Wrestling Coaches Who Overuse Repetitive Drilling are Making a Mistake
There are three types of practice methods wrestling coaches widely use to teach skills in youth and high school wrestling:
- Repetitive drilling
- Video review
- Structured play
However, by far, repetitive drilling is the method that nearly all wrestling coaches not only prefer but rely on almost exclusively. This is a mistake.
Youth and high school wrestling coaches tend to be very rigid in their approach to practice. Moreover, coaches tend to coach the same way their coaches coached them. This deters innovation and slows the advancement in coaching methods. This also creates a disadvantage for those wrestlers who learn better through the other two methods.
Video review and structured play are often the best two ways to help a wrestler improve, particularly younger wrestlers who lack focus or bore quickly. Therefore, coaches would be wise to use all three of these methods so they can reach everyone on their team
In short, coaches must work as detectives to discover what makes each of their wrestler’s tick. Then find ways to nurture that nature by emphasizing the methods that work best. Doing things the way they’ve always been done is unquestionably taking the easy way out. What’s more, easy and wrestling are two words that don’t belong together.