Day three and four morning...

Hi all,
The sessions for Day three...

Morning included a number of 1 minute goes with athletes facing a particular senario (up a point/down a point, up 2/down two. With three different partners...
Then there were 6 two minute rounds...
Also worked on some zone situations or push out drills...

The morning workout was the last in a string of solid mat practices. By its end you could see there was not much more we could expect to get out of our athletes on the day.

The evening session was a recovery session where athletes were expected to focus on a light load to enhance recovery and regeneration. Light cardio, or sauna and stretch, or game....

This morning both teams arrived mostly in singlets ready to wrestle matches. Athletes did an individual 25minute warm up, then we ran 9 match lengths. (each athlete had to wrestle three matches). We will run another set of matches this afternoon.

Prior to the session we had a talk to the team about the importance of getting everything you can out of these opportunities. If you had an opponent of their back to pin them, to work right into turns off of take downs, and generally wrestle focussed and tough. MAKE THINGS HAPPEN...

Over all I think the coaches were quite pleased with the wrestling we witnessed this morning. Our team executted well in general, and very few clinch situations arose. YET... we still need to learn how to make adjustments in the course of a match against a tough opponent. At times we return (again and again) to our bread and butter techniques and refuse to move on if they are not working. Also at times we need to making slight body position adjustments to meet our opponents best techniques. Getting caught on the same takedown in all three rounds should be a major concern when it happens. Our most experienced and successful athletes still get taken down on occasion, yet they learn from it immediatedly and are not caught napping a second time. In fact they often counter attack successfully if an opponent repeats an attack... they pick up the patterns and use it against their adversary!

It is great to be at a camp where athletes can measure themselves against quality opponents. The nice thing about it is each countries girls wants to win for themself and our team. It makes for some very good hard fought scrambles and matches...

Cant wait to watch more this afternoon....