Contact Prep Been going through a lot of previous training videos, and contact/contact prep is always a fun topic for me. From the development, progression, down to the “why don’t they just wrestle crew” Some thoughts (and video montage) from a Twitter exchange awhile ago: Our crawls and falls serve as the foundation for contact preparation. The exploratory phase focuses on overall body coordination and stiffness, allowing athletes to feel how their bodies maintain posture. We simultaneously work hand fights from the knees. Once athletes reach a comfort level, we introduce partner crawls/stand ups & emphasize hand fights from a standstill. This phase emphasizes at a low intensity a great way to build work capacity, challenging athletes to maintain posture and feel the push/pull of their opponents. Our final phase incorporates multidirectional movement and emphasizes professional competitiveness through small-sided games. Here, we can be more creative and individualized to the group’s needs. Here, we can be more creative and individualized to the group’s needs. Here our OL require more work on regaining/not losing inside leverage, while our DL need to improve their timing of chosen moves without taking themselves out of the play. I know there will be plenty from the “they should just wrestle” community, so l’il address it quickly. While | love wrestling and believe it offers significant benefits in early athlete development, I’m also a firm believer in playing sports you enjoy. While we often highlight NFL players who wrestled and are now in the league, it’s essential to recognize that there are ten times as many who wrestled and were JV backups. Not discrediting wrestling but to highlight that it might not be the gold standard for Football that many think. If we applied the same scope to every sport, aspects of ping pong could also contribute to the lateral movements & agility of lineman, yet we aren’t advocating for that. That said, we’ve integrated components of wrestling/grappling/ fighting, into our training to enhance performance. 1/2