| David Black Mastro wrote: |
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Judo, wrestling, & BJJ--now there's three methods that certainly complement each other. Ben, what kind of wrestling did you do--freestyle, or Greco-Roman? I've noticed one very interesting thing about grappling training in Russia--if you do judo, you have to also do wrestling, and if you do wrestling, you also have to do judo. That might account (at least in part), why the Russians are so good at both arts, as well as MMA.. |
David, I did freestyle wrestling for a while as a kid at a local youth centre. I really enjoyed it and wanted to stick with it longterm but the program disappeared and there are unfortunately very few places to do wrestling back in Australia. Many years later while I was doing BJJ, my team was very fortunate to have the Australian national wrestling coach come train with us (I've forgotten his name but he was from Belarus and was a medallist at the world championships in greco roman). It was only for a couple of months but it was good experience. One of my teammates stuck with it and by chance caught the attention of a visiting Japanese coach and got recruited into one of the top Japanese universities. Now he is monster and finished 11th at the worlds representing Australia last year but unfortunately didn't receive a spot to compete in Beijing.
in regards to the Russians, from what I can gather there is a very close connection between judo, sambo and wrestling. In russia. Sambo was derived from Judo and in russia both seem be done at the same time. Pretty much all the top sambo competitors were also top level judo guys too. Russian wrestlers seem to train more specifically just for their sport but it seems fairly obvious that the Russian style of judo is heavily influenced by greco-roman wresling based on their preference towards pickups.