With the season in full swing your wrestling training has started to take off and your weight training plan should reflect the changes with the season.

While some things stay fairly similar in the programs for the wrestlers that I train, there are a couple of changes I make, especially after the holidays come and go and the final 2 months of the season officially gets underway.

This next series of posts I will first go into some of the things I keep in mind when designing an In-Season training program.

I’ll then introduce the first 4 weeks of an 8-week program I wrote for a college wrestler that I train via email.

I’ll go into detail as to why I decided to structure the program the way that I did as well as detail a number of exercises like I did in the Training For Wrestling series ( the first post in that series).

In-Season Wrestling Training Principles

#1 Be Audible Ready

I stole this from Dave Tate of a number years ago when I first heard him present on it and have used this ever since; especially when working with In-Season wrestlers.

What does “be audible ready” mean in terms of wrestlers training for strength and power? In a nutshell it means that you need to be ready to make adjustments to your program based on how you feel.

Maybe the practice you just finished was a lot harder than usual. Obviously this isn’t a good time to be pushing yourself to set new personal records in the weight room if you’re fatigued and banged up. In fact, this is probably a good way to get hurt (that is, lifting hard when you’re in an overly fatigued state).

However, maybe you’re in the weight room on a Sunday and you cruised to an easy tournament victory the day before, or had the day off from competition and you feel great. This would be a great time to push yourself a little more than usual, especially if you don’t have any big upcoming matches early in the week.

Regardless of what you may or may not have planned, you need to be ready to make changes to your training plan on the fly based on how you feel on any given day.

This is primarily why I don’t use percentages of maxes in the programs I design.

So many things can factor in to your readiness to lift at a high level (diet, sleep, stress, practice, state of recovery, etc.) that all play a role in how you’re going to perform in the weight room on any given day.

For instance, say your program had you set to do 5×5 at 83% (a very hard workload) for squats one day. However, the night before in practice you had three hard matches and ran sprints and stairs after for additional conditioning.

Needless to say, the 83% is probably closer to 90% of your max on that day due to the higher level of fatigue you have.

Ultimately, this could lead to one (or more) of the following:

1. You get through the workout and it’s way tougher than it was supposed to be. This leads to an even high state of fatigue affecting your practice later.

2. You can’t get through the workout and start feeling down on yourself, thereby affecting your confidence (which could lead to a poor practice and performance in an upcoming match).

3. You attempt to get through the workout and end up hurt trying to push through it.

Obviously none of these things are desired outcomes which is why I am more in support of having sets and reps programmed but letting the lifter decide how heavy to go, or simply having the person work up to a rep max for the day which allows them to work to a challenging set specific to their readiness for that day.

Anyway, I hope this helps you to better understand both how and why being “audible ready” is an absolute must, especially when following an in-season strength and power program.

#2 Focus On Power Development, Strength Maintenance

I’ll be the first to admit, it can sometimes be very difficult to increase your strength during the season. The toll practice, matches, and cutting weight takes on your body obviously creates a less than optimal environment for gaining strength. Many of my high school wrestlers can maintain their peak strength, and some even get stronger during the season. The Division 1 and other college wrestlers I train though, are not able to though.

However, with as difficult of a grind as the season can be, maintaining strength In-Season is more than sufficient due to the significant decreases you can see if you drop lifting all together (according to a study performed at Oklahoma State University in 2006, if I remember correctly).

Increasing your focus on maximizing your power during the season will have you shooting faster, moving quicker, scrambling better, and doing basically everything with a faster rate of force. For some great ways to develop and maximize your power for wrestling check out , , and .

Ultimately you will win more, and that’s what I’m sure you’re after as someone who follows an In-Season wrestling training program.

Power Wrestling Training Results:

To see what developing functional power can do for you on the mat, look at the speed and power of these Division 1 wrestlers at their peak (NCAA Tournament). This is what calculated and periodized In-Season wrestling training programs that develop speed and power result in:

#3 Decrease The Volume

Decreasing the total training volume (number of sets, reps, and exercises you perform) is a must for In-Season lifting. In the program that I’ll detail below, I keep the volume pretty high for this wrestler until after Christmas break.

He expressed interest in trying to maintain and maybe even put on a little bit of muscle during the first part of the season because it’s not going to be as intense as the second half when double and triple sessions start during the winter recess on campus.

So to help him get the most out of training, I included a higher volume that begins to taper slightly over the course of the last 4 weeks. Again, a lot of the volume adjustments go hand in hand with the first principle- be audible ready.

However, as a general rule of thumb it’s in your best interest to cut down on the total number of sets, reps and exercises you’re doing so as to minimize your recovery time so that you’re ready for practice and matches.

Because lowering the volume is individually specific, you’re going to want to start experimenting with your program by cutting 2-3 sets out of it. Ultimately you want to find the right balance that allows you to do the following:

1. Maintain your strength.

2. Increase your power.

3. Get the most positive impact on your performance (obviously you may get a little sore here and there, but keep things under control so you’re not crippled or having mobility or speed issues and keep your sights set on the big matches at the end).

Ultimately, those are the 3 big principles I like to follow when designing in-season wrestling training programs. Keep your training simple, follow these 3 principles, make adjustments as you need, and you should be primed and ready to win some big matches at the end of the season!

Sample In-Season Training For Wrestling Plan

Below is the first week of the 8-week in-season plan I put together for one of the college wrestlers I train via email. To download the first 4 weeks of the program .

Day 1

a. (4×4) a. Speed Russian Twist (4×12) a. (4×4) b. (4×6) b. (4×8) c. (4×8) c. Feet Elevated DB Pushup (3x AMAP) c. Pullup (3x AMAP)

Day 2

a. Kneeling SL Lateral Jump (4×3) a. (4×6) a. (4×3) b. (4×4) b. (4×8) c. (4×5) c. Wtd Pullup (4×5)

Day 3

a. Box Squat Horizontal Jump (4×4) a. (4×5) a. (4×4) b. (4×4) b. Hanging Leg Raise (4×10) c. (4×8) c. (4×10) c. (4×8)

Because I’ve detailed all of the explosive power exercises in my new Explosive Power Training For Wrestling eBook, I won’t be covering them in this series of posts. However, I will go into some of the other exercises and some variations that I have in the program that you may or may not be familiar with.

So be sure to check out the next post in this series where I’ll detail the benefits of the Zercher Squat and a couple of the other variations I like to work in from time to time.

On another note, as I’ve mentioned above, I have finished my eBook Explosive Power Training For Wrestling in which I detail over 70 exercises that I implement both in my own program and also in the programs of the wrestlers that I train both at my gym and online.

You can download the exercise portion for free by

This style of training has been the ultimate complement to the strength training that I’ve been using with the wrestlers I’ve trained for the last 9 years. It has produced unbelievably fast and powerful wrestlers when incorporated with the various strength training techniques and principles I implement.

What Now?

Be sure to which will keep you up to date with my latest blog posts, programs I send out, and techniques I’m currently using to help maximize the performance of the wrestlers I’m training.

And be sure to check out the next post in this series by

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