think he was a HWY the whole time, normally I would transition to trashing tOSU for this mistake, but I think this call was only very obvious after seeing how effective he was a hwy....

[Truzzcat]

35 minutes ago, Hammerlock3 said:

Snyder really cut to make 97. I think he was a HWY the whole time, normally I would transition to trashing tOSU for this mistake, but I think this call was only very obvious after seeing how effective he was a hwy....

And this brings me back to is Justin Rademacher really kyle snyder lite but he keeps cutting to 197!

[WrestlingRash]

considering he is already 31 years old, he probably should dial it back a few notches. I already told @TNwrestling how this year would go. just watch. its all been done before. 

[Hammerlock3]

@BruceyBfeel free to do your angry person gif

[BruceyB]

Just now, Hammerlock3 said:

@BruceyBfeel free to do your angry person gif

We dun in'eract with some folk 'round here.

[ionel]

10 hours ago, BaldAt23 said:

In the past year he wrestled a full high school schedule, 3 world championships, and will go straight into a D1 NCAA season. This is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. He needs to wrestle less frequently or he is going to peak around 23 years old and have a ton of nagging injuries. Just my two cents, from someone who is a big fan. 

Too much, too often or just too fast?  

[Simpleman424]

31 minutes ago, ionel said:

Too much, too often or just too fast?  

- She

[jackwebster]

17 hours ago, BruceyB said:

I tend to just believe that more than anything, some people are born with bodies that unfortunately are more vulnerable to injury than others. 

Agree. DI wrestling grinds up most guy before their eligibility is out, but I wouldn't use this fact to draw conclusions about what will happen to freaks like Basset.

[Hammerlock3]

No way Robie and CO are dumb enough to burn him out.