"mr. kolat, this will be my 3rd year of wrestling for my high school.  I'm not that good yet.  I was wondering if it would be possible for your advice on wrestling from the referees position cause my weakest area of wrestling."  thanks dan

dan:

two parts to your problem. first part is practice which i'm sure you already know or you would not be taking the time to email me if you did not care about improving.  second, bottom wrestling is like riding a bike.  the reason i refer to riding a bike is because once you understand how to maintain the position on bottom it really does not change.  once i understood how to hold my base and seal off it never changed and I used if from little league all the way through college.  this is the exact reason why we have a riding time point in college because nobody can hold good guys down.

here are a few things you need to work on and then advance from here:

you need to work on being able to hold your base.  first moves off the whistle are great but when you don't win on the whistle you need to know how to hold your base, seal off, get hand control, and then get out.

base drill: get in a base and hold it for 30 sec. or 1 min go's where the top man can do whatever he wants to try and get you out of it.  this will force you to learn how to shift your hips against his pressure.  see video of base drill

sealing off drill:  top man attempts to put legs in, pull you out of your base, or attempts to tie up a wrist. your job is to keep the legs out (keep hips low, knees together, sometimes shifting away from him) and keep your wrist free.  see video of sealing off drill

capturing hand control:  work on shoving your opponents hands from under your arms to the outside of your hips and keeping control of his wrist without getting your wrist tied up.  make sure to keep your elbows tight to your body.

once you feel you have this then you add your stand-up, sit-out, or whatever else you like.

best of luck 

cary

I 'sit around' these days about 10 times more than I did when I was wrestling. Back then, I had nothing but energy. Now, all I want to do is take a nap. By any standard, besides morbid obesity, I sit around a lot! I'm not particularly lazy or unmotivated or anything like that, i'm just hurt.....physically, I HURT! How did that happen? It's so clear to me now, but when these injuries were setting in....during the H.S and college years...when I felt nearly invincible, the power of denial and the visions of being the toughest, got me over many obstacles but, in retrospect also got me interpreting some real warning signs of injury as 'just another' mental obstacle.

A list, or a bunch of stories, is just going to get me reminiscing and rambling, and boring everyone but myself, but a "blog" about injuries, in my case, will be plenty lengthy without that. The long and short of it is, I have had 13 operations...6 Knee, 2 shoulder, 3 lower back, 1 neck, and 1 even on my nose. Add to that, one (still untreated) dislocated elbow from an MMA fight, and you've got me, camped out here in an oversized recliner telling you to be more careful. If you only knew how funny that is to me. It's a very very sharp contrast to how I used to be.

Wrestling itself, was not to blame, Alan F. was. I was injury prone and reckless from the time I was born. I inhaled tomato poison in the garage at about 2 years old, dropped a giant old time RCA stereo on my head when I was about 4, impaled myself on a cupboard handle climbing for oatmeal cookies a few years later and nearly cut my head off on a clothesline jumping my BMX bike. So, that was a little list...but the gist of it is that I was always risky and injury-prone at the same time and that is a mix of 'gas and fire'. There was something I subconsciously thought that was 'cool' and 'funny' about getting a little injured or doing a crazy stunt, but that's how some kid's minds work. The show Jackass comes to mind. I would never dare say I could have done THOSE crazy stunts, but if those were my friends growing up, honestly who knows? I was getting injured turning normally low risk activities like riding a bike or getting a cookie into high risk things.

Well, then there's the other side of getting injured, where I wasn't too successful either. When your doing something inherently risky, like contact sports, and you're trying to minimize injury to zero so you can perform at your best. I think about Bo Jackson from time to time. His hip injury didn't look that serious, unlike Joe Theisman's lower leg injury but, either way, each of their careers were either over or never the same. However, as far as timing in Bo J.'s carreer is concerned....about 3 years into his NFL & MLB career vs. about 14 years into Theisman's career, his injury came at a time that left us all wondering how great he would have been had he played a lengthy career. Both injuries were purely from the game. Nothing malicious or foolish about them. It's just that some people's number just comes up sometimes and the end result is a body part that can't perform quite the same anymore.

Injuries started pretty early for me and I felt like I was up against a wall. I could give in to the pain and miss practices and maybe never get the opportunities to reach the higher levels of our sport. Or, should I push through again and again and ignore pain for better or worse, until I either got to the top or just had no other choice but to quit. Of course, you can have both ultimate glory and minimal long-term pain, which many athletes do accomplish. That's what I want for you, so that's why I'm writing.

A sports career that is only a memory can happen all at once, or as a sum of smaller injuries. Theisman and Bo Jackson are good examples of sudden serious career altering or ending injuries. And a good example of the second way is athletes who have to give up their sport after something like too many concussions, which I'll note, must be incredibly frustrating to the athlete, because their body can be 100% and they have to give up the dreams and lifestyle and the excitement anyway. My physical state at present was the sum of smaller "nagging"-injuries with some "doozies" mixed in. I suppose that's a common "mix".

Just like I remember a State Championship or winning NCAA's, I remember equally as vividly my first "stinger" (neck injury) during the Sectional finals freshman year of high school, my A/C joint shoulder injury at the Sunkist Open, and most definitely dislocating my elbow MMA fighting in Japan...I think, simply forgetting to tap out or maybe thinking I was strong enough to keep my arm bent. Who knows???

Those are the most serious 'one-shot' type injury moments, but I also remember the daily nagging neck pain that the "stingers" brought on...the horrible lower back spasms that ultimately I'm sure played a role in my three lower back surgeries and constantly working on my range of motion of my knees, only to slowly lose more and more range. I'm certainly not trying to put a pity party for me together, so the question that matters is...How did I get there? and How can I help the next guy to NOT get there?

The answers to both questions are the same:::

The way I see it, the physical part of wrestling (and many sports) has 4 parts: Technique (skill), Strength, Conditioning....and Flexibility. The trick is to improve in all 4 areas over time. Considering the possibility that sometimes improvement in one area can hold back or reverse progress in another area. For instance, the highly improved Technician, may lack Conditioning, due to a lack of available time for more cardio-type training, and vice versa.

For myself, the most common give and take scenario is my training was my Flexibility being sacrificed for Strength. I was very excited to begin weight training when I was about 13 and I attacked the weight room with everything I had.....completely ignoring my stretching routine for about 3 consecutive years. By that time I had neck stingers and short-term 'crippling' lower and middle back spasms coming on more frequently. And, of course, my first (of 6) cartilage tear operation.

To make a very long story short, physical limitations imposed by the 'real' injuries closed in over time. Hindsight of course is 20/20, but looking back, I think I trained myself to reinterpret REAL injury pain as mental weakness for a 1000 reasons, but mostly for fear of sitting out of practice or competition and losing my momentum of rising up through the ranks.

Competing is over for me, but I think about it sometimes still. Would I have had less success and missed many more opportunities if I would have spent more time off the mat getting healthy? Would I have possibly had more success? Would I have ever developed the necessary mental toughness if I gave in to too many injuries? Should I have been even tougher..i.e., am I just being whiny? Who knows??? The end result is what it is, and if my physical state is any indication of how hard I pushed it, then I did just fine...cuz I'm in pain!!

I think it's just good to realize that improvement along those four areas has it's parts that compliment each other and that also contradict each other. I'll just call it a delicate balancing act that you keep in mind and work on as you go along in your training and as you instruct others on their training.

In reality, you will not participate in physical sports for any length of time without some lingering injuries, but where is the threshold between a fair sacrifice and a stone cold regret. You are pushing your joints and tendons and ligaments more than you otherwise would and just like anything you push to the limit, it just won't last as long. Indy Cars, with their expert craftsmanship, probably don't race at full speed for a quater of a million miles. or even run that long, like a good old reliable pickup or something. But, there is no victory lap for Grandpa's '72 whatever truck.

You've got yourself and the people close to you to help decide things like, Is an injury hampering you even though you are giving your best effort?, or would your best effort to overcome the pain be the greatest move you ever made.

For me, I'm a little sad that I haven't been able to run full speed without pulling a hamstring or calf muscle for the last ten years...or that I have days at a time where my back hurts terribly and makes me walk crooked for no reason at all, but I'm not that sad. I gave what I had to give to get what I got. Maybe I miscalculated at times and maybe I calculated with precision at times too, but it's over now. All I can do is share my experience with you and let you make the decisions.

It's a tricky equation, but it's your equation to master. Be brave but take care of yourself too.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Alan Fried is a native of Ohio wrestling for St. Edwards and NCAA Champion for Oklahoma State University

My Coach’s Practices Hold Me Back: 

The only coaches that ever held me back were the ones who gave those long-winded speeches during practice once my sweat was rolling.  Most coaches are smart enough to give the speech prior to the start of practice or at the end.  This is a pretty common theme among the better wrestlers, the parents of the wrestlers, or anyone who is looking for some type of excuse.  No wrestler who wants to be the best will let someone get in their way and this excuse usually comes from those who do not give their best performance in practice on a regular basis.  I have never witnessed a coach stop anyone from doing more than what was asked in practice.  My example is simple, when your coach tells the team to perform ten takedowns, do you do them with perfection in the least amount of time and then wait for the group?  Or, do you do them with perfection in the least amount of time and then continue to go waiting for the other wrestlers to finish, getting extra repetitions in?  I would bet guys like John Smith (Head Coach of Oklahoma State University), Cael Sanderson (Head Coach of Penn State University), and Tom Brands (Head Coach of Iowa University) never screamed at a guy for going longer or harder than what was required.  You can always do more than what is asked instead of blame a practice on the coach.  When a coach is running practice he has to look at the group as a whole not as an individual, therefore; the individual side of the practice is up to you.  You can blame the coach for holding you back or you can do what the best have done and find a way to get what you need out of any practice.

He Has God Given Talent:

This bothers me more than any excuse because I have always considered this to be the weak man’s excuse.  “Well that guy has such God given talent it’s ok that I lost.”  I find it hard to believe that God is setting some of us for pure success in the sports world and others are doomed to be the ones in the middle or at the bottom.  Average wrestlers, average coaches, and protective parents will pull this out to make themselves feel better.  Tiger Woods did not get that golf stroke from God, he got it from his father putting time into him and his inner drive to perform the best drive time after time.  John Smith never won the Jr. National freestyle title but went on to become our best freestyle wrestler of all time.  He achieved this because he wanted to be the best and it finally happen for him his junior year in college and then five more times after that because of his work ethic and his desire to catch those ahead of him.  I believe we all enter the wrestling world with something above average but it takes more than just one aspect to win in the sport of wrestling or any other sport.  God has given us one thing that does decide if you will be successful in wrestling or any other sport and that is your brain.  You can either tell yourself some excuse or tell yourself to get your head in it and find a way to beat the guy in front of you! 

I Don’t Have Any Partners That Can Push Me:

Congratulations and welcome to the club because this is a good problem to have.  If you cant find anyone in your room that can push you then get on the phone, get in a car, or find an Adam Machine (great teaching tool) because if you are that good then you are doing the right things, but I always found partners.  The best will seek out the best and find each other and if you really want to find a partner, you will.  People always ask me what I did for partners in high school:

1. Do you know who the best are?
2. Get the phone number of that person.
3. Call them and say I’m coming to train with you.
4. Problem solved!

Problem, if you think people should be calling you and you wait on other people you are losing days of valuable time that could be spent training.  Dave Schultz is probably the best example of someone who never put himself above anyone! He was willing to train, talk with, and learn from anyone.  Dave never let pride or an elitist attitude stop him in his pursuit to be the best.  And that is why Dave will long be remembered as one of the US’s greatest wrestlers of all time.

The List Could Go On:

This list of excuses is endless, but the real problem is your inability to be a self-motivated individual.  Self-motivated individuals will find a way to train no matter what the obstacles, they get the job done. Many of the top wrestlers that I competed with on World Teams never let injuries, travel delays, partners, or anything else that might arise hold them back.  One time we got delayed traveling overseas to Europe and the next flight would just get us there in time for weigh-ins but not enough time to get our weight off.  Our gear was in the plane, so as people walked through the airport they saw 20 guys in street clothes clearing ties, pummeling, squatting, and do anything they could to make the weight.  One guy was over so much that he needed his plastics so he went into the bathroom pulled out the garbage bag and dumped the trash into one of the bathroom stalls.  He then turned the bag inside out and punched holes into it for his head and arms.  He didn’t have the plastics he needed to make the weight so he found a set (I was laughing my A#$ off)!  Not one guy (besides the heavy weight who kept time for us) was sitting there saying, “Well it’s not our fault the plane got delayed, and we tried.”  The wall was the delay and we all found a way to get around it! Regardless of how ridiculous we might have looked and smelled when we finally left. No excuses. We got it done.

If you were deserted in no mans land, you would do anything it took to survive.  Self-motivated athletes will do whatever it takes to succeed! Stop looking for excuses.  Start taking responsibility.


Copyright © 2008 Kolat.com

KOLAT BACKFLIP



I have been asked this question at least a thousand times now, “how did you come up with a back flip defense to a single leg?”  I like to think I was creative in all aspects of my wrestling especially on my single leg defense, but the truth is I stole the back flip from someone else.  I guess I get the credit for move since the age of youtube but seeing the move live myself was highly impressive.

My sophomore year in high school I went and competed in the Midlands Tournament at Northwestern University.  During that event, I was in the stands watching two well-put together wrestlers get after each other.  They were 142lb I think and were really brawling it out.  One of the wrestlers was Towsend Saunders of ASU, who would later go on to take a silver medal in the 1996 Olympic games.  The other and I just learned his name from one of my members about a year ago was Rich Bailey of Cal-Bakersfield.

Now, I’m watching this match unfold and finally Towsend gets a single leg on Bailey and has it up in the air.  Bailey all of the sudden hits probably the most perfect back flip I have ever seen and slides right down to Towsend’s ankles.  I jumped out of my seat when he hit the counter but to my amazement nobody else seemed to be impressed by what just happened.  Being a high school kid at a prestigious event surrounded by college wrestlers who probably wanted to tear my head off, I tried to play it off acting cool and sat back down in my seat.

The position was finally stalemated and Bailey had saved himself from giving up the takedown.  The match continues and probably about a minute later (it’s been a long time ago) Saunders once again has Bailey hopping around on one foot.  Seeing it done once was amazing to me but Bailey hit the flip a second time in the same match.  He gave me and instant replay that I will never forget!

I have always had a passion for technique and hitting the unusual or the unthinkable so the counter Bailey left imprinted in my mind stuck with me.  I never practiced the back flip, it wasn’t about could I do the move since I was able hit a back flip easily, it was more about did I have the guts to flip upside down and not break my neck in the process.

We had a tri-meet about two weeks later my sophomore season, which was when I first hit the back flip during a match.  The next time I hit the flip was my senior year in the state finals, which is the one many of you have viewed on youtube.  The term “Kolat Flip” is used a lot now when referring to that move but now you know the truth; I stole the move from Rich Bailey back in 1990.

I guess my question to Rich is did he create the move or did he steal it?

Copyright © 2008 Kolat.com

Ayo Technology!

I was asked to "blog". To "blog" is not something anyone would have asked me 10 years ago, about the same span of time since I've wrestled my last match. But, the blog and the tweet and the facebook poke, etc. are things that have come about from our technologically dominated lives....mainly the internet. Which, to me, is one of the greatest inventions in history b/c it makes communicating and getting information a zillion times easier than ever.

These days, technology runs my life, I think, more than most. I am a trader now. You know, the stock market, pork bellies, gold etc. etc.. You might have seen those madmen on CNBC or something screaming at the top of their lungs. I'm one of them, but in our modern age I get to do my trading from an office that's as quiet as a library most of time. At work, I stare at 5 computer screens all day long and click a mouse to enter and exit trades. As serious as the business is, it couldn't look more like I was playing a video game..Then, I come home, and well, look at me now, for example....I'm on the internet "blogging".

I want to brief, thorough and helpful. Only moments ago, I was watching videos on the internet to figure out something I was trying to teach myself in music and that's when it came to me how I can help any young wrestler or coach with just a few words of advice.

I want to tell a very short background story. Early in high school I somehow got my hands on a few videocassettes of international wrestling. All the best guys in the world were on the tapes. And, to me, they were priceless. I have never been a sports fan, and that includes wrestling. I don't watch sports on t.v. but a couple times a year and I frequently turn down tickets to Cubs games, etc.. But, I watched those wrestling videos over and over and over again. I got better at wrestling by watching how amazing someone could really become. It raised my standards technically, and got my imagination going too. Just aiming to be at that level (on the videotapes), and knowing what that level actually looked like, gave me such an advantage.

If you're into acting, let's say, or music, or mainstream sports for that matter (NFL, NBA etc.) you've had full and instant access to see or hear the very best the world has ever seen at any time you want. LeBron's on T.V. 100 nights a year...The radio (and internet) play music and movies to no end. But, if you were me in 1987 and you really wanted to watch someone like 8x world champion Sergey Belaglazov compete, you were out of luck. There was just no access to it. Until I got those tapes, I was left to only wonder what the "Big Leagues" were like in my sport and that was not a good thing.

Now, with the internet, any one of you wrestlers or coaches can have the same exact matches I watched and 1000 others playing for you inside of a half a minute, without moving an inch from where you are right now! That's is an INCREDIBLE fact, I think.

I would never tell anyone to do anything, because what works for one person, doesn't for another, and I don't know who it is reading this, but if you think it might help, then get on the internet and watch some of the world level competition.

You don't have to wonder, like I did when I was a kid, what the very best wrestlers the world has ever seen are like when they compete. You don't have to wonder what would work against the best and you do get see what is really possible.

Alan Fried is a native of Ohio wrestling for St. Edwards and NCAA Champion for Oklahoma State University