The KOLAT.COM Curriculum is a much-anticipated feature that wrestlers, coaches, and fathers have been asking for since day one: How do you teach someone how to wrestle? This curriculum will be important for everyone who feels that somewhere along the line they were not given sound fundamentals and need to sharpen up their skills. However, for the most part it was created for those beginning wrestlers, coaches, and fathers just entering the sport and needing a guide. This Curriculum will enable all wrestlers to discover their strengths and weaknesses and eventually help them to develop their own winning style.
Basic techniques are laid out first to give wrestlers solid fundamentals: offensive attacks, defensive tactics, and position-oriented wrestling. To make sure that wrestlers do not get locked into only one realm of scoring possibilities, the Curriculum slowly branches out. The intent behind this design is to make them comfortable and to give them knowledge of all positions, which will subsequently help them develop.
Style will develop later in a wrestler's career after they have a clear grasp of fundamentals. At that point, a wrestler will begin to focus on specific areas of wrestling technique that fits their skill level and approach to the sport.
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Understanding the Levels of the Curriculum
The levels of the Curriculum should be treated as a knowledge base. Levels are taught and athletes evaluated based on how they have perfected the techniques inside a particular level. The levels allow coaches to know exactly what a wrestler needs. The levels are also used to help motivate wrestlers to gain a better understanding of fundamental skills, as they now know exactly how to move onto the next level.
Athletes will advance levels at different times; what takes one wrestler one year to master might take another much longer. Perfecting this sport takes years of learning and training.
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Techniques Inside the Curriculum
The techniques inside the Curriculum are not designed to produce athletes who wrestle a certain style. Wrestlers will develop their own style of wrestling over time as they work through the levels. Most techniques build from the prior level, so even if a Level 2 wrestler is put into a Level 3 training session (maybe you need him as a partner), he will more than likely have an understanding of what is being drilled and taught in the session.
Using KOLAT.COM and the Curriculum for Style
Development of style in the Curriculum goes as follows. Wrestler “A” and Wrestler “B” have trained in the same program through all levels and each one has his own style based on body shape, athletic ability, flexibility, and so on. A coach or athlete can access the KOLAT.COM Video Library to add more techniques from that series to training sessions. This will give Wrestler “A” more skills in the area he excels in and allow him more opportunities to score when in that position.
Drills: The Key to Skill Development
Drills are imperative in learning skills and techniques throughout the process. All the drills are housed within Level 1. When a coach is looking for something for warm up, conditioning, or in the middle of practice to reinforce a skill, use Level 1 as a reference. This will keep the energy level high in the room and if you notice athletes losing a sweat during a teaching phase, drop a drill in to pick the pace up once again.
There will be drills that relate to techniques in Level 3, but there is nothing wrong with teaching athletes drills prior to reaching certain levels. Learning the drills before the technique will also make it easier on the coach to facilitate a warm-up or conditioning session that includes all levels of athletes and doesn't cater to just one group, or to one level of athletes.
Using The Levels To Run Training Sessions
Teams with multiple coaches have the ability to place coaches in charge of different levels. This curriculum allows each to know exactly what needs to be taught and how to plan. Wrestlers could easily be taught drills first and all team members could warm-up together before being split into their teaching groups; however, if you are a one-man show, you can structure workouts to some extent and cater to all athletes.
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An example would be teaching the High Crotch takedown during a training session. The techniques build so that all wrestlers could be taught the first finish and as you advance the teaching, Level 1 would continue to use Level 1 finishes for the high crotch while you begin to lead into Level 2 finishes, and so on.
Level 1: Stance and Set-Ups/Tie-Ups
Level 1 focuses on both types of stances when starting out.
- Square Stance
- Sugar Foot/Shooting Stance
This is and offense approach to using set-ups/ties to gain attacks. You will need to cover clearing ties at some point during your teaching as athletes experience difficulty.
- Collar tie snap
- Inside control circle
- Fake shot goo Touch & goo Freeze fake
- Triceps snap
- Level change goo Arm Post
- Head Post
Offensive Takedowns
Once wrestlers achieve a certain level cleanly all drilling should be done with partner sprawling & giving them a defensive look.
- Double Leg
- Explanation of Double Leg Positioning
- Hips and Head Opposite
- Leg Stack for Count
- Half When Opponent Turns Down
- Single Leg
- Explanation of Single Leg Positioning
- Drive up for Foot Sweep
- Running the Pipe
- Knee to th...
Cary’s Advice on When An Athlete Should Start The Curriculum
“That is up to you, the parent, the coach, and the athlete. If your child cannot control his or her own body and do so to the extent of a perfect forward roll, backward roll, cartwheel, front handspring, or back handspring, then why would you think they are ready to learn how to control another person's body? If you can perform simple gymnastics movements prior to entering wrestling (or any other sport for that matter) your transition into other sports will be much easier!
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Taking your time and perfecting the techniques in the curriculum at a slow pace will not put you on the top of the stand right away, but will put you on the top later down the road... when it counts! Success at a young age only means despair at an older age if it’s not done correctly. The truth of the matter is that success at a young age only means despair at an older age if it’s not done correctly.
How you approach the start of your wrestling career is critical to your longevity and success when it really matters. None of the college coaches who recruited me ever asked me about my titles at the youth level.
Framework for entering wrestling:
- First, 3-4 year in some sort of gymnastics or tumbling program to promote body awareness.
- Second, 1 to 2 years of training prior to competing in any sort of competition directly for wrestling with training only happening 2-3 days per week. If you can continue the tumbling or gymnastics, stay with it as long as the athlete is not getting too worn out.
- Third, when the athlete feels ready and shows a real desire to start competing, then make the move into competition with no more than 50-60 matches per year.
Breakdown by age:
- 4-5 years of age enter into tumbling
- 8-9 years of age enter into wrestling training
- 10-11 years of age enter into first wrestling competition
Future Expectations
The Curriculum will continue to evolve. Changes and adjustments will be made over time based on feedback from those using the program. Some other facets to be added as the Curriculum progresses:
- A gymnastics program with clips to teach athletes body awareness and to build up explosive power and core strength.
- A strength program with Kettle bell workouts.
- KOLAT.COM Planner training sessions geared specifically for this training Curriculum, making it even simpler for coaches to follow along and not run out of ideas when building a session for athletes.
- Curriculum video clips will be added to the video library to specifically follow the Curriculum system.
- Cary Kolat will begin Weekly FREE Clinics live online.