wrestle87

This year was extremely sumo-y. Obviously coaches, teams and styles will adapt to aim for low hanging fruit, it has really judo-fied wrestling a lot in terms of the start stop nature. Not a good thing. Wrestlers who can push well can get into medal matches, which is dumb. Rules now mandate points be put on the board, and they get there, but the product is getting diluted. They really need to bring back ties and overtime. Criteria blows.

There is no question our leg attacks were nowhere to be found when they really mattered, which is baffling. Leg attacks are almost always the difference maker for US wrestlers, we typically navigate and manage opponents’ entire bodies less well, and just make up for it by picking a limb and blasting through it or ripping it off. Not this year.

The personality makeup it takes to be a good amateur wrestler is polar opposite to what it takes to be a good pro wrestler. The value systems and behavior requirements are almost entirely mutually exclusive. The internal cultures if both activities are almost 180 degrees from one another. Besides sharing the name “wrestling”, they have a limited amount of common ground. Showboating, brash, arrogant—>great pro wrestler Humble, selfless, deferential —>amateur wrestler. Football players would do a much better job as pro wrestlers. Also, just to make the point completely, bobby steveson is still wrestling, gable isn’t. Wrestling pedigree doesn’t matter. It is performance art, you have to love being in front of people, that is opposite to the personality of most wrestlers. Best point of reference for the difference is the Ric Flair 30 for 30.

I think it's also smart if we start actually referencing regions. When we talk about "Russians", 99% of the time, we are talking about wrestlers from the Caucasus region.

If brooks and dake had won their weights it would have been an enormous indictment of weightlifting.

Game recognize game clearly

Makes a ton of sense, snyder’s style used to be much more tervel-y. NLWC has tried to tell him ankle picks are the only way to the promised land, and frankly they have not served him well. He’s not built like bo or david, and that style is very body type dependent.

You are spot on about snyder, he did his best wrestling under Tom Ryan no doubt.

I don’t like bashing folkstyle, because it is a lot of fun, but there is no denying that having our best wrestling minds largely devoted to a completely different skillset definitely limits our ability as a country to innovate within the international skillset. I really loved Jamalov pulling out a cradle from a cross body ride, that was super unexpected.

Wasn’t there a similar situation a few cycles back with a sprinter from South Africa who had something going on at a chromosomal level?

This 100%. It seemed like somebody fell in love with Iran’s tactics and decided that was the way for the entire team to wrestle. The amount of time guys spent trying to push from a short offense underhook was rather remarkable.

Got any answers as to why we had a bad tournament in a weakened field? Or just want to “lol c’mon” and leave it at that? RBY-down artificially low, weight cut killed him. And you’re proving my point, Amine and Parris come from the same room, but they don’t go through the same process. Odds on that this is a USAW issue of some sort. Don’t know what it is, but to have athletes coming from 3 rooms all look off, where are the commonalities for their process leading up? Our guys usually wrestle the way seabass and amine did, they didn’t this time. These tournaments happen once every 4 years. Each weight class within the US has 20+ dudes putting their lives on hold for years just to aim at these few days of wrestling. Their effort and investment demand the respect of a few questions and raised eyebrows when the entire team looks off, considering it has been decades since we last failed to bring home at least one men’s gold. Not to mention, if we want to actually keep good wrestlers in the US system, we need to be showing out. We will keep losing more talent to dual citizenship otherwise.

This question is getting at our performance on the mat ultimately. Rather than asking if we lift too much, the missing imbalances we really are talking about are gymnastic ability and access to flexibility. This is something that HAS worked its way into grassroots programming, but we could definitely benefit from the body control gymnastic training that is the core of moving up the national ladder in most state-run athletic programs (ie China and Russia). It is undeniably the best foundation for success in a sport like wrestling.

I'm getting the impression that the people having this discussion have never spent time in a college room. The notion that wrestling doesn't make you stronger is insane.

Obviously that's not 100% the case. If it were so...then nobody in any weight class sport would bother cutting weight.

I don't disagree about the optimal combination part. The wild thing for us is that no, we didn't catabolize anything away. Most of the dudes who ran westside settled at a different physical set point (and D3, I never ran gear, I don't know about the other tbh though). For my whole wrestling career high 180's was my natural set point. That year, it was high 190's. Made the cut to 174 an absolute blast. I wasn't the only one. This sort of thing would have been way better.

This is an awful lot of nonsense. Dake, and snyder, and all these other guys built their muscle by wrestling monsters. Dake is a beast bc he used to rag doll gabe dean...and oh btw, genetics. Barbells build barbell strength, wrestling builds wrestling strength, they are completely different neurological patterns. Why do you think wrestlers are always able to manhandle the random lineman who shows up and asks to scrap. The lineman have ENORMOUS barbell numbers, they have zero grappling strength. America and American performance has been distracted by bodybuilding and powerlifting for a long time. Our college team ran westside in the offseason. We all got enormous...and guess what...all that meant was that we had harder cuts the next year. Nobody was magically able to outmuscle guys in a new way because they spent time with their hands on a bar. NOW...there were other guys who just went and spent their entire summers wrestling and in wrestling practices. Guess which guys came back stronger and just impossible to handle? Wrestling is as unique a phyiscal activity as swimming, the systemic neurological adaptations are key to success, refined patterning for real touch in wrestling moves, etc. Wrestling strength comes from wrestling, there's no way around it. If anything, we as a team could probably use better chemists. Whatever cycles we were running didn't get it done.

For the men’s side, it’s obvious there are elite levels to international wrestling, and we simply aren’t on them. It has been a long time since we looked that one dimensional and unmotivated. It also clearly was a US team thing, seabass looked amazing, and Myles Amine brought pressure with no quit.

Came here to say exactly this, passivity sucks because it arbitrarily allows refs to decide who they want to tip the scales in favor of. It’s an open window to legal corruption in the sport.

Anybody who hasn’t heard much about concussions should go ask Helen about it…

It sounds like Spencer is done(read the Flo interview he gave), his heart isn’t in the sport anymore, really can’t blame him, maybe Cael and crew can help him rediscover joy in the process. Snyder looked tired, kinda all set and ready to move on. Dake…will be 37 by next cycle, and we have 99% just seen the end of Zain Retherford’s career. We are going to be starting more from scratch than we think after this cycle. We haven’t heard it yet, but this was quite possibly the end of the boom decade+ that JB started in London. Who is in position to fill those spots?

“It” is having freestyle be the entire focus of training throughout a career.

Well, that won’t be happening.

Something was off, no doubt, hard to say if it was weight, mindset, or what. Fire was not present in its usual abundance that’s for sure. Maybe the whole team got ‘vid, I really don’t know. But it was bad. And to be clear, this is not about results. Of all US guys I’d say Myles Amine and Seabass came most ready to rumble. For me, it’s not about the placements, it’s about the “yeah I’ll just hang in an underhook short offense position and not throw caution to the wind to at least attempt to get a victory.” Really looked like guys just didn’t care, or they were burnt out, or something. I don’t know what it was, but I know what it looks like, and feels like, to be burnt out or not fully there for your matches.

People tren-ble in his presence. His style is…dianabolic. He is Anavar and away the best at his weight…