What’s the best way to improve endurance for wrestling?

The Unforgiving Third Period

It’s the most frustrating way to lose a wrestling match, and it happens every single weekend in tournaments all across the country.

Your wrestler is in a war. It’s the third period, the score is close. You’ve seen him hit that takedown a thousand times in practice. But now, his stance is high. His shots are slow and desperate. His hands have stopped moving. He’s running on fumes.

His opponent pushes the pace, gets to a leg, and your wrestler just doesn’t have the horsepower to defend. The takedown comes, and the match is lost.

What went wrong? He just gassed out.

After a loss like that, the old-school mentality kicks in, and the answer you’ll hear from most coaches is simple: "He just needs to wrestle more! More live goes!" or "He needs more road work."

And here’s the hard truth: While those coaches aren't entirely wrong, they are dangerously incomplete in their thinking.

Relying on wrestling practice or running alone to build a world-class engine is one of the biggest mistakes in our sport. It’s an inefficient, incomplete, and often injurious way to build the kind of relentless, match-winning endurance a champion needs.

This article will break down the real formula for building an unstoppable wrestling engine. It's a hybrid approach that combines the irreplaceable value of live wrestling with a targeted conditioning program that forges all three of the engines a wrestler needs to dominate for a full six minutes, and then do it all over again.

Part 1: The Non-Negotiable Foundation - Wrestling

Let's get one thing straight right from the start: The single most important thing you can do to get in shape for wrestling is to wrestle.

I'm not here to tell you that what you do in the weight room is more important than what you do on the mat. That's nonsense. Anyone who tells you that you can get into elite wrestling shape without putting in thousands of hours of hard drilling and live wrestling is either a fool or a liar.

The Law of Specificity

There's a foundational rule in athletic training called the SAID Principle, which stands for Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.

In simple terms: Your body gets good at exactly what you tell it to do.

If you want to get good at handling the unique, brutal, and chaotic demands of a six-minute wrestling match, you absolutely must spend time wrestling. There is no other way.

All the strength and conditioning in the world cannot perfectly replicate the specific cocktail of stressors that wrestling throws at you:

The constant tension and isometric strength required for hand-fighting and controlling tie-ups.
The awkward, contorted positions you find yourself in during a scramble.
The grip endurance needed to hang on for a full period.
The mental pressure of competing against a thinking, fighting opponent who is actively trying to break you.

Wrestling practice is the ultimate form of wrestling-specific conditioning. It is where your skills are tested under fatigue. It is, and always will be, the most important part of your training.

But it is not the only part. And relying on it alone to build your physical capacity is a massive, progress-killing mistake. It's the primary tool, but it's not the only tool in the box, and a master craftsman never tries to build a house with just a hammer.

Part 2: The Plateau of Practice-Only Training

Alright, we've established that wrestling is the king. Nothing replaces mat time. So why isn't the answer to a bad gas tank or a lack of strength simply "more wrestling"?

The answer is one word: Plateaus.

Wrestling practice, by itself, is a poor tool for the systematic and continuous development of the raw athletic skills a wrestler needs to dominate. While you will get better at the sport, you will inevitably hit a brutal plateau in your physical development.

Here’s why.

You Can't Program Progress in a Scramble

Think about the ten universal athletic skills we are trying to elevate: Strength, Speed, Power, Cardio, Stamina, Flexibility, Balance, Coordination, Agility, and Accuracy.

A smart Strength & Conditioning program can isolate and overload each of these qualities with scientific precision.

If you need to get stronger, we follow a progressive plan to add weight to your squat.
If your explosive power is weak, we program specific Olympic lifting cycles.
If your long-range engine is failing, we attack it with targeted, long-duration Metcons.

The progression is endless. We can manipulate the load, the volume, the intensity, and the movements to ensure you are always making measurable progress in every single one of these ten categories. We can ensure you never hit a plateau.

The Brutal Plateau of Wrestling-Only Training

Now, think about trying to improve those same qualities with only live wrestling.

Can you guarantee that today's practice will provide the exact stimulus needed to increase your maximal strength? No. Can you precisely measure if your anaerobic power output increased by 5% this week? No.

Live wrestling is chaos. It's an incredible tool for testing your current abilities in a real-world environment, but it's an inefficient, almost random, tool for systematically building those abilities. Relying on it as your only physical training will absolutely lead to brutal plateaus. You will become very skilled at your current level of strength, but you will stop getting fundamentally stronger, faster, and more powerful.

This is the hard truth: You cannot get to the 99th percentile of athletic ability by just wrestling.

To break through those plateaus and build a truly elite physical engine, you need a separate, targeted, and measurable S&C program. It's the only way to ensure you are continuously raising your athletic ceiling, month after month, year after year.

Part 3: The S&C Fix - Forging the Hybrid Engine

Alright, we've established that relying on wrestling alone is a direct path to hitting a physical plateau. So, how do we fix it?

We fix it by going back to the shop and systematically upgrading the engine. A world-class gas tank isn't built by accident. It's built by deliberately targeting the three distinct energy systems that a wrestling match demands.

A smart S&C program can do this with a level of precision that the chaos of a live roll simply cannot match. We attack each engine with a specific tool to force a specific adaptation.

Building Engine #1: The 10-Second War (Anaerobic Power)

What it is on the mat: Your explosive double-leg takedown. A violent, powerful mat return. The ability to generate overwhelming force in a split second.
Why S&C is the Answer: How do you get better at producing that explosive, short-duration power? You do it by practicing exactly that. A heavy Power Clean or a max-effort Box Jump trains this specific quality far more effectively and measurably than any wrestling drill. We can systematically apply the Overload Principle—adding weight or height—to guarantee that you are getting more explosive over time. We are literally training your nervous system to be more violent.

Building Engine #2: The 60-Second Scramble (Glycolytic Capacity)

What it is on the mat: The ability to operate deep in the "pain cave" during a long, unbroken, high-output scramble. It's the engine that fuels the fight when your muscles are on fire.
Why S&C is the Answer: We can't just hope a long scramble happens in practice. We have to force it. A workout like "Fran" (21-15-9 of thrusters and pull-ups) or a brutal Assault Bike Tabata is a controlled, repeatable, and measurable dose of this exact stimulus. We are deliberately exposing the body to this specific "flavor of pain" to build a massive tolerance for it. We are forging an athlete who is comfortable in the fire.

Building Engine #3: The Third-Period Engine (Aerobic Recovery)

What it is on the mat: This is the engine that keeps you fresh in the third period. It's your ability to recover your breath between those violent scrambles. It's the diesel motor.
Why S&C is the Answer: A typical wrestling practice, with its constant start-and-stop nature, often fails to fully develop this massive aerobic base. A 20-minute grinder Metcon or a long, steady-state row forces the body to become incredibly efficient at using oxygen. This is what builds the kind of relentless, all-day endurance that shows up when it matters most. A huge aerobic engine is what allows you to fire your explosive engine over and over again in the final minutes of a war.

This is how you build a complete, hybrid engine. This is how you create a wrestler who can sprint, scramble, and grind with equal ferocity.

Part 4: The Unseen Advantage - Forging a Skilled Mover

There’s one more layer to this, and it's the one that separates the truly elite from everyone else who just works hard.

This is the concept of skilled movement, or what I call economy of motion.

Leopard vs. Bambi: The Efficiency Factor

Watch a well-trained athlete move. They're like a leopard—powerful, fluid, and ruthlessly efficient. Every movement has a purpose. There is no wasted energy. Now, watch an untrained or new athlete move. They're often like Bambi on ice—jerky, unstable, and awkward. They might be strong, but they're leaking massive amounts of energy with every step.

Our goal is to turn our athletes into leopards.

The reason is simple physics: Power = Work / Time. The ultimate goal in a wrestling match is to have the highest possible average power output for the entire six minutes. You want to be able to do more work, faster, than your opponent, from the first whistle to the last.

An inefficient mover—the Bambi—burns through their gas tank just trying to stay balanced and control their own body. A skilled mover—the leopard—uses almost all of their energy to impose their will on their opponent. Their work capacity is exponentially higher, not just because their engine is bigger, but because they are ruthlessly efficient.

Building Universal Motor Patterns

So how do we build this? This is where the Hierarchy of Movements becomes critical. We don't just choose lifts because they make you strong; we choose them because they are the ultimate teachers of universal motor recruitment patterns. Patterns that show up both in the weight room and on the mat.

Think about the Squat. It teaches the fundamental pattern of triple flexion and extension (ankles, knees, hips) under a heavy load with a braced core. It is a lesson in how to generate force from the ground up.

Think about the Clean. It teaches the violent, coordinated hip extension that is the engine of all athletic power.

By mastering these "master key" movements in the gym with perfect technique, we are hardwiring the nervous system with the most efficient patterns for producing force.

The Power of Transference

This is the magic. This is the part that most people miss.

When you become a master of moving a barbell with skill and efficiency, that skill transfers to the mat. Your body doesn't know the difference between the hip extension needed to launch a heavy clean and the hip extension needed to finish a powerful double-leg. It only knows the motor pattern.

The ability to maintain a braced, neutral spine under a heavy Deadlift is the exact same skill needed to stay in a strong, safe position during a lift or scramble.
The balance and coordination learned in a full-depth Overhead Squat is the exact same skill needed to stay stable in a chaotic, off-balance position on the mat.

The productive use of force is entirely dependent on elite movement technique. By obsessing over perfect movement through thousands of reps in the weight room, we are building an athlete who moves like a leopard on the mat. They are stronger, more powerful, and have a deeper gas tank, all because they have learned the skill of not wasting energy.

Conclusion: The Complete System

So, what's the final answer to building a gas tank that never quits?

You need a hybrid system.

Wrestling practice is, and always will be, the king. It builds the specific skills and instincts for the sport. It's irreplaceable. But relying on it as your only tool for conditioning is like trying to build a house with only a hammer—you're missing half the tools you need to do the job right.

An intelligent, targeted Strength & Conditioning program is the other half of the equation. It's the only way to systematically build all three of your body's engines, forge you into a skilled and efficient mover, and break through the physical plateaus that wrestling practice alone will inevitably create.

One without the other is an incomplete formula that will always leave a hole in your game.

Think of it this way: Wrestling practice is like taking your race car to the track for a test run. You learn how to handle the curves, you feel out the competition, and you test the limits of your current machine.

Our S&C program is what happens back at the shop. It's where we systematically upgrade the engine (the 3 energy systems), perfect the chassis and alignment (the skilled movement), and increase the raw horsepower.

You need both to win championships.

The best-conditioned, most dominant wrestlers on the planet are not the ones who just wrestle the most. They are the ones who combine high-level, dedicated wrestling with a smart, measurable, and brutally effective strength and conditioning program. They are hybrid athletes.

This is the exact philosophy we use to build our athletes. If you're ready to stop just getting tired and start building a truly world-class, hybrid engine, the Champion's Circle provides the daily S&C blueprint to do it.

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Coach Dane Whitted
Champion's Path