Building Lower Body Strength and Explosiveness

It’s a fact in wrestling: The strongest wrestler doesn't always win.

Often times, it’s the wrestler with the better technique, discipline, endurance, or heart—or combination of all four.

That’s why instead of focusing on preacher curls and looking like a workout warrior or developing that beach body, the goal of every wrestler should be to become more explosive than your competition—especially in the lower body—because lower body strength, explosiveness, and endurance can make all the difference in the world in a close, hard-fought match and throughout one’s wrestling career.

“Lower body power and power endurance is extremely important in wrestling,” says Travis Rutt, Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Iowa, and a 2011 NCAA 184 pound All-American at the University of Wisconsin. “We try to increase and produce power to increase our shot power or penetration power, as well as sprawling and throwing legs back for defensive purposes. Our shots need to be just as powerful at the end of a match, and are just as important as being powerful at the beginning of a match.”

Robert Forster, PT, is founder and CEO of Robert Forster Physical Therapy and Phase IV Scientific Health and Performance Center in Santa Monica, CA. Forster has worked as a personal physical therapist to dozens of athletes, including Olympic medalists and NBA, Grand Slam, and Mixed Martial Arts pros.

“The lower body demands of wrestling require athletes to possess speed, power, and strength-endurance, but also joint stability and musculoskeletal resiliency—protection against injury,” Forster says.

Take a step back and think about it: A wrestler uses his or her lower body in all aspects of wrestling, not just shooting or defending a shot, or when wrestling on their feet. Lower body strength and balance comes into play even in hand fighting. If the legs are balanced, the wrestler can generate more strength and power through the hands. Wrestlers use their lower body and legs when controlling a wrestler on top, or fighting to get out from bottom. Even though leg attacks are prohibited in Greco-Roman wrestling, there is no way Rulon Gardner defeats Aleksander Karelin and wins a Gold Medal at the 2000 Olympics if it wasn’t for lower body balance, strength, endurance, and explosiveness.

“Wrestling is a combination of dynamic effort and prolonged exertion, mostly including grappling, pulling, throws, and takedowns, therefore it’s crucial to have lower body strength and explosiveness to be able to throw and takedown your opponent,” says Wyatt Briggs, CSCS, Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach with the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).

So how does one develop lower body strength and endurance? One doesn't need to head to the gym and start focusing on setting age-group squat records. In fact, Rutt recommends body weight exercises for youth wrestlers, and only recommends weightlifting for high school athletes who have the supervision of a certified trainer.

Briggs, meanwhile, has trained numerous teenage athletes who rely on lower body strength and endurance to succeed - including elite-level hockey players, and top USA Ski and Snowboard athletes age 13–18 at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

“Medicine ball training provides great variations that wrestlers can incorporate in their training,” Briggs says. “The weight with medicine balls is enough to work on strength and power, and the technique is simple to learn and safe for most everyone.”

Briggs offers these training ideas and exercises for youth and high school wrestlers looking to improve lower body strength and endurance:

• Vertical medicine ball toss: In the vertical toss, the athlete is in the squat position with the medicine ball between the hands at chest height, with the elbows high, pushing the hands together against the ball like a vice. The athlete then extends upwards, as if to jump, and throws the medicine ball in the air for max height.
• Medicine ball bomb toss: The athlete is in the hinge position like the midpoint of a deadlift with the medicine ball in their hands, and arms straight. The athlete then extends the hips forward while throwing the ball up over their head. 

  Do both of these from a static position, to work on positioning and technique for the first couple weeks, before having the athletes add a counter movement, Briggs says. 

• Jumps: Vertical and broad jumps to develop power and explosiveness. Focus on single response (meaning one jump at a time) jumps from a still position as well as countermovement jumps, which include a loading movement prior to jumping. Most youth, Briggs says, won’t have the proper strength and coordination for multiple consecutive jumps at this point in their development, and thus they should progress with caution and safety in mind.  
• Fun/challenging body weight exercises: Cossack squats, skater squats and single leg squat variations, such as pistol squats or squats with the rear foot elevated, build strength and endurance, and can be used in the form of a game or team competition to make it a challenge versus an exercise.

Developing lower body strength and conditioning is also important for injury prevention.

“By exerting force into the ground, the athlete creates force using their lower body, and strength and explosiveness to throw or takedown their opponent,” Briggs says. “Lower body strength and explosiveness is important because it can help improve athletic performance while also reducing the likelihood of injury. A stronger athlete will have a reduced chance of injury due to the muscles and tendons surrounding each joint being stronger.”

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. When training advanced wrestlers, Berube-Black likes to focus on Olympic style movements—power clean, power snatch, and overhead squats, to name a few. 

“I feel that these movements build core strength, as well as power production through the hips, and leg strength,” Berube-Black says.  

She also likes kettlebell drills.

“There are many benefits associated with kettlebell training for wrestlers specifically,” Berube-Black says. “Training with kettlebells builds muscular endurance or work capacity, improves strength, promotes athleticism, flexibility, core strength, coordination, balance, strengthens the entire posterior chain, and builds mental toughness.”

When Rutt works with athletes who are ready to lift weights, some of his favorite exercises for building lower body strength and endurance are front squats and zercher squats. This puts less stress on the lower back joints while keeping stress on the muscles of the legs and hips, he says. He says he also likes sled pushes as a “dynamic and fun way to build lower body strength.” 

During the second half of a wrestling season, Rutt and Forster recommend athletes move away from heavy barbell loaded lifts to more dumbbell and body weight exercises. Rutt recommends using bands and Bulgarian bags and exercises like isometric lunge pulls or jumps. “Jumps are useful because there is no deceleration phase to the lift, just a full acceleration range of motion,” Rutt says.

Forster reminds athletes who are training hard, especially during the season, that recovery days each week and a recovery week each month are essential to maximizing the benefits of resistance training and to prevent overtraining and injury. He recommends a periodization training cycle for peak performance.

In the long run, building lower body strength and explosiveness is part of becoming a complete wrestler, and these exercises and strategies can help today’s youth and high school wrestler do just that.

They can also help that wrestler win and look good where it matters most—on top of the podium.