COACHES CORNER
Why Greco-Roman and why you should care
By Matt Lindland, U.S. National Greco-Roman Coach If I could show you scientific evidence that Greco-Roman wrestling will make you a better wrestler, would you try it? Coaches, if your wrestlers will be better as a result of Greco-
Roman will you give it a try? The first rule of selling is what’s in it for the customer. Sure, I
would love to see the U.S. be as dominant in Greco-Roman as we have historically been in freestyle. I would love to see USA Wrestling be a dominant force in both international styles. I know there are wrestling fans, coaches, and even athletes that think we should just do away with Greco-Roman here in the U.S.
Why not just put all our eggs in one basket and focus all of
our resources on being the best in the world at freestyle? I’m not going to try and tell these people why they should even care about Greco, but what I am going to explain is how Greco will help them be better at their folkstyle and freestyle, or MMA for that matter. I have always considered wrestling to be just that, wrestling. I
never got caught up in the style whether its folkstyle, freestyle or Greco-Roman. I fell in love with the art of wrestling and I see way too many commonalities in all styles, rather than see differ- ences. I have my club coach, Marc Sprague to thank for that. As a first-year wrestler, my high school coach told me there
was an opportunity to wrestle in the post high school season and he said he would show me some throws so I could com- pete. I had no idea if learning some new throws would help me prepare for this tournament or not. I went to a few workouts and practiced my new throws and was shown what a gutwrench was and that was about the extent of my training for freestyle/Greco training. I showed up for the state freestyle and Greco-Roman tourna-
ment and fell into the Cadet age group and also was able to compete against the high school age group in both freestyle and Greco. This gave me the opportunity to wrestle more matches. I went 0-2 in Cadet freestyle, 0-2 in Cadet Greco, 0-2 in Junior freestyle and 0-2 in Junior Greco. Not exactly the results I was looking for. My high school coach treated this like it was a completely dif-
ferent sport, but somewhere in my mind even back then I though of it all as just wrestling. I heard how important it was to throw your opponent. My coach never tried to connect the com- monalities because, he like many coaches think that anything outside of folkstyle is completely foreign. I went out and tried to throw my opponents, but I ended up being the guy thrown, taken down or turned. I got a lot of feedback from that tournament, and what I dis- covered was I needed to find a coach who understood wrestling. I didn’t want a coach who just had a basic under- standing of folkstyle. I needed a coach who could teach me how to wrestle. I decided if I was ever going to be able to compete
34 USA Wrestler
with these guys, I would have to seek out better training. That’s how I ended up being a club wrestler and getting the opportunity to work with coach Marc Sprague. Not only did Marc connect all the
styles with basic positions and drills to develop these positions he instilled a love for wrestling in me that I still have to this day. It’s no secret, the United States is a folkstyle-focused country. Our high schools and colleges
wrestle folkstyle and in the offsea- son wrestlers might do freestyle if they wrestle at all. Most college coaches are like my high school coach and haven’t made the connection yet that Greco-Roman is a better style for improving your wrestling overall than freestyle. I remember when I was in college and our club was willing to
Lindland
pay for post season tournaments only if I wrestled freestyle. My college coach didn’t care if I wrestled Greco, but I had to wres- tle freestyle if the club was going to pay for my trip. All my train- ing up to the University Nationals had to be in freestyle and I had to make the scratch weight for freestyle and after the tour- nament since I was already there and it was just another entry fee I could compete in Greco. I am happy to say I won two national titles in freestyle wrestling and don’t regret anything or begrudge my coach for making me focus on freestyle. It allowed me an opportunity to go compete in the freestyle Pan-American championships. I won my first international tournament, a gold medal, that’s another story for another time. My focus of this article is not to tell you why I am a fan of Greco-Roman or convince you it’s the better style. First of all, I don’t believe there is a such thing as a better style I think wrestling is wrestling, it’s all the same. What I want to show you is how scientific evidence suggests that Greco-Roman is the best for wrestling no matter what style you ultimately decide to focus on. Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice. Daniel Coyle in his book “the talent code” calls this kind of prac- tice deep practice. “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle is a book on how to grow talent. Coyle, like me, doesn’t believe we are born with talent and it
must be developed through practice, what he describes as “Deep Practice.” Coyle’s belief is that talent comes from Myelin. Myelin is the Continued on page 35
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