Why You Need to Wrestle

Wrestling may be one of the oldest sports in the history of mankind, but that’s not why you should get into it, as it offers a lot more in terms of benefits.

When you get into wrestling, you realize the immense amount of value it teaches you. You learn that wrestling not only builds physical prowess but also empowers you by building mental resilience. It is an all-around sport that translates into and improves your regular life.

In 2023, the world of High School sports experienced something it had never seen before. Wrestling has made a massive move amongst schools across the nation with boys’ wrestling programs having the highest number of members ever reported in history and girls’ wrestling programs across the nation seeing this sport become the fastest-growing high school sport amongst girls (source).

Continue reading to learn all about the benefits you gain by learning to wrestle:

Why You Need To Wrestle

Wrestling is an excellent combat sport that offers many of benefits. Not only does it provide a full-body workout that builds muscles, strength, agility, and endurance, it also teaches discipline, perseverance, and the importance of good old-fashioned hard work.

The physically demanding nature of wrestling helps you develop your balance, coordination, and body awareness, which can translate to other sports and activities in a positive way. Wrestling fosters a strong sense of camaraderie and teamwork and as you train or compete you end up growing stronger bonds with those around you.

Wrestling is an individual sport that pushes you to your limits, both physically and mentally, and helps you grow as a person and an athlete. if you plan on grappling later in life, a strong base like wrestling is something that can propel you to the highest levels.

Youth Wrestling Teaches Incredible Values

High school wrestling is an amazing way to teach priceless values to young athletes. The sport goes beyond physical skills and instills excellent qualities like discipline, perseverance, and resilience. Though the training is demanding and competitive, young wrestlers learn the importance of hard work, dedication, and commitment toward their goals in the process. All to say, your kid should wrestle!

Wrestling will help the youth develop a strong work ethic and the ability to push through obstacles and challenges.

Any BODY Can Wrestle

The beauty of wrestling is that you do not need to be a specific body type to participate and progress in this sport. You can be tall, short, skinny, boy or girl, or plus-size and still excel at this sport, but only if you are willing to make the effort in the first place.

Wrestling has a variety of weight classes, regardless of your starting point, you can find aspiring athletes with the same attributes and starting position as you. Remember, anyone who enters the wrestling community is there to better themselves and should be supported.

Many wrestlers begin their journey in college with low self-confidence, however, if you make the effort and put the hours in, you can make huge progress within weeks.

Once You’ve Wrestled, Everything In Life Is Easy

Wrestling is by far one of the hardest combat sports you could enroll yourself in, and it is even harder to become a good wrestler. However, with a bit of wrestling practice, you will slowly get used to the vigorous training sessions, and you will have built unshakable confidence, powerful resilience, and praiseworthy discipline.

At this point, you will begin to realize that since you conquered such a difficult path toward success, you can conquer anything. The physical and mental health benefits you gain from wrestling translate to your daily routine. You will find that with these newfound positive attributes, you look forward to getting over obstacles and fulfilling challenges.

Ultimately, the difficulty of wrestling acts as a metaphor to help you build the tenacity required to navigate the ups and downs in life.

Mental and Physical Benefits of Wrestling

People often think Wrestling only has physical benefits, however, this is far from the truth. Wrestling improves your mental health just as much as it does your physical health. This is because, during hard training sessions, your focus and mindset will be the determining factor of if you’ll make progress or not.

Increased Strength and Endurance

It is not just about grappling and sparring with your training partners in the wrestling room, you also regularly have to hit the weights. Most wrestlers include strength training in their weekly routine a few times. They mainly do compound lifts like power cleans, snatches, and squats to help build strong bodies.

As for endurance, it is also improved greatly when you get into wrestling. Wrestling training challenges your cardiovascular endurance significantly, every training session you must perform drills, wrestle with your partner, and much more.

Overall your strength and endurance are greatly increased when you train like a wrestler.

Build Mental Toughness and Grit

Wrestling is one of the hardest combat sports. You must dedicate yourself completely to the grind for years before you can become a good wrestler. During this period, you find yourself facing many obstacles and challenges like losing competitions, getting injured or just having bad training sessions.

However, when you work hard to get over these obstacles, you find yourself stronger mentally, and ready for the next challenge. Wrestlers not only have strong bodies but also strong minds, ready to do whatever it takes and not give up.

A true wrestler understands, that there are only wins and no losses, only lessons and areas to improve on.

Build Strong Bonds and a Sense of Camaraderie

Wrestling is a team sport, when you compete, you will likely compete alongside those who trained and wrestled with you. This helps you build a strong sense of Camaraderie with those around you. Wrestling teaches you to respect your fellow athletes, training partners, and coaches.

Building good character is especially important for high school wrestlers as the values they learn in their junior year, are the values they will stick to in the long run. The younger someone gets into wrestling, the better.

Increased Level of Confidence

One of the biggest benefits of getting into wrestling is the improvement in self-esteem. You walk with better posture, you speak clearly and do not shy away from problems. When you train and get better at a combat sport, you become stronger physically, mentally, and spiritually and more confident in your daily routine.

Every BJJ Practitioner We Know [TODAY] Wished They Wrestled

Many of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners we know today express a strong desire that they had gotten into wrestling earlier in their journey. This is because wrestling provides a solid foundation of grappling skills, takedowns, and control that seamlessly complements BJJ skills and techniques.

It’s a common opinion among BJJ athletes that wrestling experience would have greatly enhanced their overall grappling abilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Wrestling Gay?

Wrestling has nothing to do with one’s sexuality. You can become an excellent wrestler whether you are straight or homosexual. Wrestling teaches athletes to respect and protect one another, embrace sportsmanship, and create strong bonds. If your son plans on going into combat sports, getting to high levels in football, or is just a bigger kid, wrestling is ideal for them. They should not be shamed into not doing a sport they want to give a go.

Can [or should] my daughter wrestle?

Your daughter should definitely get into wrestling if they choose to do so. It is an amazing combat sport that has seen more female attention than ever in the world in the past decade. Nowadays, more and more women are training to become elite wrestlers, and have hopes of building a career in it.

If your daughter is interested in the sport, you should enroll her in a wrestling gym with experienced coaches.

How likely is it that you get cauliflower ear… really?

Cauliflower ear isn’t as common as most people think. To get it, you must train extremely hard, in an unsafe manner.

It usually occurs when your ear repeatedly gets hit or comes into contact with the mats. However, it can easily be avoided by training in a clean and safe gym, and if you’re a beginner, you can wear headgear as well.

Why is wrestling such a great sport for character-building?

Wrestling is an amazing sport for character building for two main reasons. The first is that through vigorous training, you build a strong and respectable physique, which can help you in other sports or just your daily routine.

The second is that wrestling teaches you the value of hard work, discipline, and commitment. In wrestling, skills are not something you can buy or inherit, you must work for it. It takes years of dedication to become a good wrestler.

The hard work and effort it takes to become a wrestler is what builds your character.