Wrestling Is it worth it training wrestling only once a week?

[freezer]

I have great admiration for the effectiveness of wrestling and wrestlers, and always want to learn wrestling. The problem is, wrestling clubs for adults are hard to find where I live. Luckily, a free-style westling club opened up 2 years ago in a nearby city, and I visited them a while ago. The club is very far away from where I live. I have to take the metro, then transfer to a train which takes me to a railway station. Finally I need to take the local bus to get there. It takes two hours just to get there. The training looked decent, but they only train once a week, on Saturday, due to the scarcity of members. My question is, it is worth it training wrestling only once a week? Can I make reasonable progress? How long would it take to become decent at wrestling provided that I can only train once a week? It does require a lot of dedication to travel so far just to get there every week, so I'd like to know if the significant investment of time and energy would be worth it. Thank you for your advice.

On a sidenote, there are quite a few BJJ clubs in the city where I live, but can jiu jitsu replace wrestling? Is it necessary to learn wrestling in addition to jiu jitsu?

 

[ChickenBrother]

It depends on your goals and schedule. What is your training background and do you want to compete in freestyle or BJJ? Any amount of training is better than nothing but progress will be slow training only once per week.

BJJ can't "replace" wrestling because while there is overlap, they are different rulesets with different scoring. And practices vary by club - some BJJ clubs teach starting live on the feet and wrestling TDs are relevant unless everyone at the club are butt scooting, guard pulling bitches in which case YMMV.

If your goal is to be a well-rounded hobbyist grappler, I would start with a local BJJ club and find one that teaches basic TDs and goes live from standing. That's the best one-size-fits-all. Plan to do at least 2-3 practices/week for meaningful progress and only supplement with 1 practice/week wrestling if you can't find a BJJ club that teaches TDs.

If your priority is TDs, you will need regular training at a wrestling or Judo club. Bear in mind that a big part of what makes wrestlers effective is the intense conditioning that goes with the sport. You're not going to develop that training only once/week.

 

[period]

If you can only train at a club once per week, how much progress you make would come down to how much you drill at home. Still, it's questionable whether that would justify the 4+ hours of commuting for 2 hours of training at best. Your best bet would be to find a committed friend who's willing to go there with you and drill with you 2-3x per week in addition to that.
As for "reasonable progress" and "decent", that will depend on your definition of that, as well as your talent, athletic ability, dedication, whether you manage to avoid critical injuries etc.

 

[ChessJitsu]

I would say yes, absolutely.

Is it good enough for any level of competition (in wrestling)? No.

If you do BJJ and are oriented towards grappling in general, once-a-week is going to be perfectly fine to improve your game.

 

[mattemate]

No. You should give up. Your future is bed rot.

 

[Cole train]

Back when i competed in mma wrestling once a week was beneficial since takedowns were heavily ignored at my gym

 

[Hotora86]

Why not both?

If you're low on cash, pick the closer option. Otherwise, do both if you can.

 

[NicholasJBasile]

I have great admiration for the effectiveness of wrestling and wrestlers, and always want to learn wrestling. The problem is, wrestling clubs for adults are hard to find where I live. Luckily, a free-style westling club opened up 2 years ago in a nearby city, and I visited them a while ago. The club is very far away from where I live. I have to take the metro, then transfer to a train which takes me to a railway station. Finally I need to take the local bus to get there. It takes two hours just to get there. The training looked decent, but they only train once a week, on Saturday, due to the scarcity of members. My question is, it is worth it training wrestling only once a week? Can I make reasonable progress? How long would it take to become decent at wrestling provided that I can only train once a week? It does require a lot of dedication to travel so far just to get there every week, so I'd like to know if the significant investment of time and energy would be worth it. Thank you for your advice.

On a sidenote, there are quite a few BJJ clubs in the city where I live, but can jiu jitsu replace wrestling? Is it necessary to learn wrestling in addition to jiu jitsu?

It's for sure worth training once a week, imo -- any trainiing of wrestling is better than no training. i wish wrestling was accessible for adults, but it really isn't. The clubs that I see are generally for children or maybe high school kids.

 

[ChickenBrother]

It's for sure worth training once a week, imo -- any trainiing of wrestling is better than no training. i wish wrestling was accessible for adults, but it really isn't. The clubs that I see are generally for children or maybe high school kids.

Can confirm. When I started at my BJJ gym almost 9 years ago, it was run by pro MMA fighters with lots of guys willing to start on the feet. But after the head instructor retired from MMA and started focusing on sport BJJ, trying to train TDs there has been an exercise in having guys avoid you or pull guard immediately.



Wrestling as an adult is tricky but I've been managing it at my son's wrestling club for the past year. The owner lets wrestling dads join the older kids class (to do the class with their kids) on a case by case basis and I'm usually partnered with another wrestling dad. Basically the owner doesn't want huge spazzy dads hurting the kids but he's OK with older guys with wrestling/BJJ backgrounds who he knows can train safely. When I'm the only adult doing the practice, the coach puts me with same size HS kids and that's been a great experience. I'm in good shape for my age and still have old man strength but I'm f'ing 51 and WAY less explosive with a smaller gas tank. But it evens out in the wash and relative to ~170 lbs HS kids at the club I've been shaking out better than average but the top kids take me to school. So pretty much where I shook out wrestling HS varsity 34 years ago lol.

But it's unfortunate that folkstyle wrestling for adults is non-existent (only freestyle and greco). IMO folkstyle is more relevant to BJJ/self defense because it encourages riding and getting up off bottom, with or without momentary back exposure.

 

[NicholasJBasile]

Can confirm. When I started at my BJJ gym almost 9 years ago, it was run by pro MMA fighters with lots of guys willing to start on the feet. But after the head instructor retired from MMA and started focusing on sport BJJ, trying to train TDs there has been an exercise in having guys avoid you or pull guard immediately.

View attachment 1128300

Wrestling as an adult is tricky but I've been managing it at my son's wrestling club for the past year. The owner lets wrestling dads join the older kids class (to do the class with their kids) on a case by case basis and I'm usually partnered with another wrestling dad. Basically the owner doesn't want huge spazzy dads hurting the kids but he's OK with older guys with wrestling/BJJ backgrounds who he knows can train safely. When I'm the only adult doing the practice, the coach puts me with same size HS kids and that's been a great experience. I'm in good shape for my age and still have old man strength but I'm f'ing 51 and WAY less explosive with a smaller gas tank. But it evens out in the wash and relative to ~170 lbs HS kids at the club I've been shaking out better than average but the top kids take me to school. So pretty much where I shook out wrestling HS varsity 34 years ago lol.

But it's unfortunate that folkstyle wrestling for adults is non-existent (only freestyle and greco). IMO folkstyle is more relevant to BJJ/self defense because it encourages riding and getting up off bottom, with or without momentary back exposure.

I agree so much about your opinion of folkstyle with regards to it being an applicable style. I have respect for freestyle and am a fan of it, but folkstyle is way more applicable for reasons you're probably aware of (riding and top positional control).

And yeah, the most wrestling I've had access to since I finished wrestled in college was as a wrestling coach for a high school. I was the main training partner for the senior heavyweight (I'm a big guy) and I got some great workouts in, but it's sad that you don't see folkstyle clubs for men.

You see tennis clubs, pickup basketball, running groups, etc but you just don't see wrestling clubs for adults. Even if you could find a decent group of people that would be willing to wrestle (which probably wouldn't be easy in a typical neighborhood), finding a space with a wrestling mat (which would require a large space) would be very difficult. As a dad to a 1-year old, however, it makes me so excited for my son to grow up and wrestle (hopefully -- I won't force it on him but I will introduce him to the sport).

The other silver lining is that this forced me to train muay thai and BJJ for many yearss to the point where I got just about as good at other stuff as was my wrestling. So as a fan of MMA, I feel comfortable with my understanding firsthand in all aspects of MMA from years of sparring and rolling in addition to my years of experience wrestling. I'm not going to call myself an expert, but being able to say you know what it feels like to get punched in the face and how demanding the sport is makes the sport more enjoyable imo.

 

[NicholasJBasile]

Can confirm. When I started at my BJJ gym almost 9 years ago, it was run by pro MMA fighters with lots of guys willing to start on the feet. But after the head instructor retired from MMA and started focusing on sport BJJ, trying to train TDs there has been an exercise in having guys avoid you or pull guard immediately.

View attachment 1128300

Wrestling as an adult is tricky but I've been managing it at my son's wrestling club for the past year. The owner lets wrestling dads join the older kids class (to do the class with their kids) on a case by case basis and I'm usually partnered with another wrestling dad. Basically the owner doesn't want huge spazzy dads hurting the kids but he's OK with older guys with wrestling/BJJ backgrounds who he knows can train safely. When I'm the only adult doing the practice, the coach puts me with same size HS kids and that's been a great experience. I'm in good shape for my age and still have old man strength but I'm f'ing 51 and WAY less explosive with a smaller gas tank. But it evens out in the wash and relative to ~170 lbs HS kids at the club I've been shaking out better than average but the top kids take me to school. So pretty much where I shook out wrestling HS varsity 34 years ago lol.

But it's unfortunate that folkstyle wrestling for adults is non-existent (only freestyle and greco). IMO folkstyle is more relevant to BJJ/self defense because it encourages riding and getting up off bottom, with or without momentary back exposure.

Also, bad ass that you're still getting after it at 51. I'm 37, but have ballooned up to about 350 lbs. I'd like to love 100 lbs and get back into grappling and whatnot.