The Coaching Corner

Cornering at youth tournaments is a crazy these days, for the most part when I wrestled at the youth level, my buddies were in the corner. I think that made wrestling fun for me, no pressure, just competition. These days I go to a youth tournament and a kid has a coach in every corner.

Cornering has become big business, now they sell you coaching bands so you can get in the corner. It is a total racket, but since the money is being spent on wrestling I guess I can live with getting fleeced every Saturday. Since I, nor anyone else for that matter is going to get coaches out of the corner, I figure I will put my two cents in on what I think is good cornering. I have 6 simple rules to cornering that I have learned from over 12 years of coaching at the college, high school and youth level.

1. The most important rule any coach can learn is that your wrestler is always in the match. Always stay positive even when things are going really wrong. If you can keep your wrestler from getting overly emotional or giving up, then you always have a chance to win.

2. Remember that you are not going to win every match. Despite what some lunatic coaches might tell you, there is such a thing as a moral victory. This is particularly the case at the youth level, if you can keep a kid from getting pinned and to fight to the very end; in my opinion you have accomplished something. As a coach the one thing you are trying to accomplish is to keep it fun for the participants. You want to keep them in the sport that is the most important thing you can do as a coach at the youth level. Concentrate more on the effort, rather than the result. Winning takes care of itself if you instill in your wrestler the ability to overcome adversity.

3. Don’t convey negative emotions either verbally or visually. If your kid gets thrown for 5 in the first period you don’t want him to look over at his corner and see his corner guy having a panic attack. Relax and remember rule number 1.You are always in the match. If you are a parent and you have to corner your kid in a wrestling match you need to try to not get overly emotional. Your son or daughter feeds off of your expressions and emotions. The last thing you want to do as a corner man is convey panic or frustration. Remember rule number 1, you are always in the match.

Parenting and cornering really don’t go well together. In most instances the parent gets overly emotional and the kid feeds off of that. It usually ends badly at that point. If you are a parent and you have a coach that you can trust to corner your kid, let them. This way you can sit in the stands and do what you do best, be a parent. I hate to sound overly critical about parents in the corner. But in many instances the things I have seen parents do in the corner makes my stomach turn. Acting like a A-hole in the corner is the quickest way to turn a kid off of wrestling. Enough said.

4. Develop moves and strategies for certain match situations. If you kid gets thrown for five in the first. How are you going to coach him to come back? What are you going to tell him? Â These are the skills that make difference between a good corner guy and a bad one. We will discuss match strategies and match scenios in a later blog.

5. Run off the interference. If you have kids sitting by you in the corner, screaming their heads off, how is the wrestler on the mat supposed to hear your instructions? Tell the cheerleaders to get back far enough where it is just background noise to the wrestler.

After the wrestler gets off the mat ask him if he heard any of your instructions. I don’t know how many times I have asked that question and been told that they could not hear me. You just spent 5 minutes with the best seat in the house but really didn’t accomplish much in terms of coaching. Tell the wrestler to try to key in on your voice. No matter how loud the crowd got when I wrestled in college I could still hear my coach. This is huge, hearing that reassuring voice in the corner might mean the difference between a good performance and a bad one. Notice I did not mention winning and losing.

6. At the youth level 90% of wrestlers are habitual; they do the same things over and over. With that being said only remain habitual if the things your are doing work. If they are not, you need to change up. Don’t have one move from bottom, have a stand-up along with a sit-out, switch or Granby roll. Don’t have just one tie-up have two to three. Have a leg shot to each leg, that way if you cant move the opponent or get him to change his lead leg at least you have a shot to the other side. As a corner man(person, I have to be politically correct) it is important to remain calm and problem solve on the fly. If a wrestlers go-to move isn’t working you need to get him to change up and try something different.

These are just some of the strategies that go into being successfully coaching from the corner. Remember that no matter where you are in your coaching development, you can always develop new strategies and philosophies on coaching. I just turned 40 and I feel that I am finally learning to be a good coach. Why? Because I finally figured out that I don’t know everything and I need to stay current and ahead of the curve. Once you feel you know everything there is to know and you are not ready to accept new approaches to the sport, that is when you start to fall behind .