JJ WRESTLING
Pre-Season Running Program
This is the recommended running program to get yourself in competitive shape for the upcoming season. There are 3 components to this program: Distance, Interval and sprint. In wrestling, you will be calling on all of these aerobic and anaerobic systems during your practices and matches. If you subscribe to this program, you will be in superior conditioning, usually burying the competition in the 3rd period. We have always said that you may lack experience or skill for one reason or another, but there is no excuse for not being in shape, other than just being lazy.
This program will allow you to be relentless, and constantly push the pace on the mat, which is what separated the Good from the Great. Just read this article from a former US Greco Olympic Champion, Steve Fraser, on what his thoughts were while watching the last Olympics from mat side and studying the victors that made it to the podium. Here is just a snippet of what he had to say……
“I walked away with two main things that I saw. The first one is, for the most part, the athletes winning the medals are all tenacious fighters. They are in OUTSTANDING cardiovascular conditioning. They are strong. They are smart. And they will do whatever it takes to put points on the board. If you go back and look at photos or video of the wrestlers receiving their medals, you will see one thing very clearly. You will see banged up, battered and bruised faces. They most always look like they have been beaten up and punched from ear to ear.
I believe to be the best in the world you must be willing to fight to the death! And when I say fight to the death I mean always moving forward, attacking with relentless resolve, never backing down. All three of our Olympic medalists display that tenfold”
Ok, so here it is. This is actually close to the program that I followed in HS and College, except I did a little more. 3 days a week should be fine…DO NOT MISS. Part of the program is the mental piece… that when you don’t feel like doing it, YOU DO!
Day 1–Distance: Go out and run 2-3 miles at a decent clip and finish strong. Start out with whatever you can do, if it is a run/walk that is fine, it doesn’t matter, just build up to the 2-3 mile runs. Make sure you time and chart. Nothing like competing against yourself and you’ll be pumped when you get a personal best. Keep adding to that positive, confident mental experience. This will give you an underlying base of conditioning that will hold you through overtime matches. Should only take you 15-25 minutes. Not a huge time consumer.
Day 2–Intervals: On the road or at the track find a stretch that is 100-150 yards long. What you want to do is work up to is 8-10 of these interval sprints. After each sprint, turn around and walk back towards the starting line for the next sprint. When you have caught your breath, jog back to the line and run your next one. Wrestling matches tend to be a series of 15-30 second goes, and this is perfect training for that.
Day 3–Sprint: You can do these anywhere that is convenient. What you want to do is work on your explosiveness. Start with 5 yard sprints and add 5 yards, and then do 10 yard sprints. Go to up to about 25 yards. Do 4-5 at each distance. As soon as you are ready to go, GO. You can train yourself to be more explosive on the mat and this is one of the ways to do it.
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Make sure you have at least a day of rest in between each running day and pick a consistent time during the day when you can knock these out. Morning, afternoon or night. None of these workouts take very long but they will make a HUGE difference in your performance in the circle. Good Luck.