5 Exercises For A More Explosive Double Leg
One of the most exciting takedowns to see in wrestling is a blast double leg. It takes a good set up, perfect timing, and a lot of explosive power from the legs and hips. If you have ever watched Jordan Burroughs wrestle, you can understand how dangerous a wrestler with a good double leg can be.
It is obviously important to drill double legs to get good technique, learn a variety of setups, and to work on your timing, but to get that extra explosive power that will help you to run your opponent over with a double leg, you will need to spend some time doing strength and explosion drills both on and off the wrestling mat. Here are five drills and exercises you can do to help you increase your speed and power when shooting a double leg.
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Back Squats
Back squats are a foundational exercise if you are looking to build up explosive strength in your legs in any sport, including wrestling. The stronger your legs and hips are, the easier of a time you will have driving through and even lifting your opponent when you hit a double leg. Building raw strength in your legs will also help you in other areas of wrestling like standing up from the bottom. Make sure you are incorporating back squats into you training program.
Just like with any heavy lifting, be sure you have proper form to avoid injury. If you ever have any questions be sure to ask your school’s strength and conditioning coach.
Jumping
One way to help increase your explosiveness on the mat is to incorporate different types of jumps into your training. Two great types of jumping exercises are box jumps and broad jumps. A box jump is essentially jumping from the ground onto a high surface. A lot of times a plyo box is used to jump on, but really anything sturdy could be used like a bench or a retaining wall ledge. When you do a box jump, start with both feet side by side and really focus on exploding up and landing on the box. As you get better, you will be able to work up to taller boxes and this will help you to see the progress that you are making.
Another type of jumping exercise that is great for building explosiveness is a standing broad jump. In a broad jump, instead of jumping for height, you are jumping for distance. Be sure to start from standing still and both feet at shoulder width. Everytime you jump, go for max distance.
With both of these exercises, be sure bend at the ankles, knees, and waist to train your body to recruit all the muscles of the lower body. This will help by mimicking the movement of lowering your level and exploding out when you hit your double leg.
Shooting Through Your Shot
One great way to get more explosiveness with double leg is to practice shooting through your shot. Something that a lot of wrestlers do when they shoot a double leg is they only shoot to their opponent instead of through their opponent. Everytime you shoot a double leg, even if its just in practice, you should focus on moving your partner back. You can even turn this into a drill by shooting a double leg and focus on driving your partner backwards in an exaggerated manner. The more you work on shooting through your partner instead of just to them, the better your double leg will be.
Sled Push
Sled pushes are a great way to increase your driving power that will directly cross over to your double leg power. There is even a new type of sled called a Shotsled that is designed for wrestlers. Putting weight on a sled and pushing it is a great way to build up the strength and explosiveness you want for shooting double legs.
When you do sled pushes, you can use a lot of weight to really focus on strength or you could put lighter weight on and focus on speed. It would be beneficial to do some of each as both strength and speed are vital to hitting a good double leg.
Hill Sprints
The last exercise on the list is hill sprints. To utilize hill sprints to increase your explosiveness, find a small steep hill, start at the bottom and sprint to the top. You don’t really need to spring for a long distance when doing these. In fact, if you are just using hill sprints to improve your explosiveness, all you need is a distance ten to fifteen yards, but make sure the hill is fairly steep. When you do them, make sure you are focusing on going from the bottom to the top as fast as you can. This will help to recruit and develop the fast twitch muscles fibers you need to blast through a double leg.
It is currently the off season for most wrestlers so there is no better time to start incorporating these exercises than now. If you are interested in learning more about strength training from wrestling, be sure to check out “1% Better Every Day Strength Building System by Ricky Lundell”.