Underground Strength Interview
with Coach Ethan Reeve
Part II

2) With the experience & knowledge you have gained in the past years as the head strength coach at Wake Forest, what have you learned or implemented differently that you wish you would have done when you had wrestlers in your strength room (for those who don't know, Wake Forest does not have a wrestling program) at your previous coaching positions?

Coach Reeve: We do not have a wrestling program here at Wake Forest. I wish we did! I'm not sure I would have trained wrestlers a whole lot differently than I did back in the 80's.

I have a notebook for every one of my six years at UT Chattanooga. It is a detailed notebook with every practice's lesson plan, minute by minute. It also has my observations of each workout.

Within the notebook, prior to the daily lesson plans, is a detailed Master Plan of the teaching progression and drills to incorporate for strength training and wrestling technique.

We had a philosophy the permeated every wrestling drill and competition we had. Everything we did was based on these three elements of our philosophy:

1. Pressure
2. Position
3. Motion

These words were said, by me, to our team maybe 100-200 times at each and every practice. I will explain what their meaning is!

1. Pressure. The wrestler must keep pressure on his opponent every split second of every match he wrestles. This is whether he is on top, bottom, or on his feet! Pressure, pressure, pressure! Unrelenting pressure must be applied. The wrestler must also be able to handle pressure mentally and physically when it is applied to him. Referees will make mistakes. The crowd will taunt him. The opposing coach will say negative things at times.

The wrestler must maintain his cool. He should never show emotion of any kind! Stone-face and stoic! When you show emotion in competition, the heat of battle, it is compared to a shark smelling blood! If you display emotion during the battle the shark will smell the blood and attack that weakness.

We taught our wrestlers to search for physical and mental weaknesses in their opponents and attack them! If you are to have success with pressure then you must put all three portions of the philosophy together. And it must be implemented into every drill and scrimmage during practice sessions. There is no way you will pressure in a match without practicing pressure in every drill in practice.

2. Position. If the wrestler applies pressure to his opponent while being in poor position he will surely not have good success. All strength is angle specific. A great wrestler puts himself into positions of strength. This is whether he is on his feet, bottom or top position.

Having good position is not just being in an athletic stance. It is his position in relation to his opponent. Cutting distance down so he can work his offensive technique and also be able to have a good defense when his opponent attacks is paramount.

This is true in all sport whether it is strong man competitions, Olympic weightlifting, Power lifting, tennis, golf, football, basketball or wrestling. In the lifting sports it is gravity, resistance and the object to be lifted that is your opponent.

The great wrestler continues putting himself into positions of strength in his sport. This is why being a strong strength room guy is not as important to him. The strength you receive from the strength room will only benefit the athlete if he has paid the price with technique of his sport.

There are a lot of wrestlers that don't appear strong. However, they realize their strength potential in wrestling by putting themselves into positions of strength. Teaching a wrestler how to use his body with total body power and strength lifts will help him use his strength in wrestling.

Out of season we would focus on the power cleans, hang cleans, squats, standing presses, chins, dips, etc. In-season we placed more focus on lifting our partners within the technique of the wrestling drills. That way we hit two birds with one stone. We worked on our strength specific to the sport of wrestling! However, in-season, we still did our lifting two days per week.

3. Motion. A wrestler is not in good position if he cannot move. A wrestler cannot run as fast or move as fast on his knees, butt, back, sides etc. as he can while he is on his feet.

Shooting takedowns and staying on your knees will stop your motion. I am not saying you should not shoot to your knees. However, don't stay there if you cannot finish quickly while there. Learn to hit on the knee and get off of it quickly or work on your takedown technique by not going to your knees.

We found we had more success by not allowing our wrestlers to go to their knees on double leg and single leg takedowns. Their technique for the setups and penetration was much better by doing this. We did allow them to go to their knees while doing fireman's carries.

There is one other thing we did at UT Chattanooga that no other wrestling team did that I am aware of. We made our wrestlers bow as they entered and exited the wrestling room. This was not done as some religious sort of thing.

The only clothing we allowed our wrestlers to wear in the room was t-shirt, shorts, jock, socks and shoes! No sweats or rubber gear! We emphasized to our wrestlers that they need to come into every practice with the intent to leave the room in some way better than when they walked in.

Did they get better at technique, stronger, better condition, more mentally tough? Better and better everyday was our motto. A wrestler cannot get better if he knows everything. He must come in with an empty glass to learn and improve. If he walks in with a full glass, if he knows everything, he will not make changes needed to become a champion! Bowing as you enter and exit the room promotes humility. Humility allows the humble to learn and get better!

3) How would you go about training a high school football player who is heavy in body weight but lacks the strength & power for someone his weight? The reason I ask is that I find a good number of high school football players tend to carry extra weight yet are weak /deconditioned for their size.

Coach Reeve: That high school athlete, in our opinion, should work on all qualities of athleticism together: strength, power, speed, anaerobic-endurance, flexibility, balance, mental toughness, spatial and kinesthetic awareness.

By doing this the athlete will fit into his body naturally with some changes in his diet. I am not a certified dietician nor do I claim a vast knowledge of nutrition. I know enough to identify folks that need some help with their diet and try to direct them in the right place.

We believe the combination of Olympic lifts (hybrids), Powerlifts, bodyweight calisthenics, dumbbells, kettlebells, speed work twice a week, agility work twice a week, tumbling, plyometrics, static and dynamic stretching will benefit all athletes.

I remember one of our baseball coaches coming up to me at Ohio University telling me that a couple of the pitchers didn't understand how the tumbling or agility ladders would help them as pitchers. I told him that the two pitchers he mentioned were not very good at ladders or tumbling. Also, I informed him to tell the pitchers when they get good at ladders and tumbling they'll understand why we do them. They both went on to have their best seasons that spring.

Everything we do is based on the ability to move. The only way to get good at moving is to move everyday! As the athletes get stronger and more powerful in the strength room they will move faster and more explosively.

However, their flexibility or lack of flexibility will be a limiting factor if they don't do both dynamic and static stretching each day. Static stretching should be done at the end of the workouts or after a dynamic warm-up. We feel it is more important for athletes to spend more time on dynamic flexibilty like: tumbling, hurdle flexibilty drills, form running drills, and agility drills.

What we are trying to develop are athletes that can move more efficiently for sport. They must spend the bulk of their training time working on the technique of their sport in order to be successful!

However, they must also work on being more well-rounded athletes. This is where strength coaches come in to play! The strength coach must also realize that strength and athletic development, by his prescription, is just a piece of the pie. This is why we stress that strength coaches train athletes to be better athletes on the field of competition. They should focus on making their athletes better athletes not so much on getting bigger lift numbers to be posted on the strength room board.

If you want more from Coach Reeve, check out The Underground Strength System for a uncut audio interrogation where Coach Reeve reveals some of the most powerful strength & conditioning information you will ever hear. Check it out HERE.