Thinking Outside the Gym

When Chris Spealler was a wrestler at Lock Haven University he spent a summer at a youth camp that had limited exercise equipment. So he made up his own workouts.

"It was brutal, but it was one of the things I found myself falling back on in my workouts time and again," says Spealler, who now owns CrossFit Park City in Park City, Utah. Incorporating workouts that don’t rely on the usual gym equipment or exercises can be a great addition to a training regime, he notes. Most of his non-traditional workouts, he notes, can be completed in roughly seven to 15 minutes.

"They are high intensity and that’s incredibly similar to the demands wrestlers see out on the mat," says Spealler.

Wrestlers of all ages can benefit from pushing their workout routine outside the gym. Youth and high school wrestlers don't always have access to a weight room or fitness center. So being able to maintain your fitness level without those resources can be key to staying competitive. Incorporating simple exercises, like lunges and overhead squats, or inexpensive equipment, like medicine balls or and sandbags, in a workout doesn’t require a lot of space or money, so most young wrestlers can employ them at home easily. What’s more, these non-traditional methods can keep your routine out of falling into a rut.

"Mixing and matching these movements and equipment with some of the simple drills you do in wrestling practice can make for a great training session and change of pace for coach and athlete," says Spealler. 

Dustin Myers, strength and conditioning coach for the Ohio Regional Training Center at Ohio State, agrees. He works closely with senior-level competitors like Reece Humphrey, Kyle Snyder and Logan Stieber, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes wrestling team, which won the 2015 NCAA Division I national championship. As part of his preseason training routine for wrestlers, Myers sets aside one day a week as "game day," when team members play soccer, handball, or dodgeball, among other activities. To finish off those workouts, the team takes on strongman-style challenges like tug of war and sled races.

"The guys love it and really compete hard, sprinting around like mad," says Myers. “The wrestling season is a grind and it's hard to keep athletes from getting burned out or over-trained by the end of the season. One of the keys to keeping their workouts fresh and unique.”

Myers notes that Humphrey, a three-time USA World Team member, is a master at finding ways to incorporate non-traditional strength and conditioning methods into his daily workouts. For example, after an intense weight training session, Humphrey may spend 30 minutes doing gymnastic-type movements, like walking on his hands or completing tricks on the chin-up bar. "It’s fun and gets competitive as we are always trying to one-up each other," Myers says. "Body weight calisthenics are a great way to work on balance, coordination, and core strength." And to get a good sweat and work on flexibility, the pair also take classes at a local Bikram Hot Yoga studio.

In the offseason, Myers works closely with high school wrestlers. A couple of days each month he has them go to a local park and run hills or climb trees, or head to a nearby pool to swim laps (the intensity is cranked up by creating team-oriented races). They also practice hand-fighting in the water.

Jackie Berube-Black, a silver medalist at the 1996 World Wrestling Championships, is a USA Weightlifting certified coach and owner and head strength and conditioning coach at Pinnacle Weightlifting and Sports Performance in Colorado Springs. And while her training focus is on traditional strength-training exercises, she is sure to incorporate non-traditional ones as well, like rope climbs, sled pulls, and kettlebells.

"Training with kettlebells builds muscular endurance, promotes athleticism, flexibility, coordination, balance, and strengthens the entire posterior chain while building mental toughness," says Berube-Black. A former college gymnast, she also likes to include basic tumbling drills, handstands, and ring work as part of a well-rounded training regimen.

"Gymnastics movements can be a great tool for training, they help develop body awareness and body control, core strength and promote good flexibility," says Berube-Black. "Using gymnastics movements as a warm up really helped me focus on my balance and body awareness, which really came in handy when I was fending off an attack."  

There is no one-size-fits-all strength and conditioning program. The key is to keep finding new ways to challenge yourself, says Brandon Paulson, a 1996 Olympic silver medalist in Greco-Roman and co-owner of PINnacle Wrestling, a youth/high school wrestling club and training facility in Shoreview, Minnesota. And since practice and competition schedules are often interrupted during holiday season,this is a great time of year to start trying non-traditional training methods that can pay dividends come end-of-season tournament time.

"Wrestling is a lifestyle and it is important to have a positive attitude towards eating healthy and getting workouts in," says Paulson. " No matter what it is, find the time to get that workout in, conventional or unconventional. I always think it is important to do something hard. Make up a workout yourself that you know will be hard to accomplish and then do it."