Why Lower Body Strength Defines Wrestling Success

Before diving into specific exercises, it’s essential to understand why lower body development is so crucial for wrestling performance. Unlike sports where athletes can compensate for leg weakness with upper body strength or technical skill, wrestling demands that your lower body produce force in multiple planes of motion, under fatigue, while supporting unpredictable loads created by your opponent’s resistance. When you shoot a double leg, you’re not just dropping your level and reaching for legs—you’re explosively driving forward with your lead leg, stabilizing on your back leg, and then using both legs to drive through your opponent and finish the takedown. This requires a unique combination of unilateral power, bilateral strength, and the conditioning to repeat these efforts throughout a six or seven-minute match.

The biomechanical demands of wrestling also place tremendous stress on your posterior chain—the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back musculature that form the powerhouse of athletic movement. Every time you extend your hips to stand up from bottom position, sprawl to defend a shot, or lift an opponent for a throw, you’re relying on posterior chain strength and power. Athletes who neglect this aspect of their lower body development inevitably find themselves getting outwrestled in the positions that matter most. Additionally, the frontal plane movements inherent to wrestling—lateral motion during hand fighting, sideways pressure when driving an opponent toward the boundary, and the rotational demands of throws and turns—require specific training that traditional sagittal plane exercises like squats and deadlifts don’t fully address.

The Three-Pillar Framework for Wrestling Lower Body Training

To maximize your lower body development for wrestling, you need to think beyond just “getting stronger legs.” Effective wrestling strength and conditioning programs address three distinct but complementary training qualities, each of which plays a specific role in your mat performance. Understanding this framework will help you select the right exercises for your current training phase and ensure you’re developing a complete athletic foundation rather than leaving gaps in your physical preparation.

The first pillar is explosive power and rate of force development. These exercises train your nervous system to recruit muscle fibers rapidly and produce high levels of force in the minimal time windows available during wrestling exchanges. When you change levels for a shot, you might have a fraction of a second to close the distance before your opponent reacts. Explosive power training ensures that when you commit to an attack, you can generate maximum force immediately rather than gradually building up to it. This quality is trained through movements like trap bar jumps, plyometric variations, and medicine ball throws that emphasize maximal acceleration and velocity rather than grinding through heavy loads.

The second pillar consists of general strength and hypertrophy development. These exercises build the foundational strength levels and muscle mass that support all other athletic qualities. A wrestler with a 400-pound squat and a 500-pound deadlift simply has more raw horsepower available than a wrestler who struggles to lift half that amount. This maximal strength provides a higher ceiling for power development—the stronger you are, the more force you can potentially produce at high velocities. These exercises typically involve heavier loads, lower repetition ranges, and longer rest periods to maximize strength adaptation. They’re the bedrock of your physical preparation, particularly during offseason training phases when you have the recovery capacity to push these lifts hard.

The third pillar encompasses conditioning and accessory exercises that address specific gaps in your athletic profile while improving your work capacity. These movements might target underutilized muscle groups like the adductors, train movement patterns specific to wrestling like lateral dragging, or simply accumulate training volume to improve your conditioning base. While these exercises might not seem as glamorous as hitting a personal record on your squat, they often make the difference between finishing strong in the third period versus fading when the match is on the line. They’re also generally lower in fatigue cost, meaning you can implement them year-round without interfering with your mat work.

Power and Explosiveness: Building the Foundation for Finishing Shots

Exercise 1: Trap Bar Jump (Hex Bar Jump)

The trap bar jump stands as one of the most effective and accessible explosive lower body exercises available to wrestlers. This movement develops triple extension power—the simultaneous extension of your ankles, knees, and hips—which is the fundamental movement pattern underlying almost every explosive action in wrestling. When you shoot a penetration step, finish a double leg, or explode up from bottom position, you’re using triple extension. The trap bar jump trains this pattern under load, teaching your nervous system to coordinate these joints to produce force together rather than sequentially.

What makes the trap bar jump particularly valuable for wrestling strength and conditioning is its unique combination of high force production with minimal technical complexity. While Olympic weightlifting movements like the clean and snatch certainly develop explosive power, they require extensive coaching and practice to execute properly. A wrestler can learn the trap bar jump in a single session and immediately start training power development. This efficiency matters tremendously when you’re working with large groups of athletes or when training time is limited during the competitive season.

From a biomechanical standpoint, the trap bar jump allows athletes to maintain a more vertical torso position compared to a conventional barbell jump, which reduces shear stress on the lower back while still loading the movement pattern appropriately. The handles on most trap bars also sit slightly higher than a standard barbell, which accommodates athletes with limited mobility or those still developing their movement quality. You can load the bar progressively as athletes get stronger, typically starting with just ten to thirty pounds for most high school wrestlers and building from there as their power output improves.

Programming the trap bar jump effectively requires attention to both load selection and volume management. The goal is maximal acceleration on every repetition, which means the load must be light enough that athletes can still achieve significant bar speed and leave the ground six to seven inches. If the weight is too heavy and athletes barely leave the ground or land flat-footed, you’re no longer training power—you’re just doing slow jumps, which defeats the purpose. I recommend three to five sets of three to five repetitions, with full recovery between sets to ensure quality remains high. This exercise fits perfectly into the early portion of your training session when the nervous system is fresh and you can produce maximum effort on each rep.

For wrestlers who don’t have access to a trap bar or who aren’t yet strong enough to use one effectively, weighted dumbbell jumps provide an excellent alternative. Simply grab a pair of light dumbbells—ten to twenty-five pounds each is typically appropriate—and perform the same jumping movement pattern. The dumbbells will hang at your sides, allowing you to maintain good posture throughout the movement while still adding external load to increase the power demand beyond bodyweight jumping.

Exercise 2: Kneeling Jump to Box Jump

The kneeling jump to box jump is one of the most wrestling-specific power exercises you can implement because it trains explosive hip extension from a position you frequently find yourself in on the mat. When you’re working from bottom position, down on your knees after a scramble, or recovering from a failed shot, you need the ability to violently extend your hips and drive yourself back to your feet. This exercise isolates and develops exactly that quality.

The movement begins from a tall kneeling position with your weight balanced on both knees and your torso upright. From here, you explosively drive your hips forward and up, generating enough force to propel yourself into a standing position. The emphasis is on violent hip extension driven primarily by glute and hamstring contraction rather than using momentum or rocking back. This teaches your nervous system to recruit these muscle groups rapidly and forcefully, which directly transfers to standing up from bottom position or recovering to your feet during scrambles. After landing in the standing position, you immediately transition into a standard box jump, which trains the complete triple extension pattern and reinforces the connection between getting to your feet and immediately being ready to move or attack.

From a neuromuscular development standpoint, this exercise is incredibly valuable because it forces isolated hip extension without the ability to generate momentum from your ankles or use countermovement from your quads. You’re purely relying on your posterior chain to produce the necessary force. Many wrestlers, particularly younger athletes, have never isolated this movement pattern and discover they’re significantly weaker at explosive hip extension than they realized. Developing this quality pays massive dividends not just for standing up from bottom, but also for finishing penetration steps, driving through sprawls, and maintaining pressure in top position.

I program kneeling jumps to box jumps for three to five sets of three to five repetitions, similar to the trap bar jump. This can be paired with your weighted jumps in a superset format—perform a set of trap bar jumps, rest briefly, then perform a set of kneeling jumps, then take your full rest period. This approach efficiently develops multiple power qualities in the same training block. The box height should be challenging but achievable; most athletes will use a box that’s twelve to twenty-four inches high depending on their power output and technical proficiency. As you get stronger, you can increase the box height or add a light weight vest to progress the movement.

Exercise 3: Single Leg Broad Jump

While bilateral power development is important, wrestling also demands significant unilateral power production. Almost every shot, stance change, and level drop involves putting the majority of your force production through one leg while the other provides balance or prepares for the next movement. The single leg broad jump develops this critical unilateral power while simultaneously challenging the stability and coordination required to control your body during single-leg force production and landing.

The exercise is straightforward in execution but challenging to perform well. Starting on one leg, you load that leg by sitting back into the hip and knee, then explosively drive forward, projecting yourself as far as possible horizontally while maintaining control. The landing occurs on the same leg you jumped from, which requires tremendous eccentric strength and stability to decelerate your momentum and stick the landing without wobbling or having to step out. This loading and landing component is crucial because wrestling constantly requires you to produce force from unstable or compromised positions where you don’t have ideal bilateral balance.

What makes the single leg broad jump particularly transferable to wrestling performance is how closely it mimics the force production pattern of shooting a penetration step or pushing laterally across the mat. When you change levels and drive forward into a shot, you’re predominantly pushing off your back leg in a very similar pattern to a single leg broad jump. The explosive hip and knee extension, the forward projection of your center of mass, and the need to stabilize upon landing all mirror the demands of effective takedown execution. Additionally, this exercise develops the often-neglected frontal plane stability that prevents your knee from collapsing inward during single-leg force production, which is both a performance and injury prevention consideration.

Programming single leg broad jumps requires attention to both legs to prevent developing imbalances, even though most wrestlers will have a naturally stronger and more coordinated lead leg based on their stance preference. I recommend three to five sets of three to five repetitions per leg, focusing on maximal distance while maintaining perfect landing position. Quality is more important than quantity with this movement—if your landing position becomes sloppy or you have to take extra steps to stabilize, that repetition didn’t develop the qualities you’re after. Film yourself performing this exercise occasionally to ensure your knee alignment stays optimal and you’re generating force through your hip rather than compensating with your lower back or upper body.

Exercise 4: Rotational Medicine Ball Shot Put

No power development program for wrestling would be complete without addressing rotational power, and the rotational medicine ball shot put is the most accessible and effective exercise for this quality. While the throwing motion involves the upper body and many people think of this as an upper body exercise, the real power generation comes from the hips, specifically the ability to rapidly rotate your pelvis while extending your back hip. This is the exact movement pattern you use when you rotate to throw an opponent, execute a slide-by, or generate sideways pressure while hand fighting.

The setup for this exercise involves standing perpendicular to your target with a medicine ball held at chest height. You load your back hip by slightly sitting into it and rotating away from the target, creating elastic tension through your core. From this loaded position, you explosively rotate toward the target, driving hard off your back leg while your hips lead the movement. Your upper body follows the hip rotation, and the ball release is simply the culmination of the kinetic chain transferring force from ground to hips to torso to arms. When performed correctly, the vast majority of the force production happens through hip rotation and extension rather than from your arms pushing the ball.

The beauty of this exercise for wrestling applications is that it trains rotational power without the high eccentric loading that can leave athletes sore or interfere with mat work. Because you’re throwing the ball away from you, there’s no catching or lowering phase—it’s purely concentric force production. This makes it extremely sustainable to implement year-round, even during heavy competition phases when you need to minimize fatigue from your strength training. The exercise also has tremendous variation potential; you can throw against a wall for continuous repetitions, throw for maximum distance into an open area, or incorporate partner catches to add coordination demands.

Programming this movement requires emphasis on speed of execution rather than load. Many athletes make the mistake of grabbing too heavy a medicine ball and grinding through the movement, which defeats the entire purpose. Power development requires rapid force production, which necessitates lighter loads that allow maximum velocity. I recommend four to eight pound medicine balls for most wrestlers, with some larger athletes potentially using up to ten pounds. Perform three to five sets of five to eight repetitions per side, focusing on maximum explosion on every single rep. Both sides should be trained equally even though most wrestlers will have a dominant rotation they use more frequently on the mat.

Maximum Strength Development: Building Your Raw Horsepower

Exercise 5: Safety Squat Bar Box Squat

The safety squat bar box squat represents one of the most effective lower body strength exercises for wrestlers, combining accessibility with tremendous strength development potential. The safety squat bar, with its cambered design and padded yoke, eliminates the shoulder and thoracic mobility limitations that often plague wrestlers when performing traditional back squats. The bar position also creates a forward load vector that strengthens the upper back isometrically as you fight to maintain posture throughout the movement, which has obvious carryover to maintaining position on the mat.

The box squat variation adds several important benefits beyond the safety bar itself. By squating to a box, you establish a consistent depth standard that eliminates the tendency to cut your squat depth short when the weight gets heavy. The brief pause on the box also eliminates the elastic energy from the stretch reflex that you get during continuous squats, which means your muscles have to produce all the force to stand up rather than relying on stored elastic energy. This makes the movement harder but develops greater strength throughout the full range of motion. Additionally, the box allows you to sit back further into your hips than you would during a free squat, which shifts the emphasis to your posterior chain—your glutes, hamstrings, and low back—which are the prime movers in most wrestling situations.

From a biomechanical perspective, the wider stance typically used for box squats better mirrors the stance width wrestlers use during actual competition. Wrestling requires a wide, stable base whether you’re hand fighting, defending shots, or applying pressure from top position. By squatting with a stance that resembles your wrestling stance, you develop strength through the specific hip angles and positions you’ll actually use on the mat. This specificity of strength development is one reason why box squats have been so successful for developing athletes in wrestling and other combat sports.

The programming approach for safety squat bar box squats varies considerably based on whether you’re in offseason strength building phases or in-season maintenance periods. During the offseason, you might perform two to five sets of one to five repetitions, building up to very heavy weights to maximize strength development. You could also utilize higher volume protocols with sets of five to eight reps to build muscle mass alongside strength. During the competitive season, lighter loads for hard sets of two to three reps maintain your strength without creating excessive fatigue or soreness that would interfere with mat performance. The beauty of this exercise is its adaptability—you can push it hard when you have recovery capacity, or dial it back when wrestling needs to be your priority.

Exercise 6: Snatch Grip Romanian Deadlift

The Romanian deadlift is widely recognized as one of the best exercises for developing posterior chain strength, but the snatch grip variation offers unique benefits for wrestlers that make it superior to the conventional grip version. The wider grip required for a snatch grip automatically increases the range of motion at the hips, creates greater lat and upper back engagement to maintain the bar path, and forces a more vertical torso position throughout the movement. For wrestlers who need to maintain strong, proud posture while controlling an opponent at chest height, these technical demands of the snatch grip RDL create highly specific adaptations.

The Romanian deadlift pattern itself teaches the fundamental hip hinge movement—the ability to push your hips back while maintaining a neutral spine and loading your hamstrings and glutes eccentrically. This eccentric strength is crucial for deceleration, injury prevention, and the ability to control your body position during dynamic movements. When you sprawl to defend a shot, you’re essentially performing a rapid eccentric hip hinge. When you lower your level to shoot, you’re hinging at the hips while maintaining back position. The RDL builds the strength and motor control to perform these movements efficiently and safely under the unpredictable loads created by wrestling exchanges.

The snatch grip width creates significantly more upper back and lat activation compared to conventional grip RDLs because the wider hand position puts more leverage on these muscle groups to keep the bar close to your body throughout the movement. For wrestlers who constantly need to control an opponent’s upper body, arms, or head while maintaining their own posture, this upper back strength development is invaluable. The lats also play a crucial role in hip extension mechanics, which means developing them through the snatch grip RDL improves not just your back strength but your ability to produce force through your posterior chain during hip extension movements.

I program snatch grip Romanian deadlifts for two to four sets of five to eight repetitions, using this exercise as a muscle-building and time-under-tension tool rather than a maximum strength test. The goal is to accumulate quality volume with challenging loads while maintaining perfect technique—a rigid spine, controlled tempo, and full range of motion at the hips. This exercise is best reserved for offseason training blocks because the eccentric emphasis can create significant muscle soreness, particularly when you first introduce it or after periods away from the movement. Using lifting straps when needed allows you to continue the set even after your grip fatigues, ensuring your posterior chain gets the full training stimulus rather than being limited by forearm endurance.

Exercise 7: Zercher Split Squat Variations

Zercher position exercises—where you hold the barbell in the crooks of your elbows at roughly belly button to chest height—are uniquely valuable for wrestlers because they mimic the exact position where you most frequently need to produce force on the mat. Whether you’re controlling an opponent’s legs, holding them in a bear hug, or maintaining a body lock, you’re typically supporting loads around your torso at this exact height. The Zercher split squat combines this wrestling-specific loading pattern with unilateral leg strengthening, creating one of the most transferable exercises available for the sport.

Among the various split squat variations, the Bulgarian split squat (rear foot elevated split squat) is particularly effective because the elevated rear foot increases the range of motion and shifts more emphasis to the glutes and hamstrings of the front leg. This posterior chain emphasis is highly desirable for wrestling applications. The mechanics of the Bulgarian split squat also require significant stability and balance, which develops proprioception and body control that transfers directly to single-leg scrambles and position changes on the mat. However, regular split squats, reverse lunges, walking lunges, and step-ups all work excellently in the Zercher position as well, giving you variation options based on your training phase and recovery status.

The Zercher loading position itself deserves detailed attention because it creates unique training demands. Holding a loaded barbell at your torso requires tremendous core stability to prevent your spine from rounding forward. Your upper back, lats, and arms must work isometrically to support the weight while your legs move through the split squat pattern. This creates a total body training effect that far exceeds what you’d get from holding dumbbells at your sides during lunges. The metabolic demand is also higher due to the larger amount of working muscle mass, which contributes to conditioning development alongside strength.

From a programming perspective, Zercher split squats work well in the two to four set range of six to ten repetitions per leg. This moderate to higher rep range allows you to accumulate significant volume for muscle development while staying fresh enough to maintain technical quality throughout the sets. During offseason phases, you can push toward the higher end of this rep range or even beyond to maximize hypertrophy. During competitive season, keeping reps in the six to eight range with challenging but not maximal loads maintains your strength without creating excessive soreness. The exercise can truly be trained year-round, though you might shift between variations—using Bulgarian split squats and reverse lunges during the offseason when you can tolerate more eccentric stress, then switching to forward step-ups or standard split squats during competition when minimizing soreness is priority.

Exercise 8: Glute Ham Raise

The glute ham raise stands alone as perhaps the single most important posterior chain exercise for wrestlers. Unlike other hamstring exercises that primarily work knee flexion or hip extension in isolation, the glute ham raise trains both functions simultaneously while developing eccentric strength that’s crucial for injury prevention and performance. The movement begins with your body extended with knees on the pad and ankles secured, then you control your torso lowering forward using your hamstrings to resist the descent, and finally drive your body back to the starting position through powerful hamstring contraction and hip extension.

What makes the glute ham raise uniquely valuable is the combination of hip extension and knee flexion occurring under high tension. When you sprawl to defend a shot, your hamstrings must simultaneously extend your hips to drive your hips forward while flexing your knees to pull your feet back. The glute ham raise is one of the few exercises that trains this exact dual function. Additionally, the eccentric strength component—your ability to control and resist lengthening under load—is critical for reducing injury risk to the hamstrings and ACL. Athletes with stronger glute ham raise performance consistently demonstrate lower injury rates and faster return to sport timelines after lower body injuries.

The relationship between glute ham raise proficiency and general strength performance is remarkable. As athletes improve their glute ham raise from struggling to complete three reps to being able to perform hard sets of ten to fifteen, their squats, deadlifts, Olympic lift variations, and jumping performance all improve proportionally. The posterior chain is the engine that drives these movements, and the glute ham raise builds that engine more effectively than almost any other single exercise. It also serves as an excellent assessment tool—if you can’t perform at least ten clean repetitions, you have a significant gap in your posterior chain development that’s likely limiting your wrestling performance.

Programming the glute ham raise requires patience and progressive development, particularly for athletes who haven’t trained it regularly. Many wrestlers will initially struggle to perform even a handful of quality repetitions. If this is your situation, start with eccentric-only reps where you lower yourself slowly and use your hands to push yourself back to the starting position. You can also perform slider leg curls, Nordic hamstring curls, or band-assisted glute ham raises to build the necessary strength. As you develop, your goal should be to reach sets of eight to ten with bodyweight before adding external loading via weight vest, dumbbell, or band resistance. The exercise can be trained two to four times per week without issues since it responds well to frequent exposure, and you can implement it year-round by simply adjusting the total volume you perform based on your training phase and recovery demands.

Conditioning and Accessory Exercises: The Finishing Touches

Exercise 9: Belt Squat Marching

The belt squat march is a conditioning game-changer for wrestlers because it develops hip strength and work capacity in a movement pattern that directly mirrors the demands of constant motion and pressure application on the mat. By standing on the belt squat platform with weight suspended from a belt around your waist and simply marching in place while maintaining a wide, athletic stance, you’re training the exact hip endurance needed for extended periods of hand fighting, scrambling, and position pressure. The beauty of this exercise is that the weight hangs below you rather than compressing your spine, which means you can load it heavily and accumulate high volumes without the fatigue or form breakdown that would occur with a barbell on your back.

The conditioning effect of belt squat marching comes from sustained work time rather than short intense bursts. While a sprint or heavy sled push might last ten to twenty seconds, belt squat marching for two to three minutes creates a completely different stimulus. Your hip flexors, glutes, and the small stabilizers around your pelvis have to repeatedly fire to lift your knees through the marching pattern while the belt weight tries to pull you down. This develops the specific muscular endurance necessary to maintain your stance, keep moving, and continue applying pressure late in matches when fatigue starts to set in. The metabolic demand also contributes to general conditioning improvement without the impact stress of running or the technique requirements of more complex conditioning methods.

Adding upper body loading by holding a sandbag, kettlebell, or dumbbells while performing belt squat marches elevates the exercise to another level entirely. Now you’re developing grip endurance, upper back stability, and total-body coordination while your hips are working to march against the belt resistance. This more closely approximates the total system demands of wrestling where you’re simultaneously controlling an opponent with your upper body while your lower body drives movement and creates pressure. The load you can use during belt squat marches is impressive—athletes can often march with their bodyweight or more loaded on the belt while still maintaining quality movement for the full time duration.

For wrestlers without access to a belt squat machine, you can create a similar training effect with minimal equipment. Take a regular weightlifting belt, secure it around your waist, and loop a resistance band through the belt. Anchor each end of the band around each foot, creating tension that pulls downward when you stand up. Now march in place against this band tension. While you won’t be able to load this as heavily as a dedicated belt squat machine, you’ll still develop the hip strength and conditioning the exercise targets. Programming belt squat marching is straightforward—perform two to three sets of two to three minutes at the end of your training sessions when you want to finish with conditioning work that reinforces your strength rather than just doing mindless cardio.

Exercise 10: Lateral Sled Drag

Wrestling is fundamentally a multi-directional sport, yet the vast majority of strength training exercises occur in the sagittal plane—forward and backward movement. The lateral sled drag addresses this gap by training lateral force production and movement quality in the frontal plane. When you’re driving across the mat to push an opponent out of bounds, applying sideways pressure during a high crotch finish, or circling to create angles, you’re producing force laterally. The sled drag develops this exact quality while providing a conditioning stimulus that can be scaled from light and fast to heavy and grinding based on your programming goals.

One of the greatest advantages of sled dragging is that it’s almost entirely concentric muscle action—you’re pulling the sled rather than lowering it, which means there’s minimal eccentric loading and therefore minimal muscle soreness. This makes lateral sled drags perfect for year-round implementation even during heavy competition schedules when you can’t afford to be sore from training. You can load a sled extraordinarily heavy on Monday, drag it again on Wednesday, and still be fresh for competition on Saturday. Very few exercises offer this combination of high training value with low fatigue cost, which makes the lateral sled drag an incredibly efficient use of training time.

The technique for lateral sled dragging emphasizes wide, powerful steps while maintaining a low athletic position. You’re not shuffling with tiny steps, but rather taking big lateral steps and powerfully driving into the ground to move the sled. The movement should look very similar to your wrestling stance and movement patterns—hips low, weight balanced, upper body controlled. As you get proficient at the movement, you can manipulate the training stimulus by changing the load and distance. Heavy loads for shorter distances (ten to fifteen yards) develop maximum strength in the lateral pushing pattern. Lighter loads for longer distances (twenty-five to fifty yards) shift the emphasis toward conditioning and work capacity.

Programming lateral sled drags is highly flexible, which is part of their appeal. Two to four sets of fifteen to twenty-five yards works well for most applications, and you can implement this multiple times per week without issue. During the offseason, you might go heavier and shorter to build maximum lateral strength. During the competitive season, lighter and longer builds conditioning without interfering with recovery. The exercise also works great as a finisher at the end of training sessions or even as an active recovery method between heavier strength exercises. If you only had time to add one accessory exercise to your wrestling program, the lateral sled drag would be the top candidate due to its versatility, low injury risk, sustainability, and direct transfer to sport performance.

Exercise 11: Copenhagen Plank

The Copenhagen plank might seem like a simple core exercise at first glance, but it’s actually one of the most effective movements for developing adductor strength and hip stability crucial for wrestling performance. The exercise is performed by placing your lower leg on an elevated surface (usually a bench) while keeping your body in a side plank position, which creates tremendous tension through your inner thigh muscles (adductors) as they work to prevent your hips from sagging. This trains your adductors in a hip-stabilizing role rather than in pure adduction, which is far more specific to how these muscles function during wrestling.

Strong adductors are essential for several aspects of wrestling performance. When you’re riding from top position and need to control your opponent’s legs or maintain hooks, your adductors provide the squeezing force and stability. During scrambles when you need to quickly adjust your base and prevent getting rolled, adductor strength helps you stabilize your hips and control your lower body position. There’s also a significant injury prevention component—wrestlers with weak adductors are more susceptible to groin strains and hip mobility limitations that interfere with shooting and sprawling mechanics. The Copenhagen plank addresses all of these elements while also providing exceptional oblique and core strengthening as a bonus.

What makes the Copenhagen plank particularly valuable for wrestlers is its versatility and scalability. You can perform the basic version anywhere—gym, home, wrestling room, hotel—without any special equipment. As you get stronger, there are multiple progression options. You can add weight by holding a dumbbell or plate at your hip, increase the hold time, or perform more challenging variations like Copenhagen dips (actively lowering and raising your hips) or adding rowing movements. The exercise also integrates beautifully into any training program because it requires minimal recovery—you’re not creating significant muscle damage, just building strength endurance in often-neglected muscle groups.

Programming Copenhagen planks is straightforward and forgiving. Perform two to four sets of ten to thirty second holds per side, focusing on maintaining perfect position throughout the hold. Your body should form a straight line without your hips sagging or hiking up. As the time becomes easy, add external load rather than extending holds beyond thirty seconds. The exercise can be trained three to four times per week without issues since the muscle groups recover quickly from this type of isometric work. Consider the Copenhagen plank as free abdominal and adductor training that you can insert anywhere in your program—as part of your warm-up, between main exercises, or as part of your cool-down. The return on investment for the minimal time and energy required is exceptional.

Implementing These Exercises into Your Training Program

Understanding individual exercises is valuable, but knowing how to organize them into a coherent training program is where real progress happens. The worst approach you could take is attempting to perform all eleven exercises in a single training session and hoping for the best—this would create overwhelming fatigue, extend your training session to multiple hours, and leave you too sore to wrestle effectively. Instead, effective programming requires strategic selection from each category based on your current training phase, competition schedule, and individual needs.

A well-structured wrestling strength program typically includes one to two power exercises, one to two primary strength exercises, and one to two conditioning or accessory movements per training session. These don’t all need to occur on the same day, but should be distributed throughout your training week in a way that allows adequate recovery while still developing all the necessary physical qualities. For example, a lower body session might include trap bar jumps for power, safety squat bar box squats for strength, and lateral sled drags for conditioning. The next lower body session in your week might feature single leg broad jumps, Romanian deadlifts, and Copenhagen planks. This approach ensures you’re touching on all categories across your training week without overloading any single session.

The distinction between in-season and offseason programming cannot be overstated. During the offseason, typically the summer months for scholastic wrestlers, you have maximum recovery capacity because you’re not wrestling daily. This is when you push maximum strength development hard with exercises like the safety squat bar box squat and Romanian deadlift, potentially using higher volumes and heavier loads to build muscle mass alongside strength. Exercises that create more muscle soreness, like Bulgarian split squats and RDLs, are appropriate during this phase because you have time to recover before your next training session. Offseason is also when you can implement more frequent training sessions per week—four or five sessions is manageable when wrestling practice isn’t competing for recovery resources.

As you transition into the competitive season, your programming priorities shift dramatically. Wrestling practice and competition become the stimulus driving your adaptation, and strength training becomes a tool for maintaining the qualities you built during the offseason without interfering with mat performance. This means reducing volume, potentially reducing training frequency to two or three sessions per week, and emphasizing exercises that don’t create excessive soreness. Power exercises like trap bar jumps and kneeling jumps remain highly valuable because they’re primarily concentric and don’t create significant muscle damage. Conditioning exercises like belt squat marching and sled dragging similarly can be trained frequently without soreness. Strength work shifts toward lower volumes of higher quality—maybe hard sets of two to three reps on your main lifts rather than grinding through sets of five to eight.

For in-season training specifically, full-body sessions become increasingly attractive because they allow you to hit all movement patterns and muscle groups in fewer training days. Rather than dedicating one day to upper body and another to lower body, you might perform a trap bar jump, a horizontal push, a horizontal pull, and finish with lateral sled drags—touching on lower body power, upper body strength in two directions, and conditioning in one efficient session. This approach optimizes your time in the weight room while ensuring you maintain your physical qualities without accumulating fatigue that interferes with wrestling.

Conclusion: Taking Your Wrestling Performance to the Next Level

The lower body exercises outlined in this guide represent the most effective training tools available for developing the power, strength, and conditioning that separate elite wrestlers from the competition. By organizing your training around the three-pillar framework of explosive power, maximum strength, and conditioning accessories, you ensure comprehensive athletic development rather than leaving gaps in your physical preparation. Each exercise category serves a distinct purpose: power exercises develop your ability to produce force rapidly for shots and scrambles, strength exercises build the raw horsepower needed to move resistant opponents, and conditioning accessories address specific movement patterns and work capacity demands unique to wrestling.

The key to long-term success with these exercises is consistent, intelligent implementation rather than sporadic heroic efforts. Wrestling is a marathon sport where the athlete who prepares systematically over months and years will outperform the athlete who trains inconsistently regardless of temporary intensity. Start by selecting one or two exercises from each category that fit your current equipment availability and training phase. Master the technique on these movements, build strength and proficiency, and only then consider adding additional variations. Quality execution with appropriate loads will always produce better results than haphazard exercise selection performed with poor form.

Remember that these exercises are tools in service of your ultimate goal—improved performance on the mat. They should enhance your wrestling, not become a substitute for it or create so much fatigue that your mat work suffers. During the competitive season especially, err on the side of doing slightly too little in the weight room rather than too much. You can’t out-train poor recovery, and showing up to practice fresh and ready to compete for positions will serve your development better than being chronically sore from overzealous strength work. Use these exercises strategically based on your current phase of training, listen to your body’s recovery signals, and adjust accordingly.

If you’re serious about taking your wrestling to the next level, implementing a structured lower body training program built around these eleven exercises will provide the physical foundation necessary to execute your technique at the highest level. Start with the basics, remain consistent with your training, and watch your performance on the mat improve as your power, strength, and conditioning reach new levels. The investment you make in the weight room today will pay dividends in matches won tomorrow.