Five Ways to Make Practice Fun

The wrestling season is long and grueling, and practice can be a grind.

That’s why it’s imperative that coaches come up with strategies to interject some fun into the daily routine.

“Wrestling is a very physically and mentally demanding sport,” says Dom Duncan, Kids Director for Washington USA Wrestling and the head boys and girls wrestling coach at Hanford High School in Richland, WA.

But by creating an environment that becomes a safe haven—albeit still a place where kids need to work hard and put in maximum effort—daily practice becomes much more than a place where kids work on wrestling for a couple of hours a day.

Duncan sees it daily. And because his team has created a strong, family bond, the wrestling room is a place where kids can escape for a few hours and at some point, hopefully have some fun, too.

“If there are not times that it is fun, kids will not enjoy it,” Duncan says. “There are kids on my team that have 3–5 wins on the season, but they keep coming back because of the family bond that the team has created. It’s fun to be part of a group that is close like that. It’s fun to have a place to come and enjoy a couple hours a day no matter what else is going on in your life.”

Conor Fitzgerald, head coach at Olathe South High School in Olathe, KS, agrees.

“Breaking up routine and having some fun in practice is important at all levels,” says Fitzgerald, also a bronze level coach with USA Wrestling who runs a weekly regional training center for wrestlers trying to make the Kansas national team.

Here are five ways to make practice more fun.

1. Break up the routine

The best wrestlers are successful when things get uncomfortable. Routine is good, but can also breed complacency. So breaking up the monotony of the daily grind over the course of a long season can challenge and re-energize wrestlers and coaches alike.

“We break up routine by varying our daily drills, making adjustments in practice structure, and by taking days off later in the season,” Fitzgerald says. “As we wind down towards the final month we will spend a day without wrestling to save our bodies and recharge our minds.”

Case in point: Fitzgerald’s team was just coming off two tough dual meets on a Thursday and didn’t have any competition scheduled for the weekend, so they brought in a yoga instructor on a Friday and put kids through an hour long active recovery session, then sent them home.

Duncan emphasizes similar changes. Some are more drastic than others.

“There are days we will drill first and then wrestle live or wrestle live and then drill,” he says. “Some days are shorter and just intense live wrestling or shorter with focused drilling.”

Josh Nolan, Director of Operations for the Legends of Gold Regional Training Center and International Development Academy in Beresford, SD, says his wrestlers have practices where they work on individual skills, practices focused solely on team skills, and practices that are focused on hard wrestling and drilling.

2. Incorporate games into practice

It’s no secret incorporating games into practice can energize a wrestling room. In the article “5 great games for wrestling development,” Mike Clayton, Manager of the National Coaches Education Program for USA Wrestling, says incorporating games helps kids get sweaty, smarter, and smile.

“Games can be used at all levels and ages to help build competitive skills, motion skills, improve mental capacity, and just plain make training more fun for everyone,” he says.

At Olathe kids go through a strenuous warmup to start the season. By mid-January they warm up playing handball for 10–15 minutes.

“They have a blast and are drenched with sweat by the time we’re ready to start drilling,” Fitzgerald says. “Sometimes we play spike ball to finish practice. We’ll play a version of dodgeball we call switch to wrap up after conditioning. We will do relay races midway through practice to get cranked up before we wrestle live. Basically, we put a major emphasis on keeping things fresh and having fun throughout the practice week.”

3. Think outside the sport

Yoga is one way to incorporate other conditioning drills into the practice routine. There are several wrestlers who claim to be outstanding basketball players. Some teams skip the wrestling room and hit the pool for a day. At Hanford High School, playing ultimate Frisbee is popular.

“Every now and then have a day unrelated to wrestling,” Duncan says. “It breaks up the grind of wrestling. Kids enjoy it and there isn’t the beating on the body.”

Other days, the focus may solely be on strength/weight training.

“My team loves to get in the weight room and later in the season you can see it pay off,” Duncan says. “Fewer injuries, bigger bodies on the mat, more late season success.”

Incorporating gymnastics and/or other developmental training in to the practice routines is also beneficial, says Nolan.

“Gymnastics is a great way for athletes to build strength, coordination, and kinesthetic awareness, all of which are highly important for wrestling,” Nolan says.

If a complete day of physical recovery is necessary, spending a few hours watching video of top collegiate and international wrestlers, and/or breaking down video (if available) of recent wrestling matches can be a great way to instruct and teach.

4. Run efficient and effective practices

Coaches who create a daily practice plan, or daily goals, can run more effective and efficient practices. They don’t have to be three to four hours long, either.

“One thing that I believe helps us is maintaining efficient practices,” Nolan says. “We keep all practices under an hour and a half and make sure that our coaches have a plan for the workout ahead of time. This makes it so there is little down time and we can make sure to keep the kids’ attention throughout the entirety of practice.”

5. Focus on the person, not just the wrestler

Kids who believe they are part of something bigger than just being on a wrestling team will go the extra mile for a coach, a teammate, and themselves. So spend time getting to know what makes kids tick outside of wrestling. Show them you care. This can be done in individual talks, team talks, or just asking questions and showing that a coach cares about them as a person.

“I know something about each of the kids on my team that has nothing to do with the sport of wrestling,” says Duncan, also a Life Skills instructor at Hanford HS. “The biggest reason this is important is that is shows the kids that you care about them above and beyond the sport and they are more than just an athlete to you. When there is a solid bond between athlete and coach the limits are endless for potential to be reached.”

Every few weeks Duncan holds a practice called “kids choose day” where the kids pick what drills to focus on, and they rotate between stations focusing on top, bottom, and neutral position.

“It helps the kids understand that we see them as individuals still even when we coach to a system,” Duncan says.

Duncan continued: “Creating a family atmosphere is a huge deal for our program, the bond amongst wrestlers is really like no other. If you have never wrestled you really do not understand what it is like to go through and endure the mental and physical ups and downs of wrestling, only your brothers and sisters that walk it with you can truly understand it. They will forever be a part of your life, even a stranger that has wrestled is part of your extended wrestling family.”

Wrestling isn’t always fun. It takes hard work, sweat, the ability to overcome obstacles, and pushing one to their limits to succeed. Each day, the best wrestlers and teams must challenge each other to get better. But at some point, there has to be fun for everyone to keep getting motivated, and involved, especially those who may be struggling.

“When I first started coaching I didn’t realize the impact these variables played in maintaining high levels of effort, focus, and enjoyment in practice throughout the course of a season,” Fitzgerald says. “Wrestling will always be tough, but it only becomes a grind when the work is monotonous and we never make time for fun.”