Get Into Shape While Improving Your Wrestling Skills
…wrestling, like lifting heavy weights, is necessary for a strong, healthy, virile body.
Wrestling is a sport based on shoving, grabbing, slamming, pinning, and otherwise controlling an unwilling opponent. Although many other sports, such as football or rugby, incorporate these strategies to some degree, it is the primary goal of the wrestler. It is easy to see then these guys are some tough SOBs. In fact, wrestling has been one of the primary means of demonstrating manhood across cultures and throughout history. From Icelandic glima to Japanese sumo to Turkish oil-wrestling almost every culture has had some indigenous form of grappling. A quick read through anything written by early European and American physical culturists such as Hackenschmidt, Leiderman, and Sandow will reveal a consensus – that wrestling, like lifting heavy weights, is necessary for a strong, healthy, virile body. However, at some point this connection between strength, physique, and wrestling was severed leaving many guys with buffed-out beach body muscles they couldn’t use to defend themselves if they had to.
The intent of this article is not to make anyone feel insecure or start some sort of physical culture revolution. My goal is to reintroduce some exercises and training methods were lost to the strength and bodybuilding world when lifting and wrestling parted ways. These exercises are designed not only to build strength and endurance, but also to add some mental toughness and competitiveness to a possibly stagnant training program. Incorporating some of these drills into your program will work your muscles in ways you didn’t know possible – and also to reconnect with your inner barbarian. So read this article, watch Conan, and then give these exercises a try.