Why Your Wrestler Is Slow (And How To Fix It)
Your wrestler isn't slow because of his genetics. He's slow because his training is flawed.
And that slowness is costing him matches he should be winning.
As a coach, I see parents and athletes chase speed with all the wrong tools. They run endless sprints, do punishing "conditioning" drills, and spend hours in the gym, only to see their wrestler still get beat to the punch on the mat. The frustration is real, because the work ethic is there, but the results aren't.
The mistake is thinking about "speed" as one single thing. It's not. Speed is a skill, and it's built in layers. If you are missing any one of these layers, you are building a fatal flaw into your athlete.
Layer 1: Athletic Speed
This is the foundation. Athletic speed is the skill and technique required to move the human body with maximal efficiency.
Think about it this way: when you see a kid run for the first time, some look natural and fluid, others look goofy and uncoordinated. But as soon as you teach that goofy runner a few simple technique tips—how to use their arms, how to drive their knees—they get instantly faster.
This applies to every single thing we do in the gym. A squat, a jump, a pull, a push—these are all skills. An athlete who masters these skills becomes a Skilled Mover. Their body becomes a ruthlessly efficient machine that doesn't leak energy.
The other side of this is the physical adaptation of the tissue and nervous system. As the muscle cells and the nervous system that fires them get stronger through intelligent training, the athlete's raw speed increases.
Layer 2: Wrestling Speed
This is how quickly an athlete can execute a wrestling move.
Wrestling Speed is built on two more factors:
- Technique Efficiency: Is the wrestling move itself maximally efficient? Are you getting from point A to point B on a straight path, or are you taking unnecessary detours? Are you creating the best leverage and torque with the best biomechanics? Inefficient wrestling technique is slow, no matter how fast the athlete is.
- Timing: This is the secret weapon. This is where an athlete with a physically "slower" body can still dominate. Timing is the ability to execute a wrestling move at the perfect moment. You develop this through thousands of hours of drilling and live wrestling. You learn to read your opponent's body language through sight and feel. You know what he's going to do before he does it.
For example, if your opponent always stutter-steps before he shoots, the next time he stutter-steps, you're already preparing your down-block. You are reacting to a signal he doesn't even know he's giving. That is Wrestling Speed.
The 3 Fatal Flaws Killing Your Wrestler's Speed
So why is your wrestler slow? Because his training is committing one of these three fatal flaws.
Flaw #1: Ignoring Athletic Skill.
Most programs throw strength on top of dysfunction. They have kids squatting, lifting, and jumping with sloppy form. You think you're building strength, but you're actually just reinforcing bad movement patterns. You core is never in the right shape, your "stretch shortening cycle" is not fluid, and your positioning is inaccurate. You are bleeding torque everywhere. You are teaching your athlete's body to be inefficient, which is the definition of slow.
Flaw #2: Building a Bodybuilder, Not a Coordinated Weapon.
This is the most common trap wrestlers fall into when they first touch a barbell. They train like a bodybuilder, and in doing so, they actively dismantle the very skills they need to dominate on the mat.
The fatal flaw of bodybuilding is that it is a practice of isolation. Bicep curls, leg extensions, chest flyes—these movements are designed to make a muscle grow by working it in a vacuum. They require zero athletic skill.
This de-coordinates the body. It fragments a single, powerful weapon into a collection of individual parts. It teaches muscles to work alone.
Wrestling is a full-body sport that lives and dies on total-body coordination, agility, accuracy, and balance. Every shot, every scramble, every mat return is a violent symphony of movement, transferring force from the ground, through the hips, and into an opponent.
Bodybuilding trains each musician in a separate room and hopes they can play together on game day. It's a recipe for disaster. You are building an athlete who is strong in pieces but weak as a whole. You are not just failing to build speed; you are actively sabotaging the body's ability to express it.
Flaw #3: Drilling Moves, Not Mastering Timing.
Drilling a double-leg 100 times is a start. But if you don't teach the athlete when to shoot it, you've only given him half the weapon. Timing is a mental skill. It's about pattern recognition. It must be deliberately coached with the same intensity as the physical movement with reactionary drills and live wrestling.
A slower athlete with good wrestling timing can beat a faster athlete with average wrestling timing, and it happens at he highest levels.
The Solution: Building the Complete Weapon
We fix this problem by attacking it with a complete, integrated system: The 4 Pillars. We don't chase "speed" as a separate quality; we build a complete athlete, and speed is the inevitable, violent result.
Here is how the system works together:
Our Skill and Strength pillars work in unison to build the physical foundation of all speed. We first create a Skilled Mover, teaching the body to be ruthlessly efficient and eliminating energy leaks. Then, we load that perfect movement to build raw horsepower, strengthen the muscle tissue, and upgrade the nervous system. This forges a powerful, explosive athlete.
But raw physical speed is useless if it can't last a full match or be applied at the right moment. That is where the other pillars come in.
Our Conditioning pillar builds the world-class engine that allows you to be just as fast in the third period as you were in the first. It is the ability to sustain your speed when others are fading.
Our Mindset pillar is what masters Timing. It forges an unshockable athlete who is calm in the chaos, able to process information, read their opponent, and execute with precision. A panicked mind is always a slow mind, no matter how fast the body is.
We don't train in pieces. We build a complete weapon, and speed is the edge of that weapon.
Find the Weak Link
If you want to know which layer of speed is the weak link in your wrestler's game, I've created a tool to help you find out. It's a free, 5-Minute Wrestler Audit that will show you the exact gaps in their preparation. Stop guessing, and start building.