COACHES CORNER
Understanding role that defense plays
Wrestlers who are stingy on defense have achieved success internationally
By Zeke Jones, U.S. National Freestyle Coach Like I wrote in the first article, different wrestling styles are pri- marily influenced by a countries culture, morals, ethics, and even religion.
In addition, a country’s wrestling behavior can be influenced by an individual country’s wrestling rules. All of these factors shape a country’s wrestling style and impact its ability for suc- cess. Let’s look at America. American folkstyle wrestling plays a heavy role in our ability to compete at international style of wrestling, freestyle. In American folkstyle wrestling, the rules reward an aggressive, attacking style and penalize the wrestler with a defensive style. I believe American folkstyle rules were created and based on a scoring system that rewards wrestlers to be aggressive, offen- sive minded with attacking mentalities. In analyzing the folkstyle rule system, I call it more of an offensive/counter offensive scor- ing system with little or no reward and even penalties for defen- sive wrestling. In America, we believe watching offense is more fun to watch, too. I agree. We reinforce offensive wrestling and penalize defensive wrestling in folkstyle through stalling. Stalling penalizes wrestlers that wrestle a defensive style or don’t continue to attack. The rule says whether you are ahead by eight points or behind by one point, you are required to keep attacking or you will be called for stalling resulting in points for your opponent. As a result, this shapes our combat behavior. Americans have wrestled this way for so long, Americans believe that defensive wrestling is viewed as weak and a less superior strategy to being offensive. Although we can all agree that watching offense is more appealing than defense, defense has a signifi- cant place in international wrestling particularly if you want to be a complete wrestler. Have you ever seen a wrestler lose who didn’t get scored on?
Now look at international freestyle wrestling. Freestyle’s value system is based on the offense/defense model. The rules say that whether I’m winning by a point or losing by a point I cannot be called for stalling since the rule doesn’t exist in the interna- tional style.
Why am I using the ahead by a point/down by a point sce-
nario? Because it is the most common score in freestyle with a short two minute period with closely matched opponents. So if I’m winning by a point and I cannot be called for stalling, I’m not
26 USA Wrestler
required to score anymore. So my choices are to either stay on the offense or employ a defensive strategy. I must also factor in what my opponent is doing. If he is behind by a point with little time left in the period what is he doing? That’s right; he’s attacking me relentlessly since he knows that if he scores he will win.
Zeke Jones
So then I must determine what is my best strategy for when I’m in the lead with short time on the clock - stay on the offense, counter attack, or defend? At a minimum, I must defend or I will lose and at a maximum I can continue to score. So I ask myself what’s the best strategy or better yet what do the best wrestlers in the World do? The answer: the lowest risk and highest return among the best wrestlers in the World is to employ the 100 per- cent defensive strategy.
In other words, if I am in the lead with short time and no one can score on me, then I will win every time. If you look at all of the World champions last year, they gave up less than a third of a point per minute on average.
In other words, they were stingy on defense.
WHY IS THIS HARD FOR AMERICAN WRESTLERS? It’s simple, we hardly ever talk, teach, or reward defense. Our wrestlers are so used to trying to score all the time they never learn or train defense. So in the final 30 seconds of a period with a one-point lead, we often employ a less successful strategy of staying on the offense which gets us in trouble most of the time. What we must learn to do is the more successful strategy; learn the 100 percent defensive strategy. As the National Coach, the first thing we do with our most successful college wrestlers is add defense to their already good offensive style. Most of all, we ingrain in our wrestlers to take pride in having an outstanding defense. Now it’s time American coaches and wrestlers support the complete wrestler strategy. What is it? It’s embracing the con- cept of The Total Wrestler. It’s understanding that the wrestler that has superior offense AND defense is better than just being great at offense. WHEN IS IT OK TO WRESTLE DEFENSIVELY? When can you wrestle defense as a strategy? You wrestle defense because there’s less than 30 seconds on the clock and you have a one or two point lead. This is the time to employ the 100 percent defensive strategy.
But just because you are in the lead and you’re wrestling defense it doesn’t mean to under-wrestle your lead, position, or hold. What does that mean? It means that sometimes when a wrestler goes on defense he basically stops wrestling. Don’t do that. Always look to improve your position, gain on your oppo- nent inch by inch defensively and when your opponent takes too big of a risk or makes a mistake, make him pay by scoring
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