Old school vs. New school of training and teaching


Cary, I would like your thought on "OLD SCHOOL VS. NEW SCHOOL. I've been in wrestling for over 40 years. I see more and more coaches teaching newer more technical moves to wrestlers with 5 or less years in the sport. My thoughts are I'd rather see my wrestler "perfect" 5 or 6 basic moves, singles, doubles, high crotch, sit backs, stand ups, etc then to just work on 15 moves and see them doing them sloppy and missing them. My method of training has been to drill, drill, drill till you perfect it then to just keep trying all these moves and not perfecting most. My high school coach was one of Dan Gables in the Olympics in 72. He coached like Dan and that has been my method of training. I have been fortunate with following my coaches and Dans to have a 85% winning percentage as head coach. I value your thoughts on this. Thank you. Mike Denny

Great Question

This is happening in all sports at the youth level. I expect wrestling to resist the most because of so many Gablers in the sport. Its fundamentals versus flash. The modern creative types like flash and the fundamentalists like tradition and pure sport. I think both have a place but obviously the fundamentals need taught and mastered first. I also think that flash and creativity can keep a kid in the room versus quiting. As all coaches know, every kid has a place on the learning spectrum and some learn through strict fundamentals and some learn through a little flash or creativity. At best I would focus on on the fundamentals 80% of the time and then add some creativity by broadening the number of moves they learn. I would try to to take the ten periphial moves and offer them as an option for each kid to learn, let them pick one or two moves to work on beyond the five or sixe basic moves.If you see a kid handle more moves than five or six, let them expand like Cary. If not, take them back to the five or six moves. It is all about incremental and planed exploration and Cary was a master at that. What is perfect for each kid is different to some degree. Cary worked on a number of moves because he had that flexible knee where most kids would waste their time with any move like that. Just like in a classroom, if you design every kid to learn like the average, then you get a group of average kids. If the kid can handle more than average, then let them go like Cary did. At some point, I would bet that Gable and Cary would argue that there is a point of diminishing returns on how many moves you should and can learn. I would also bet that wrestlers like John Smith, Cael Sanderson, Kerry McCoy, and Stephen Neil will all tell you some variation of the same.