Freestyle Wrestling
With over 4,000 years of recorded history wrestling can be considered one of the oldest sports known to man. It was part of the ancient Olympics, and was highly respected in both ancient Greece and Egypt. The objective of the sport is to obtain a highly dominant by immobilising and controlling your opponent. This is achieved through the use of grappling style techniques: clinch, throws, takedowns, pins, etc.
With the advent of MMA, Wrestling has gained respect and popularity among many martial art practitioners. This is due to the unprecedented success of wrestlers in this kind of competitions. During the early days of UFC wrestlers often defeated stylists from traditional striking and grappling arts, such as boxing, judo or jiu-jitsu. Out of the first 12 UFC tournaments, wrestlers won 6.
It is a very technical and challenging sport, which rewards perseverance. It complements both striking and grappling skills and is a backbone of modern MMA. As such, it is an invaluable tool in the arsenal of any fighter, as it allows you to not only dictate the direction of the fight but also to maintain a constant control over your opponent.
Our Freestyle Wrestling class caters for both: beginners and experienced wrestlers alike. It is designed around a newly devised syllabus, covering everything from the very basics and up to some very advanced techniques. The class is taught by Saeed Esmaeli, an exceptional and highly experienced coach who has coached GB Olympic team member, British champion and Commonwealth Bronze medallist, Leon Rattigan, as well as one of the top MMA fighters in Europe, Ronnie Mann.
Most of our training session follow a fairly predictable format: classes start with a warm up then progress onto a technical part of the lesson; this is where you learn and perfect your current techniques. The lesson ends with a few rounds of light hearted wrestling and a warm down.
It doesn’t even matter what level of fitness you are at when you start. All our classes, include fitness and conditioning training aimed at developing and improving overall strength, endurance, flexibility, agility and speed. As you progress with your training, you’ll find that your fitness improves naturally; you’ll notice that you can do more and train for longer.
Those who train with us come from a wide range of backgrounds and abilities. Our beginners often comment on how quickly they improve their balance, endurance and strength. Experienced wrestlers praise Saeed’s advise and depth of knowledge. While those training in other martial arts found that the superior control and positioning of wrestling combined with its unparalleled conditioning helped them to dramatically improve in their own arts.
