Wrestling Classes and Lessons
For Beginners and Experienced Wrestlers
Wrestling is a combat sport built around controlling your opponent’s position. That means taking an opponent down, defending against their takedowns, and controlling them once you’re on the ground.
Our wrestling lessons center on the stand-up game: attacks and defense on your feet through shots, throws, and trips. From there, you can choose where to specialize on the ground, whether that’s submission grappling or folkstyle and freestyle wrestling.
Most adults who join have never wrestled before, while others are former high school and college wrestlers looking to keep training. Open mats on Friday evenings and weekends give everyone extra time to drill takedowns and get in live rounds. New to the mats? Read our gym etiquette guide for beginners before your first class.
Why Train Wrestling?
Fitness
Gyms are great, but why not become stronger, faster and more coordinated while making new friends and learning practical new skills?
Confidence-Boosting
It’s hard not to become more confident as you feel yourself become stronger, build better cardio health and improve your coordination.
Self-Defense
Being the better wrestler in a self-defense situation means someone can’t pin you to the ground and restrain you.
Community
Remember how much fun after-school activities like band or football were? It’s the same here. Join a community of friends and teammates who train together, encourage one another and grow as a group.
Wrestling Classes Coached by Jacob Young
Jacob himself has been wrestling for over 16 years, having spent four years in collegiate wrestling at Highline College.
He also has a fantastic Brazilian jiu-jitsu background, where he is a Purple Belt and competes regularly. This combination makes him an excellent coach for high school and college wrestling athletes, as well as BJJ practitioners looking to improve their takedown game.
Class Structure
Jacob’s coaching strategy focuses on positioning and distance management to create effective attack angles and explode through them.
Learning to manage these distances and angles is essential to recognizing opportunities and dangers in any combat sport involving grappling.
Wrestling Class Structure
- Shadow wrestling. This start to the class provides time for individual drilling and skill refinement, fundamental movement and technique practice, and body warm-up and preparation.
- Partner warm-ups. We do this with flow wrestling, working with a partner and grappling at about 50-60% intensity. We do the first half of this section setting up attacks and holding back just before putting our training partner on the ground. The second half is the same, except for finishing takedowns and putting our training partner on the ground with each rep. This slower pace gets our bodies adjusted to impact and resistance before we increase the intensity for the remainder of practice.
- Technique work. This starts with a review of what we’ve learned over the past few classes. We spend time drilling these, then move to adding onto those techniques, teaching different options, counters and defenses that can build on what we’ve learned.
- Situational rounds. This is when we put the techniques we’ve been practicing for the day into practice. We start with one training partner in position to use the technique we’ve just practiced, then live spar from that position for 20 seconds. Whenever that technique is either executed successfully or shut down, we restart until the end of the 20 seconds, then rotate training partners.
- Live sparring. We’re on our feet wrestling for 2-minute rounds, rotating who we work with in a group of three people close to our own size and skill level.
Partner Warmups
Technique Work
Situational Rounds
Live Sparring
Learn Why We Have More Than 150 Five-Star Reviews on Google
FAQ
Wrestling focuses on taking your opponent to the ground and pinning them on the ground. Jiu-jitsu focuses on taking your opponent to the ground, controlling them on the ground and then submitting them with a choke, armlock or footlock.
They complement each other, and we train both at Mat Chess!
You certainly may! Many of our students also come from a BJJ background, so going barefoot is perfectly fine as well.
At Mat Chess, we combine each wrestling style with an emphasis on the feet and battling for the takedown. We have specialists in folkstyle, freestyle and Greco in the gym alongside our Brazilian jiu-jitsu wrestlers.
Yes! We have wrestlers coming in from Ballard High, Roosevelt, Blanchet, Seattle Prep and Lincoln. Training with us is a great way to stay engaged in wrestling year-round!
Absolutely! We have D1-D3 represented on the Mat Chess mats regularly. Come on in!
Absolutely! We’re well known for teaching BJJ students how to take down their opponents effectively under both wrestling and BJJ rulesets.
Parking is easy! You have an abundance of free street parking surrounding our building.
All you need are clothes you feel comfortable working out in. If you’re trying out a class, we have community gear that’ll get you through the day.
Absolutely not! In fact, 95% of the people who come in have never trained before. We’re renowned for teaching you from zero.
Open mat is noninstructional time when people come in to drill, spar, roll and work on their own martial arts projects. It’s a great opportunity to push yourself while having a good time with the community.
Our kids’ class accommodates ages 5 to 15. We start integrating students into adult class around high school, and our oldest student is 71 years old!
Overwhelmingly, the answer is to come to class! We design our class structure to maximize your progress, so doing the things needed to free time to attend class is often the most important part of maximizing your learning.
Your coaches also work with you on your personal development. Each Mat Chess coach has excellent experience working with you on your unique goals.
The best time to start is now! Don’t worry in the slightest about not being in the shape that you want to be in.
And don’t waste time thinking you should work on your general fitness to start your martial arts journey. Martial arts will help with that!
