How To Get Kids To Develop A Good Wrestling Stance

All successful wrestling begins with a solid stance. Without it, your moves are less powerful and your body moves more slowly. When coaching kids, it can be hard to convince them of the importance of a strong stance because it's not a "flashy" move like a throw or a pinning combination. Misdirection can help teach kids good stance by getting them to focus on something else while they're "coincidentally" also working the basics.

Step 1

Warm up classes with circle drills. A circle drill is when all students stand in a circle, then move around it as a group while in a mobile wrestling stance. This gives you an opportunity to examine the stances of everybody on the team and assess who needs special attention in this area.

Step 2

Conduct takedown drills where two students work together with one trying to take the other down and the other defending. When a student successfully takes the other down, point out the flaw in stance that allowed it to happen. When a student successfully counters an incoming takedown attempt, show how a good stance made that possible.

Step 3

Play "correct coach" by assuming a poor stance and asking your team to explain how to make it a good stance. This exercises their observation and increases their intellectual understanding of what makes a good stance. As your team improves in their skills, you can make progressively subtler errors.

Step 4

Freeze athletes occasionally when you see them in noticeably good or bad stances. Demonstrate to the class exactly what's right or wrong. For many kids, catching the good stance is a more effective teaching tool than publicly calling out their mistakes.

Step 5

Conduct exercises during conditioning that work the muscles responsible for a strong stance: the thighs, abs and lower back. Situps, crunches, superman exercises, squats, burpees and gymnastics moves are all good candidates for kids to develop these muscles.

Tips and Warnings

Always reinforce a kid's stance within seconds of seeing it -- either for good or bad. If you tell a child 10 minutes later, he might not be able to connect the message with the behavior you observed. That's a cognitive skill that develops at the middle school or even high school age.