End of Year 2009

Wrestling has officially ended for 2009, starting again 1st of February 2010.

We had our official end of year party today, with a ten pin bowling session organised for the kids followed by dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It was great to see everyone again. Hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year.

In reality, Emma and I will still be training over the holidays. She has just gone off to India again for the Commonwealth Championships. Good luck Emma!

Training Break

We are currently taking a break from training at Fremantle. In the meantime, we wish Coach Butler a speedy recovery from illness.

Emma Chalmers has left for the United States to compete in the NYAC Wrestling Championships. Good luck Emma!

The WA State Championships are tentatively scheduled for 6th December. We may recommence training the week prior to that. Any suggestions, please email Jonathan on: jonathantan77@yahoo.com

Jonathan on Holidays

I'll be on holidays for a couple of weeks. Monday 26-Oct-09 is the last training session that I will be taking until I return. There will be no Monday or Wednesday classes during this period.

I will resume taking classes on Monday 16-Nov-09.

For information on Wednesday classes, please contact Chris Butler.

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Emma Chalmers has got 2 more training sessions to finalise her training for the Invitation Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Tournament! All the best to her!

Updates Post School Age Nationals

First of all, congratulations to all Fremantle and WA wrestlers who competed at last week's School-age Nationals. It was a very successful event and the organisation was spot on.

Training at Freo is on this week only on Friday (16-Oct) for the seniors.

Next week, the only classes available are:
Juniors will resume training on Wednesday 21-Oct at 5.00pm. Rhea will run the class.
Senior classes will run on Monday and Friday next week.

Training Update

Training update for the National School-Age championships in October.

Everything is going pretty well, and we are working very closely to my overall plan. As of this week (mid September), we have 2 more weeks of conditioning left before tapering off for competition.

Technically, I still think that we are too light on defence. Defending against attacks starts with having a really aggressive attitude where you must push yourself to work harder than the attacker. Too often, wrestlers are still looking for quick go-behinds or reversals against their opponent's attacks.

Our sparring has become very focussed and quite competitive. 3 minutes is now the norm for each round.

Weigh In for 2009 Winter Cup

The weigh-in for Sunday's "Winter Cup" tournament will be held at Fremantle PCYC on Friday 24-July-09 at 6.30pm.

Scales will be available from 4:30 and weigh in will last for a period of 1 hour. Please remind your wrestlers that if you do no weigh in on Friday you cannot enter the comp.

Registration will also be done at the weigh in.

The tournament will be at Fremantle PCYC on Sunday 26-July-09, starting 10.30am.

No Training on Friday 24th-July

There is no training at Fremantle on Friday 24-July-09.

Training will be as normal on Mondays 20-July and 27-Jul.
Remember that there is also a tournament at Freo on Sunday 26th-July.

Training Schedule for School Holidays

To all Fremantle Wrestlers:

Wednesday 8-Jul-09: Chris Butler is away and there is no junior class. The senior class will be run by by Jonathan at 6.30pm-8.00pm.

Training will resume as normal the following week.

Conditioning Workouts

We've kicked off another phase of hard training and conditioning. This will take about 4 weeks, then we'll go into a peaking phase as a practice for competition.

I was happy with the general enthusiasm of the class, and congratulate everyone who participated today. It was tough. Sprints, squats and wrestling drills combined with a couple of live sparring matches really sapped us physically. But everyone kept their spirits together and managed to complete the tough day.

It will get tougher....but it will FEEL easier.

High Performance Workshop - 21 Jun 09 - Fremantle PCYC

I will be holding a "High Performance Introduction" workshop for interested wrestlers. I can confirm that the date will be Sunday 21-Jun-09 at Fremantle PCYC from 10.30am to 2.00pm. An official flyer will be emailed sometime in the next week.

The workshop is aimed at athletes who:
- Have had some competitive experience.
- Train regularly at class, but have not done much conditioning/training outside of class.
- Would like to commence serious training (for competition) within the next year.

All WWA members are welcome, but if you do not fit into the above categories, you may not find the workshop as useful. Coaches and parents are also welcome to attend or observe.

The workshop will consist of classroom style discussions and actual wrestling practice. Please come prepared with training attire and a change of clothes. Also, you might like to bring water and a snack. Sorry, I won't be providing lunch!

The official flyer will provide a bit more information. In the meantime, I would appreciate if you could confirm whether you wish to attend before 14-Jun. I need to know final numbers so I can print enough workshop notes and plan the wrestling clinic.

Regards,
Jonathan Tan
WWA High Performance
jonathantan77@yahoo.com

LAUNCH OF NEW BLOG

This is the official launch of the new Fremantle Wrestling Website. This will take over from the old Geocities website, as Geocities is soon closing down.

All the old posts from the Geocities site have been successfully transferred over here. Please visit the archives to view them.

2009 Australia Cup Results

Congratulations to the Fremantle Wrestlers below for their results in the 2009 Australia Cup

69 kg Male FS School-Age
Jasmit Phulka Canada
Blake Barden NSW
Daniel Carrigg WA

72 kg Female FS Senior
Emma Chalmers WA
Maryanne Mullahy Vic

Referee's Course

A referee's course was held at Fremantle PCYC today. The course facilitator was FILA Level 1 referee Larry Papadoupolis. A classroom session was held in the morning where attendees learned the scoring system and conventions used in refereeing. This was followed by a practice tournament where the attendees tested their knowledge by officiating on the mat.

Oceania Championships 2009

Congratulations to Emma Chalmers who has completed a great start to the year with a gold medal at the Oceania Championships (winning the coveted "best female wrestler" award too!) and third place at the Australian Nationals. All in all, she has won 7 out of her last 8 matches over two tournaments.

This training session marked the first step towards preparing for the Australia Cup. I've been preparing individual training programs for the wrestlers and we started putting them into practice today. We were mainly concerned with identifying strengths and weaknesses today. This gave the wrestlers a good understanding of the training path they would have to take over the next few months in order to address those weaknesses.

We will continue with drills and light sparring until the X-Cup at the end of March. That tournament will be a good indicator of match fitness. After that tournament, we will use its momentum to continue getting match ready for the Aus Cup.

As we wind down the short training phase leading towards the Oceania Games, there are a few noteworthy lessons to be taken away from it. The first is that there is no better way to get in shape than to do lots and lots of sparring. That is, don't save the sparring training till later in the training phase. Introduce sparring early on but keep it flowing and light. The heavy match practice can come later once the athlete is in decent competitive shape.

The second is that the peaking phase is extremely important. I was amazed at how the athletes could perfectly execute techniques in practice, but fail to seize the opportunity to use them while sparring. The peaking phase involves visualisation, timing and reflex training. It is quite easy to see how a week's worth of "peaking" training trims away so much wasted movement and hesitatation. I've incorporated a lot of mental drills for this Oceania training plan and it is having a tremendous effect. Having great technical execution was simply not good enough. I could see that transitioning from one move to another was the area where a lot of time was wasted *thinking* about what move to go to next. Mental training, flow drills and developing a good strategy had a great effect towards solving this. However, "peaking" is also the phase that requires the greatest coaching resource. While it is relatively easy to drill a large class on basic techniques and making them spar, every wrestler has individual problems which must be solved by developing mental drills etc which are suitable for that individual.

Today we discussed the importance of getting everyone in the class to consolidate the basic moves that we spent so long learning last year. I stressed that learning a single leg attack, a central penetration attack and the snapdown-go-behind attack.

Since these techniques are pretty familiar to everyone in the class, it is important to drill them at a fast pace and high intensity. This allows the move to be done as though it was in a real wrestling match. If a mistake is made, then the timing will be out and the move will not "flow" nicely. These drills are also great for fitness. We will continue to drill these moves often in class. Practice makes perfect....especially when it is for these important basic techniques.

New techniques should be drilled at a slower pace to learn the subtle details. We also did those sorts of drills today. Once the moves can be done smoothly, then the pace of the drills should be increased.

We've started the new year with a bang. The first week of training was very successful, with the main focus being getting back in shape for the Oceania Championships in March. Friday's session concentrated on revising and drilling the centre penetration shots vs. the side-angle shots. There is no better illustration of the single leg attack from a side angle than this: Smith vs Bohay.

Smith demonstrates just about every trick in the book to get the single leg takedown on a very tough opponent. He scoots out to the side, gets out from under the sprawl and stands up. He elevates the leg well and puts tremendous pressure with a tight grip. He steps in and tries to trip the opponent, who manages to defend very well. Smith also tries to change direction and drag the opponent down using the "round the pipe" technique. Finally, he re-elevates the leg and successfully trips the opponent.

After that, Smith goes for a hi-crotch and this time, he stays in the centre. He gets a deep, penetrating shot and drives his rear leg in to continue his forward momentum. He gets into a good position, straightens up and lifts. He turns while continuing to drive and gets his opponent down to the mat.