#kolat.com

  October 30, 2010

  Guest Clinician Cary Kolat

          All information covered in this clinic by Cary Kolat will be located on Kolat.com with coaches agenda along with video clips to accompany all technique covered.

  WWW.KOLAT.COM

ckspecial  (discounted rate for all those attending coaches clinic)

          Fundamental Takedowns:  covering the solid attacks on your feet that all team members need to have a full understanding of.

  High Crotch:  elbow deep

Solid head, shoulder, and hip position

Basic finish

Chasing the corner finish on sprawl (critical skill that is overlooked)

Chasing the corner elbow to the ankle finish

Crackdown:  don’t make it harder than what it is, focus on the set & control position

Don’t allow opponent to place you in the crack

Shooting knee outside

Control position & drill

Run in double finish

Knee in double finish

Foot hook my favorite

NEW Jack Jensen finish

Double:  best shot in the world, drilled & perfected on a regular basis, elbow deep

Solid head, shoulder, and hip position

Run to the corner finish

Chasing the corner finish on sprawl

Drill to teach rebuild

Single Leg:  elbow deep, drilling should focus on the corner

Solid head, shoulder, and hip position

Drilling mistake of not hitting corner & long guy using his hands

Pick up finish

If you could pick when to hit the best guy in the tournament the first round is the time to do it.  Most wrestlers like to ease into events, do not warm-up properly, fatigue easy, quit mort often in the first round of the event if they have a tough opponent!  Warm-up properly and the first round of the event will work in your favor more times than not.  Don’t lost matches only because you did not warm-up and get the burn out of your body the day of an event.

  Warm-Up Routine

  You should be stretching as you are going through the routine

  Jog/Tumble                             3 min

Clearing Ties                           2 min

20-20-20                                 high pace quick motions

Finishing Shots                       3 min  (opponent 70% fight)

20-20-20                                 high pace quick motions

Sprints                                                1:30 min  (sprint – bounce – sprint – bounce – etc.)

Escapes/Rev                            2 min

20-20-20                                 high pace quick motions

Escapes to take down             3 min

Jog                                           1 min

Hand Fight                              3 min (: 30 sec – bounce)

Sprints                                                1 min

Live Wrestling             5 min  (feet don’t stalemate more than 10 sec. keep moving)

10-10-10                                                  High pace quick motions

Shadow wrestling                    2 min (1 min - :30 sec break lots of motion)

Stretch

  This routine is 27:30 minutes in length without breaks.  You should attempt to time this and be done with the warm-up 15 minutes prior to your first match if you can.  You want to get as tired as you can during the warm-up everything should be done hard, fast, and executed perfectly 5 minutes into the warm-up once your body is loose.  Get tired so your body will respond to the fatigue you feel during the first round and fight through it. 

  You will have already gone through the pain and your muscles and lungs will adjust to the stress the match is putting on them your opponent will be enduring it for the first time and his body will not respond as well as you are to the stress of the match.

  I recently broadcasted a live question and answer show online for viewers and a question, which I receive again and again, is how do I structure a practice.

  Fundamental skills are something that need worked everyday in various areas.  The correct way to think about skills and drills are to take the common positions in wrestling and apply them daily in training sessions.  The number one problem with this is wrestlers and even coaches do not attack these skill sets properly.

  Wrestler A has been training in the sport for 6-10 years and skills were very important to him when he was first learning and he probably attacked them with enthusiasm.  These skills were brand new to him and his passion for learning how to wrestle was high.  As wrestler A has entered high school he now approaches these drills as part of a daily warm-up and just something used to get him ready for when the training session really begins.  His level of intensity and passion for the sport has dropped and will ultimately cause his ability to react, defend, or have full understanding of common wrestling positions to become sub par.

  Determine Your Skill and Drill Sets For Your Team

  First, you as the coach need to determine what common positions you consider to be important drills in all areas of wrestling.  One example is a spin drill, which teaches wrestlers to react quickly, defend their legs, and then capitalize on their opponent’s attempt to take them down.  This skill or drill would fall into a defensive feet warm-up session.  A spin drill can also fall into a feet offensive warm-up session, but you probably get the point of how I categorize my drill sets.

  Quick list of skills and drills could look like this:

  Feet Offense Skills

  Shadow wrestling

Penetration steps through opponent’s legs

Attacking tie-ups and moving partner

Etc

  Feet Defense Skills

  Spin drill

Down block and spin

Defend single leg attack

Defend double leg attack

Etc

  Top Riding Skills

  Sit and follow drill

Opponent stands return him to mat

Taking opponent out of base

Etc

  Bottom Skills

  Base building

Hip heist drill

Clearing hands drill

Etc

  There are many more drills for each area; I’m just keeping it simple for this blog.

  Getting the most out of the warm-up

  The warm-up section of training should be treated as time to work the skills you feel are most important to your team.  This is where you get into your teams head about what you are going to accomplish during the training session.  This is where you and your staff have determined the places that each team member has to be above average in common positions.  Your warm-up routine needs to change almost every training session.

  Big twenty warm-ups

  Prior to the start of your season, write down the skills that you feel are important to your team.  Each warm-up covering a specific area of skills and drills should be 20-30 minutes in length.  Creating these warm-ups keeps your team from falling into the same stale routine that will eventually kill the intensity of the room.  If the warm up stays fresh, you and your team can expect solid quality work in every session. Don’t underestimate the significance of the first 20 minutes of practice. Warm ups should: Grab their attention, set the pace, and get them physically and mentally ready for the next 60 minutes. Now after you have applied these 20, you should be an expert at disguising these drills into the warm-up in a variety ways that your team is constantly getting work in common positions.

  Warm-Up & Teaching

  I don’t feel the warm-up needs to mirror what is being covered that day, but you could put the two together.  If we plan to teach feet defense during our teaching segment of practice, I may grab one of my top riding skill warm-ups and use that at the start.  You can of course have the two match up if you like, but 20 days later you will return to that warm-up.

  Practice Planning

  Now that you have twenty different warm-ups designed to cover your daily skill work you have saved yourself a great deal of time when it comes to planning practice.  Simply keep a record of each warm-up and when you’ve used it during the month.  Twenty days later start back through the cycle and your guys will not remember the exact routine keeping them on their toes and working!

My Coach’s Practices Hold Me Back: 

The only coaches that ever held me back were the ones who gave those long-winded speeches during practice once my sweat was rolling.  Most coaches are smart enough to give the speech prior to the start of practice or at the end.  This is a pretty common theme among the better wrestlers, the parents of the wrestlers, or anyone who is looking for some type of excuse.  No wrestler who wants to be the best will let someone get in their way and this excuse usually comes from those who do not give their best performance in practice on a regular basis.  I have never witnessed a coach stop anyone from doing more than what was asked in practice.  My example is simple, when your coach tells the team to perform ten takedowns, do you do them with perfection in the least amount of time and then wait for the group?  Or, do you do them with perfection in the least amount of time and then continue to go waiting for the other wrestlers to finish, getting extra repetitions in?  I would bet guys like John Smith (Head Coach of Oklahoma State University), Cael Sanderson (Head Coach of Penn State University), and Tom Brands (Head Coach of Iowa University) never screamed at a guy for going longer or harder than what was required.  You can always do more than what is asked instead of blame a practice on the coach.  When a coach is running practice he has to look at the group as a whole not as an individual, therefore; the individual side of the practice is up to you.  You can blame the coach for holding you back or you can do what the best have done and find a way to get what you need out of any practice.

He Has God Given Talent:

This bothers me more than any excuse because I have always considered this to be the weak man’s excuse.  “Well that guy has such God given talent it’s ok that I lost.”  I find it hard to believe that God is setting some of us for pure success in the sports world and others are doomed to be the ones in the middle or at the bottom.  Average wrestlers, average coaches, and protective parents will pull this out to make themselves feel better.  Tiger Woods did not get that golf stroke from God, he got it from his father putting time into him and his inner drive to perform the best drive time after time.  John Smith never won the Jr. National freestyle title but went on to become our best freestyle wrestler of all time.  He achieved this because he wanted to be the best and it finally happen for him his junior year in college and then five more times after that because of his work ethic and his desire to catch those ahead of him.  I believe we all enter the wrestling world with something above average but it takes more than just one aspect to win in the sport of wrestling or any other sport.  God has given us one thing that does decide if you will be successful in wrestling or any other sport and that is your brain.  You can either tell yourself some excuse or tell yourself to get your head in it and find a way to beat the guy in front of you! 

I Don’t Have Any Partners That Can Push Me:

Congratulations and welcome to the club because this is a good problem to have.  If you cant find anyone in your room that can push you then get on the phone, get in a car, or find an Adam Machine (great teaching tool) because if you are that good then you are doing the right things, but I always found partners.  The best will seek out the best and find each other and if you really want to find a partner, you will.  People always ask me what I did for partners in high school:

1.Do you know who the best are?

2.Get the phone number of that person.

3.Call them and say I’m coming to train with you.

4.Problem solved!

Problem, if you think people should be calling you and you wait on other people you are losing days of valuable time that could be spent training.  Dave Schultz is probably the best example of someone who never put himself above anyone! He was willing to train, talk with, and learn from anyone.  Dave never let pride or an elitist attitude stop him in his pursuit to be the best.  And that is why Dave will long be remembered as one of the US’s greatest wrestlers of all time.

The List Could Go On:

This list of excuses is endless, but the real problem is your inability to be a self-motivated individual.  Self-motivated individuals will find a way to train no matter what the obstacles, they get the job done. Many of the top wrestlers that I competed with on World Teams never let injuries, travel delays, partners, or anything else that might arise hold them back.  One time we got delayed traveling overseas to Europe and the next flight would just get us there in time for weigh-ins but not enough time to get our weight off.  Our gear was in the plane, so as people walked through the airport they saw 20 guys in street clothes clearing ties, pummeling, squatting, and do anything they could to make the weight.  One guy was over so much that he needed his plastics so he went into the bathroom pulled out the garbage bag and dumped the trash into one of the bathroom stalls.  He then turned the bag inside out and punched holes into it for his head and arms.  He didn’t have the plastics he needed to make the weight so he found a set (I was laughing my A#$ off)!  Not one guy (besides the heavy weight who kept time for us) was sitting there saying, “Well it’s not our fault the plane got delayed, and we tried.”  The wall was the delay and we all found a way to get around it! Regardless of how ridiculous we might have looked and smelled when we finally left. No excuses. We got it done.

I have been asked the same question over a thousand times, “how did you come up with a back flip out as a counter to a single leg?”  I would like to take full credit for coming up with the counter but truth be told I was not the first person to hit the flip. 

I was asked to "blog". To "blog" is not something anyone would have asked me 10 years ago, about the same span of time since I've wrestled my last match. But, the blog and the tweet and the facebook poke, etc. are things that have come about from our technologically dominated lives....mainly the internet. Which, to me, is one of the greatest inventions in history b/c it makes communicating and getting information a zillion times easier than ever.

These days, technology runs my life, I think, more than most. I am a trader now. You know, the stock market, pork bellies, gold etc. etc.. You might have seen those madmen on CNBC or something screaming at the top of their lungs. I'm one of them, but in our modern age I get to do my trading from an office that's as quiet as a library most of time. At work, I stare at 5 computer screens all day long and click a mouse to enter and exit trades. As serious as the business is, it couldn't look more like I was playing a video game..Then, I come home, and well, look at me now, for example....I'm on the internet "blogging".

I want to brief, thorough and helpful. Only moments ago, I was watching videos on the internet to figure out something I was trying to teach myself in music and that's when it came to me how I can help any young wrestler or coach with just a few words of advice.

I want to tell a very short background story. Early in high school I somehow got my hands on a few videocassettes of international wrestling. All the best guys in the world were on the tapes. And, to me, they were priceless. I have never been a sports fan, and that includes wrestling. I don't watch sports on t.v. but a couple times a year and I frequently turn down tickets to Cubs games, etc.. But, I watched those wrestling videos over and over and over again. I got better at wrestling by watching how amazing someone could really become. It raised my standards technically, and got my imagination going too. Just aiming to be at that level (on the videotapes), and knowing what that level actually looked like, gave me such an advantage.

If you're into acting, let's say, or music, or mainstream sports for that matter (NFL, NBA etc.) you've had full and instant access to see or hear the very best the world has ever seen at any time you want. LeBron's on T.V. 100 nights a year...The radio (and internet) play music and movies to no end. But, if you were me in 1987 and you really wanted to watch someone like 8x world champion Sergey Belaglazov compete, you were out of luck. There was just no access to it. Until I got those tapes, I was left to only wonder what the "Big Leagues" were like in my sport and that was not a good thing.

Now, with the internet, any one of you wrestlers or coaches can have the same exact matches I watched and 1000 others playing for you inside of a half a minute, without moving an inch from where you are right now! That's is an INCREDIBLE fact, I think.

I would never tell anyone to do anything, because what works for one person, doesn't for another, and I don't know who it is reading this, but if you think it might help, then get on the internet and watch some of the world level competition.

You don't have to wonder, like I did when I was a kid, what the very best wrestlers the world has ever seen are like when they compete. You don't have to wonder what would work against the best and you do get see what is really possible.

Alan Fried is a native of Ohio wrestling for St. Edwards and NCAA Champion for Oklahoma State University

If you have some how battled your way into an overtime match you need to understand the strategy when you start the sudden death period on your feet.  If you are part of the club than you should be in shape and able to move just like you did when you started the match.

  First, how did you get to and overtime match?  This will allow us to pick a course of action to win the bout.

  Tight Match (the score between you and your opponent has been even from the start)

  If you scored a takedown during the bout you want to attempt to use the same shot to win in overtime.  He did not stop it the first time and more than likely is now tired and will not stop it the second time.

This shot now needs to be set-up with a minimum of 2-3 body and hand fakes to break down his reaction, or hit from the standing front healock position when he brings his head up.

Front headlock snap and spin should always be given priority in sudden death

  Battled back from being down

  If you have battled back from being down 4 or more points your opponent is now exhausted and has let you back into the bout.

Solid collar ties spending the first :30 sec of overtime only working to pull him to the mat and spin.

If you have not succeeded in a spin at this point stay on the head and continually pull down look for sweep single to avoid him catching a front headlock and stalemating the position and running down the clock.  Run the corner right away on the single.

Important:  do not rush the scoring action he is tired so :30 sec. of hand fighing and faking will soften him up.  If you rush a sloppy shot it will be easy for him to capture the front headlock and stalemate.

I recently had a conversation with a coach and he explained that he loved my site and tuned in for the live clinics every week but wasn't a member of the site.  He explained that he loved his DVD collection and that he liked the idea that if he needed to go back to review he could pop the DVD into the player and find the technique he was looking for.  He also explained buying a membership to Kolat.com each year was not within his budget.

This is about the evolution of coaching and getting people to look at the value of how Kolat.com will not only make teaching/learning technique easier but also save you time and money if these are concerns of yours.  Time should be the number one priority to all of us in our lives because it can not be replaced.  After talking with him I figured out that it took him about 5-10 minutes to find a technique on DVD if he needed to find something.  He would have to find the DVD, get to the DVD player, watch the standard copyright protection notice, hit play, and then skim through the chapters until he found the move he wanted to teach that day.  After explaining that if he was sitting near a computer at home, work, or just about anywhere,  he could dropped the name of the move or a description of the move into our search function and found the technique on the spot.  He could also save the techniques in the my practice section for review later, if he wanted to watch that DVD again the next day to review again he was gonna have to go through the same procedure.  Kolat.com will save you time and that is what is important when preparing for practice.

Next, money is another important issue and when you're reaching into your pockets you want to spend it on something useful,  especially right now with what is going on in the global economy.  The coach explained that he had about 44 DVD's in his collection covering technique across the board and he loves his collection.  I asked him the following questions:

1.  What do you think the avg. cost was per DVD as you built that library over time (keeping in mind that the cost has increased over time)  $40.00 2.  Did you pay for shipping of those DVD's?  Yes, probably $8.95 per dvd. 2.  What is the avg. number of techniques on each DVD if we combined all of them?  He said 20 to 25 so I split the difference:  23

After receiving the information,  this is the cost breakdown:

Cost per DVD:                        $40.00                                Kolat.com 1 yr. Membership:  $159.95 Shipping:                                $8.95                                  Shipping:                                 $0.00 Cost Per Technique he paid:  $1.91  (1012 techniques)   Cost Per Technique:                $0.11     (1350 currently)                              His Total Collection Cost:       $2153.80                                  

As you can see, he could purchase 13 years on Kolat.com for the time and money he put into this collection. And remember our site in constantly adding new techniques from solid coaches and athletes which keeps the site current.  Particularly pertaining to this coach, he still would have to purchase an additional 14 DVD's to his current collection of 44 to catch the Kolat.com library.

Now that I got him past the cost and the ownership of the material he needed to see past the cost and realize the real value of Kolat.com vs. his DVD collection:

His DVD collection gets older every year and Kolat.com grows every month. How many products do you own that truly get better with time?

Technique evolves:  Kolat.com has the capability of evolving with the sport.

He did not get to email, call, or contact the clinician on the DVD before they began making it asking him to add this or that.  Kolat.com is about giving members the technique they are looking for this site is tailored to fit the needs of our members.

Live clinics each week because you are a member and you can request what is covered and ask questions.

Ability to search the content and save yourself TIME

Ability to save workouts and plan out training techniques for the week per our feature "my practice"

Ownership, Kolat.com gives you more ownership than you know with all of the above we just don't sit on your shelf collecting dust.

Everything changes and it's about being better, faster, smarter, and the ability to quickly adapt to stay ahead of the competition.  Years ago,  you would not enter a wrestling room and expect to see wrestlers using rubber bands for weight training, throwing heavy balls against the wall, jumping from box to box to build speed but now this is normal everyday training.