By Caleb Steven, head wrestling coach Combat Sports School, Phase 2 advanced CQC/MSD exponent
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore is not an act, but a habit”
Aristotle
Recently I was helping our Master Chief Instructor shifting some stuff from town out to the camp, whilst on the drive we got onto the subject of the necessity of drilling techniques to acquire refined motor patterning either for competitive success or more importantly saving yourself on the street, he surmised this notion perfectly by saying you need to drill skills by majority to win by minority, this resonates with me in so many ways, so let’s deconstruct this statement and discuss its importance.
I am a huge fan of drilling skills and I have been for a very long time, but why am I a fan…
Chris Taylor against Wilfred Dietrich
Roller et al (2012) in Contemporary Issues and Theories of Motor Control, Motor Learning, and Neuroplasticity, the production and control of human movement is a process that varies from a simple reflex loop to a complex network of neural patterns that communicate throughout the Central Nervous System (CNS) and Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). New motor patterns are learned through movement, interactions with rich sensory environments, and challenging experiences that challenge a person to solve problems they encounter.
To me what this means is, firstly we need to train to build the skill, this means building the skills with the fewest variables as possible, how I coach people is give them the broad concept of what they are doing, what it looks like and the least amount of information possible at the start (I like to get people doing the movement then refine), this way they practice the skill or how they interpreted it (movement) and then inform them as they go to make it better (interaction), after building the base skill (movement pattern and intrinsic feeling of the skill) then I like to layer the bricks as it were, and slightly change variables as they go (rich sensory environments, extrinsic feeling of skill variables), changing one variable at a time (position, timing, defence, distance) allows the skill to remain fairly unchanged minus the situation, after countless repetitions is the time to start utilizing the skill in a more competitive fashion (challenging experiences) to layer in the last portion of the above formula, as people now have some information in their knowledge of the movement and situations that they can use to try problem solve the situations (having a situational library to draw upon to solve either new similar situations or entirely new complex challenges) that may arise from an active resistive competitor.
Any time I had free from the gym I was shadowing drills on my own, at home, when I was working, when I was at the gym before anyone else got there, and after people would leave, something my students often point out is how tight my positioning is when I hit a move like an arm drag or 2 on 1, these were drills I would consistently do if I had a spare moment, they don’t require very much thought from me at all now, they were a huge part of how I wrestled competitively, eventually but not always, I went through many overhauls of my wrestling style, I would have some good successes but would come across people I couldn’t beat or score upon and had to set my ego aside and take my in gym losses to try and overcome a plateau by changing key components of the current style I had to find better ways of doing things, ways that would allow me to stay on par with bigger and stronger opponents, I was one of the smaller members of our wrestling team and we had many national champions so had a great environment to trial and test myself and acquired skills.
To me whatever skill you decide upon is usually only the middle portion of a situation, and the original piece of the puzzle to get, either side of the skill itself you have the set-up, and the finish, the set up gets you in place to perform your skill, and is a huge obstacle that needs overcome.
Some of the factors that change in the set up phase are the distance between you and your opponent, the timing that you use (or exploit if they leave an opening including fakes to draw a reaction), positional advantages and control ties.
The middle portion remains largely unchanged in my opinion, but is the most valuable portion that gives you the information required to easily finish a skill or arduously struggle to succeed or potentially fail, in a takedown you receive feedback via the opponents weight or lack thereof, the feeling of a large amount of weight is part of a feedback mechanism or feedback loop, drilling allows you a sensitivity to the shift of weight in the movement that you have felt a thousand times before, so when you feel these resistive forces, it’s a signal (if paying attention) to change angle or technique to finish, if an opponent is resisting they are usually distributing weight and force in a particular linear direction, so you need to create an equal or overwhelming amount of force opposed to their efforts, or a simple change of direction or supplementary associated skill means you don’t have to use near as much force to overcome them, this is true control in my opinion and what the Master Chief taught me years ago, the concept of resist and yield.
The ending portion is determined by that weight shift and is the last part in the drilling equation, you practiced how to get there, you have a move, and you vary the way you finish based on the variables, in my eyes, high level competitors are the ones that adapt the best, you are either diverse or a specialist and 2 great wrestling based examples to give are 2 American greats.
John Smith
John smith, was in my opinion a specialist, He is a two-time NCAA Division I national champion, and a six-time world level champion with two Olympic Championships and four World Wrestling Championships. As of October 2019, he has won more world-level gold medals in wrestling than any other American, in international competition his record was 100 wins and only 5 losses and won 6 consecutive world championships, he was known for one move, the one named after him, the john smith single, every single person he faced knew he was going to shoot a low single, and what he did was drill and drill and drill, every time in competition if someone defended the low single he would go away, experiment and drill every way to defeat their defence, and was an absolute master and specialist with that move.
Smith obviously practiced and used other moves situationally what was best to win, but favoured the low single, in this highlight he hits low singles, singles, high crotch, double leg, fireman’s and arm spin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wYzaHE8DbY. A great match to watch is the 1989 world championships where Smith vs a highly technical wrestler from the USSR Sergei Beloglazov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jC_NSXkZiA
Dan Gable
The Next great is Dan Gable who was diverse, he is a two-time NCAA Division I national champion, a world gold medalist, and an Olympic gold medalist in the 1972 Munich summer Olympics and won without surrendering a single point in competition, As the University of Iowa’s all-time winningest coach from 1976 to 1997, Gable won 15 NCAA National Wrestling Team Titles while compiling a career record of 355-21-5, He coached 152 All-Americans, 45 National Champions, 106 Big Ten Champions and 12 Olympians, including four gold, one silver and three bronze medalists. The Hawkeyes won 25 consecutive Big Ten championships, 21 under Gable as head coach and four while he was an assistant coach and administrator. He had a winning percentage of .932 and captured nine consecutive (1978-86) NCAA Championships.
“The obvious goals were there- State Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words, to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the mat.” Dan Gable
Gable when preparing for the Olympics trained 7 hours a day, 7 days a week and was a picture of pure dedication to winning that medal, in this short clip you can also see the level to which he has and expects his athletes to drill at in order to train under him in the Iowa program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaX0LF70Lh8
One of my personal all-time favourite wrestlers Cary Kolat, says that live wrestling was a small part of his training and that 70% to 80% of his training revolved around drill practices. He says, “I got a better workout from drilling than I ever did from live wrestling.”
I wholeheartedly agree with Kolat on this point, the problem with live wrestling is often we can be passive, I know when I wrestle competitively I often will utilise a counter offensive style to be conservative with my energy, as many wrestlers in the gym also do, they don’t attack, they wait, this is problematic if done consistently because this won’t prepare us fully for the rigors of competition against high output opponents. With drilling especially in a gauntlet fashion (1 person performing takedowns vs several opponents, meaning there is little to no rest between takedowns) can be taxing and challenging, otherwise if drilling in a 1 vs 1 traditional situation you need a dedicated partner that doesn’t waste time, too often people want to talk, or take too long to get up off of the ground, I, myself as a drilling partner tried to make a point after getting taken down or thrown, of being up before the attacking partner, to be sure that they got in the most repetitions per session per move as they could. Drilling itself is an artificial match with high output; it is a process of skill acquisition also, but an important tool to go above and beyond match pace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY3NEEqQRrk. My favourite all time wrestler Wade Schalles, who holds the all time records for wins (821) and pins (530), defeating over 30 national champions (pinning 17) was an absolute drilling machine and attributes drilling to being the main driver of successful athletes.
Vasyl Lomachenko
To put this in a different sport context, if you’re a boxer you can’t spar all the time, it’s not a good or healthy thing to do, My favourite all time boxer is a man by the name of Vasyl Lomachenko, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ZqfOVFc3k He spent years alone perfecting his footwork for boxing by learning and practicing dance, and spends meticulous hours drilling his physical skills through pad and bag work, as well as mental skills training, this man is such an impressive boxer that he fought Guillermo Rigondeaux a man once ranked 6th on the pound for pound list of great boxers and almost didn’t get punched once and made his opponent quit half way through the fight.
Floyd Mayweather (with a record of 50 fights and no losses) a man who has been boxing from a very young age, Starting his professional career in 1996 still practicing his jab, every all-time great has put the hours in drilling in the gym as well as many boxing greats, in my opinion we are never too good for the basics.
So drilling by majority to me is this, drilling major or high percentage skills, a majority of the time, and through gradual layering of the variables and situational differences, refining the techniques so you can’t get the movement wrong, and then testing the validity of your skills against other training partners in controlled fashion (limited speed and strength, in competitive in gym scenarios I don’t believe intent should ever be over 80% as a high estimate) before putting it against other high level competitors, that my friends is winning by minority, beating peer or above opponents with skill and wit, by means of countless repetitions and hours refining your craft. This is how I trained with Geoff Todd our Master Chief with any training that I have had under his supervision it is also in wrestling with Alan Rolton, Scott Hewit, Steve Wylie, Brent Hollamby or Karl Webber in grappling as well as work I have done with Gareth Ealey and some of Karl’s other top fighters.
I tell my athletes all the time everyone always wants to do the fun stuff, but no one wants to put in the work, and whilst doing things in a competitive way is fun, it only serves to build our ego via winning, however many great lessons are also had by losing, and that is where growth occurs, but not before we refine the patterns, otherwise we not only get false data as to our timing or choice of technique (mostly from inefficient movement patterning) but the opportunities are few and far between of learning intervals, most times athletes don’t realise that they miss many opportunities in sparring or active wrestling because they haven’t trained enough to know what they don’t know, you can’t build Rome in a day, but you could destroy it in one.
I started this article with a quote of excellence so feel it’s only right to finish in the same way because excellence is never an accident, it’s the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution and the vision to see every obstacles as an opportunity.
“Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well”
John William Gardener
My friends, train hard, stay fight ready and continue to sharpen your weapons daily without fail.
