YARYGIN BLOG: First Yarygin weigh-ins and trivia question answers
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by Bill Zadick
Thursday, January 22 - A very exciting day today for Team USA at the Yarygin Grand Prix! We had three athletes weigh in late this afternoon: Tony Ramos, Matt McDonough and Andrew Howe.
We were up early getting started with workouts hitting the sauna around 9 a.m. Ramos lost a few pounds and settled down to relax until the afternoon workout. The second workout followed up at 1 p.m., with all three getting a good warm-up, some light work and, letting the sweat roll until they were all on weight.
McDonough can really sweat a…lot! After a short work out (less than an hour) his gear sounded like the sloshing of a washing machine when he was walking. Howe was down in no time flat like the machine that is Andrew Howe! They all finished with plenty of time to shower, relax and head to the venue for med-check. The guys did a great job getting their weights down like professionals which makes it nice on us coaches. It’s one part of our sport that is completely in our control and makes a tremendous difference in performance when done properly!
We, at USA Wrestling, have great resources with our partners on our High Performance Team at the USOC and one of those is Jenn Gibson, our Sport Dietician. Her help, educating our athletes and staff, has been a bonus for our National Team! We left the hotel at 3:30 pm headed to the venue carrying plenty of water, sports drinks and light nutrition to replenish after stepping on the scales. It doesn’t matter where in the world or at what age/skill level of competition, the weigh-in and weigh-in room is always a mad house and today was no different!
After our guys weighed in and the rush settled down, I took a picture thinking you might like to see how the craziness here is not any different than the craziness you’ve experienced at most wrestling tournaments. Everyone there is anxious to get on the scale and get some fluid back in their bodies. At the same time there is a lot of posturing and body language as competitors size each other up. I’m sure there is a psychology book out there explaining it all very scientifically. I can tell you that at a world-level tournament as prestigious as this, everyone knows what’s going on. Who is the baddest dude in the room? I, along with everyone else, am looking forward to finding out!
Tomorrow’s wrestling starts at 10 a.m. and Team USA will be ready to roll. We have three guys, Brent Metcalf, Jimmy Kennedy and Aaron Pico, all weighing in for day two’s competition at 65 kg. Of course, these are very highly-anticipated and exciting potential match ups, not to mention the international competitors who will be here. Definitely keep your dials right where they are for this.
There is a webcast that you can check out here: http://www. krascsp.ru/online-yariguin-2015. Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is 12 hours ahead of U.S. EST and 15 from U.S. PST so set your alarms and make the popcorn before you go to bed…it's Hysteria in Siberia!
Always, going for gold-s!
Bill Zadick
National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
Answers to the discussion question – What Americans have won either the Yarygin Grand Prix or the Tbilisi Tournament?
Click here if you want to see the answer
Wednesday, January 21 - We’ve had another great day in preparation for the Yarygin here in Krasnoyarsk. Two good workouts: one light to start blood pumping and another to get some good repetitions and continue building positive muscle memory. Everything this week is about being sharp and crisp technically while keeping energy levels high.
With three of our eight men weighing in tomorrow, our training starts to break into more individually specific training for each athlete’s needs. For the guys starting on the second and third days, training is still on the mats. It’s business as usual, as we are continuing to sharpen. This afternoon, while we had a few guys working on weight management, a few others played with some situations on the mats. After training, we had a short sauna and then walked back to the hotel for some dinner. The walk is nice and the cool air feels refreshing after a good day.
Tomorrow will be a very busy day with three athletes weighing-in (57-Ramos, McDonough and, 74-Howe) and five others training. Between Coaches Jeff Buxton, Valentin Kalika and myself, we will assign each to oversee athletes at different locations through the day at the training hall, the hotel and the competition venue where weigh-ins are held.
Team Leader ‘Pauli’ Kieblesz has helped coordinate a bus for transportation to and from weigh-ins, as well as, picked up some of the food for after weigh-in recovery meal. Dr. Clearfield is doing a good job keeping everyone moving and healthy. Our official, Pete Kuisle, will attend the rules clinic and inform us of the latest interpretations. We have a great group of folks working together… a well-oiled machine!
It’s getting very close to the exciting part of the trip where we get see it all shake down! I saw 2x World Champion Victor Lebedev (57kg RUS) getting his weight down. I look forward to Ramos and McDonough in the final vs each other so, of course, one of these guys will have to take him out…and that’s why we love to hear the first whistle!
There are many other great competitors around both current and from previous years. I spoke with Buvaysar Saitiev, one of the all-time greats and an exciting wrestler to watch. I believe I’m one year older than he however, he’s wearing a few more grey hairs! Pauli got a picture of the group, which is shown above.
P.S. Anyone have an answer on yesterday’s wrestling trivia? Name the U.S. champions at the Tbilisi Tournament and the Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix. If you want to give your guess, post it at the bottom of the article. Stay tuned!
All the way and then some!
Bill Zadick
National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
Tuesday, January 20 – Today, our second full day in country, we are looking good and everyone is reporting to feel rested. Our team did two workouts today at 10 am and 4 pm; morning in our own gym with one mat and afternoon with the crowd in the big gym with six mats.
Most of the guys warmed up and drilled with each other a bit to get their bodies moving and then grabbed a hold of one of the many foreign training partners. It’s quite fun as a coach to watch our team mixing it up with international partners in these practices. It becomes a great learning experience for each of them to develop a “feel” for different skills and styles. A broad spectrum of knowledge generally promotes better understand and faster growth as an athlete. Most of our guys wrestled situations and some sparring goes. Besides, wrestling a lot of matches in this crowded space is not only improbable but dangerous for injuries.
Between practices, we had a lot of busy work to get done today. Team leader Paul Kieblesz took care of our credentialing while we also tracked down laundry service and reserved sauna times for tomorrow. We’ve arranged for the laundry to be done in the hotel for a few rubles per kilo of clothing. This will work out conveniently and save everyone from doing laundry in their bathroom sinks, as well as keeping our rooms from smelling like an old hamper (a familiar odor for most wrestlers hotel rooms)!
As we get closer to the first weigh-in, our training will be much more individually focused. The peaking process is focused on sharpening mind and body more each day, not overly taxing yourself and, helping manage weight to ease recovery and maximize performance in competition. We are still a few days out of the first weigh-in. However, the excitement is building in each of our guys!
After dinner this evening, Coach Buxton, official Pete Kuisle and I walked around the courtyard to look at the ice sculptures; what we found was a really cool ice carnival. There are many ice sculpture depicting tales and legends from Russian folklore, ice jungle gym type structures. However, the most popular seemed to be the ice slides. There are a couple but one in particular, the steepest and fastest, of course, was the kids’ favorite. I was my favorite too, although I haven't embarrassed myself on that… yet!
Another day closer to the great Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix! As I spoke in an earlier post, the Yarygin is annually the premier freestyle competition outside the World Championships and Olympic Games. Before the Yarygin and during the former Soviet Union era the premier event was in Tbilisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic - now its own country - to the south of Moscow in the Caucasaus Mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas. Combining the country of Georgia with the Russian states of Ossetia, Dagestan and, Chechnya makes up the 'fertile crescent' of the wrestling world. There are more individual World and Olympic champions from this small region than all of the rest of the earth combined!
So just for fun I have a discussion topic… In counting both the Tbilisi tournament and the Yargyin how many Americans have won either of those competitions AND who are these awesome competitors? Ready? Go…
Da Zavtra,
Bill Zadick, National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
Monday, January 19 - We all enjoyed a good night sleep and awoke rested and ready to go. The hotel served a typical Russian breakfast buffet with scrambled, fried and soft boiled eggs, oatmeal and traditional Russain porridge, a variety of sausages and meat, sliced tomatoes and cheese, as well as a good selection of pastries. From what others tell me, some very strong coffee is also available. Like the ol’ cowboys say “if a spoon won’t stand in it, it’s not strong enough.”
We met in the lobby at 9:30 am to head over for the first practice. The training facility is a state sponsored wrestling academy that serves several thousand athletes from grass roots ages all the way through Seniors. Inside this wrestling complex are six separate wrestling rooms ranging from one up to six full mats as well as locker rooms, showers and saunas to accommodate the number of athletes served.
Some of the best who have ever wrestled have trained here in Krasnoyarsk. Of course, Ivan Yarygin, 2x Olympic and 1x World champion, and also the Saitiev brothers, Buvaisar and Adam. Adam is a 1999 World and 2000 Olympic champion while Buvaisar’s nine titles (3x Olympic gold) range from 1995-2008. These accomplishments make Buvaisar Saitiev second only to Alexander Medved (10 Gold, 3x Olympic gold) as owning the most World and Olympic gold medals in the history of men’s freestyle wrestling!
As we walk in to the practice room for the 10:00 am workout, it is flooded with athletes coming and going, nearly 200 in all. Young kids leaving their workout are lingering to watch the Senior athletes strap it on. The Senior athletes are mostly from Russia however, in addition to the US team there are also Kazakhstan and Belarus national teams coached by Sergei and Anatoly Belaglazov, respectively. Another pair of Russian brothers owning nine titles between the two, Sergei’s eight (2x Olympic gold) between 1980-88 and Anatoly’s 1980 Olympic title. There is a lot of gold running around this place; it’s a wrestling junky’s dream! Just seeing the pictures in the building and the champions walking around gets me fired up! Our athletes are getting fired up, too - a little jumpy like too many stallions locked up in one corral!
Sunday, January 18 - Team USA departed our homes mid-day on Friday, January 16, headed to the Ivan Yarygin Memorial in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
We have an exciting group of athletes and staff traveling, including: 57kg, Tony Ramos, Matt McDonough; 65kg, Brent Metcalf, Jimmy Kennedy, Aaron Pico; 74kg, Andrew Howe; 86kg, Phil Keddy, Jake Herbert; Coaches-Jeff Buxton, Valentin Kalika, Bill Zadick; Official-Pete Kuisle; Medical-Dr. Dan Clearfield and; team leader-Paul Kieblesz.
After traveling 18 hours from the U.S. to Moscow, we stopped to overnight, getting a light sweat in the sauna at our hotel near Domodedovo Airport, where we left at 10 am for the last leg of our journey.
Flying due east of Moscow for roughly five hours left plenty of time to look out the window and contemplate the vastness of the Siberian wilderness in the cold of January. We travelled approximately the distance from LA to New York and have only crossed about half of Russia.
The Ivan Yarygin Memorial, living up to its namesake, is considered to be the strongest competition on the globe outside of the World Championships and Olympic Games. Some years the competition rivals even those most prestigious events!
Arriving in Krasnoyarsk around 7 pm, it is a full 13-14 hours time difference from our homes in the USA. Not unlike home, it is cold, about –4°C or 18°F, however, not terrible for Siberia in January. Following a 40-minute shuttle ride, we settled into our hotel and found the sauna to help get the trip out of us and start adjusting to the more than half-a-day time difference. Outside the hotel is a courtyard filled with lighted decorations and ice sculptures celebrating Christmas and the New Year holidays.
Everyone is looking forward to a good night sleep. Training will start in the morning at 10 am. This will be home for the next week leading up to this great tournament!
From Russia with love,
Bill Zadick
National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
We were up early getting started with workouts hitting the sauna around 9 a.m. Ramos lost a few pounds and settled down to relax until the afternoon workout. The second workout followed up at 1 p.m., with all three getting a good warm-up, some light work and, letting the sweat roll until they were all on weight.
McDonough can really sweat a…lot! After a short work out (less than an hour) his gear sounded like the sloshing of a washing machine when he was walking. Howe was down in no time flat like the machine that is Andrew Howe! They all finished with plenty of time to shower, relax and head to the venue for med-check. The guys did a great job getting their weights down like professionals which makes it nice on us coaches. It’s one part of our sport that is completely in our control and makes a tremendous difference in performance when done properly!
We, at USA Wrestling, have great resources with our partners on our High Performance Team at the USOC and one of those is Jenn Gibson, our Sport Dietician. Her help, educating our athletes and staff, has been a bonus for our National Team! We left the hotel at 3:30 pm headed to the venue carrying plenty of water, sports drinks and light nutrition to replenish after stepping on the scales. It doesn’t matter where in the world or at what age/skill level of competition, the weigh-in and weigh-in room is always a mad house and today was no different!
After our guys weighed in and the rush settled down, I took a picture thinking you might like to see how the craziness here is not any different than the craziness you’ve experienced at most wrestling tournaments. Everyone there is anxious to get on the scale and get some fluid back in their bodies. At the same time there is a lot of posturing and body language as competitors size each other up. I’m sure there is a psychology book out there explaining it all very scientifically. I can tell you that at a world-level tournament as prestigious as this, everyone knows what’s going on. Who is the baddest dude in the room? I, along with everyone else, am looking forward to finding out!
Tomorrow’s wrestling starts at 10 a.m. and Team USA will be ready to roll. We have three guys, Brent Metcalf, Jimmy Kennedy and Aaron Pico, all weighing in for day two’s competition at 65 kg. Of course, these are very highly-anticipated and exciting potential match ups, not to mention the international competitors who will be here. Definitely keep your dials right where they are for this.
There is a webcast that you can check out here: http://www. krascsp.ru/online-yariguin-2015. Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is 12 hours ahead of U.S. EST and 15 from U.S. PST so set your alarms and make the popcorn before you go to bed…it's Hysteria in Siberia!
Always, going for gold-s!
Bill Zadick
National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
Answers to the discussion question – What Americans have won either the Yarygin Grand Prix or the Tbilisi Tournament?
Click here if you want to see the answer
Wednesday, January 21 - We’ve had another great day in preparation for the Yarygin here in Krasnoyarsk. Two good workouts: one light to start blood pumping and another to get some good repetitions and continue building positive muscle memory. Everything this week is about being sharp and crisp technically while keeping energy levels high.
With three of our eight men weighing in tomorrow, our training starts to break into more individually specific training for each athlete’s needs. For the guys starting on the second and third days, training is still on the mats. It’s business as usual, as we are continuing to sharpen. This afternoon, while we had a few guys working on weight management, a few others played with some situations on the mats. After training, we had a short sauna and then walked back to the hotel for some dinner. The walk is nice and the cool air feels refreshing after a good day.
Tomorrow will be a very busy day with three athletes weighing-in (57-Ramos, McDonough and, 74-Howe) and five others training. Between Coaches Jeff Buxton, Valentin Kalika and myself, we will assign each to oversee athletes at different locations through the day at the training hall, the hotel and the competition venue where weigh-ins are held.
Team Leader ‘Pauli’ Kieblesz has helped coordinate a bus for transportation to and from weigh-ins, as well as, picked up some of the food for after weigh-in recovery meal. Dr. Clearfield is doing a good job keeping everyone moving and healthy. Our official, Pete Kuisle, will attend the rules clinic and inform us of the latest interpretations. We have a great group of folks working together… a well-oiled machine!
It’s getting very close to the exciting part of the trip where we get see it all shake down! I saw 2x World Champion Victor Lebedev (57kg RUS) getting his weight down. I look forward to Ramos and McDonough in the final vs each other so, of course, one of these guys will have to take him out…and that’s why we love to hear the first whistle!
There are many other great competitors around both current and from previous years. I spoke with Buvaysar Saitiev, one of the all-time greats and an exciting wrestler to watch. I believe I’m one year older than he however, he’s wearing a few more grey hairs! Pauli got a picture of the group, which is shown above.
P.S. Anyone have an answer on yesterday’s wrestling trivia? Name the U.S. champions at the Tbilisi Tournament and the Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix. If you want to give your guess, post it at the bottom of the article. Stay tuned!
All the way and then some!
Bill Zadick
National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
Tuesday, January 20 – Today, our second full day in country, we are looking good and everyone is reporting to feel rested. Our team did two workouts today at 10 am and 4 pm; morning in our own gym with one mat and afternoon with the crowd in the big gym with six mats.
Most of the guys warmed up and drilled with each other a bit to get their bodies moving and then grabbed a hold of one of the many foreign training partners. It’s quite fun as a coach to watch our team mixing it up with international partners in these practices. It becomes a great learning experience for each of them to develop a “feel” for different skills and styles. A broad spectrum of knowledge generally promotes better understand and faster growth as an athlete. Most of our guys wrestled situations and some sparring goes. Besides, wrestling a lot of matches in this crowded space is not only improbable but dangerous for injuries.
Between practices, we had a lot of busy work to get done today. Team leader Paul Kieblesz took care of our credentialing while we also tracked down laundry service and reserved sauna times for tomorrow. We’ve arranged for the laundry to be done in the hotel for a few rubles per kilo of clothing. This will work out conveniently and save everyone from doing laundry in their bathroom sinks, as well as keeping our rooms from smelling like an old hamper (a familiar odor for most wrestlers hotel rooms)!
As we get closer to the first weigh-in, our training will be much more individually focused. The peaking process is focused on sharpening mind and body more each day, not overly taxing yourself and, helping manage weight to ease recovery and maximize performance in competition. We are still a few days out of the first weigh-in. However, the excitement is building in each of our guys!
After dinner this evening, Coach Buxton, official Pete Kuisle and I walked around the courtyard to look at the ice sculptures; what we found was a really cool ice carnival. There are many ice sculpture depicting tales and legends from Russian folklore, ice jungle gym type structures. However, the most popular seemed to be the ice slides. There are a couple but one in particular, the steepest and fastest, of course, was the kids’ favorite. I was my favorite too, although I haven't embarrassed myself on that… yet!
Another day closer to the great Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix! As I spoke in an earlier post, the Yarygin is annually the premier freestyle competition outside the World Championships and Olympic Games. Before the Yarygin and during the former Soviet Union era the premier event was in Tbilisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic - now its own country - to the south of Moscow in the Caucasaus Mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas. Combining the country of Georgia with the Russian states of Ossetia, Dagestan and, Chechnya makes up the 'fertile crescent' of the wrestling world. There are more individual World and Olympic champions from this small region than all of the rest of the earth combined!
So just for fun I have a discussion topic… In counting both the Tbilisi tournament and the Yargyin how many Americans have won either of those competitions AND who are these awesome competitors? Ready? Go…
Da Zavtra,
Bill Zadick, National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
Monday, January 19 - We all enjoyed a good night sleep and awoke rested and ready to go. The hotel served a typical Russian breakfast buffet with scrambled, fried and soft boiled eggs, oatmeal and traditional Russain porridge, a variety of sausages and meat, sliced tomatoes and cheese, as well as a good selection of pastries. From what others tell me, some very strong coffee is also available. Like the ol’ cowboys say “if a spoon won’t stand in it, it’s not strong enough.”
We met in the lobby at 9:30 am to head over for the first practice. The training facility is a state sponsored wrestling academy that serves several thousand athletes from grass roots ages all the way through Seniors. Inside this wrestling complex are six separate wrestling rooms ranging from one up to six full mats as well as locker rooms, showers and saunas to accommodate the number of athletes served.
Some of the best who have ever wrestled have trained here in Krasnoyarsk. Of course, Ivan Yarygin, 2x Olympic and 1x World champion, and also the Saitiev brothers, Buvaisar and Adam. Adam is a 1999 World and 2000 Olympic champion while Buvaisar’s nine titles (3x Olympic gold) range from 1995-2008. These accomplishments make Buvaisar Saitiev second only to Alexander Medved (10 Gold, 3x Olympic gold) as owning the most World and Olympic gold medals in the history of men’s freestyle wrestling!
As we walk in to the practice room for the 10:00 am workout, it is flooded with athletes coming and going, nearly 200 in all. Young kids leaving their workout are lingering to watch the Senior athletes strap it on. The Senior athletes are mostly from Russia however, in addition to the US team there are also Kazakhstan and Belarus national teams coached by Sergei and Anatoly Belaglazov, respectively. Another pair of Russian brothers owning nine titles between the two, Sergei’s eight (2x Olympic gold) between 1980-88 and Anatoly’s 1980 Olympic title. There is a lot of gold running around this place; it’s a wrestling junky’s dream! Just seeing the pictures in the building and the champions walking around gets me fired up! Our athletes are getting fired up, too - a little jumpy like too many stallions locked up in one corral!
Sunday, January 18 - Team USA departed our homes mid-day on Friday, January 16, headed to the Ivan Yarygin Memorial in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
We have an exciting group of athletes and staff traveling, including: 57kg, Tony Ramos, Matt McDonough; 65kg, Brent Metcalf, Jimmy Kennedy, Aaron Pico; 74kg, Andrew Howe; 86kg, Phil Keddy, Jake Herbert; Coaches-Jeff Buxton, Valentin Kalika, Bill Zadick; Official-Pete Kuisle; Medical-Dr. Dan Clearfield and; team leader-Paul Kieblesz.
After traveling 18 hours from the U.S. to Moscow, we stopped to overnight, getting a light sweat in the sauna at our hotel near Domodedovo Airport, where we left at 10 am for the last leg of our journey.
Flying due east of Moscow for roughly five hours left plenty of time to look out the window and contemplate the vastness of the Siberian wilderness in the cold of January. We travelled approximately the distance from LA to New York and have only crossed about half of Russia.
The Ivan Yarygin Memorial, living up to its namesake, is considered to be the strongest competition on the globe outside of the World Championships and Olympic Games. Some years the competition rivals even those most prestigious events!
Arriving in Krasnoyarsk around 7 pm, it is a full 13-14 hours time difference from our homes in the USA. Not unlike home, it is cold, about –4°C or 18°F, however, not terrible for Siberia in January. Following a 40-minute shuttle ride, we settled into our hotel and found the sauna to help get the trip out of us and start adjusting to the more than half-a-day time difference. Outside the hotel is a courtyard filled with lighted decorations and ice sculptures celebrating Christmas and the New Year holidays.
Everyone is looking forward to a good night sleep. Training will start in the morning at 10 am. This will be home for the next week leading up to this great tournament!
From Russia with love,
Bill Zadick
National Freestyle University & Senior Developmental Coach
