High Level Single Leg Finish With Zack Esposito
The single leg is a unique technique because of a few different reasons. One of those reasons being that the single leg has so many variations to it. You have high and low singles, head inside and head outside singles and all of the other small variations of the single leg. Each of these gives people different opportunities for transitions and takedowns.
One of these variations is the high single leg and it's a position that puts you in a ton of control over your opponent. It can sometimes be a struggle to get to this position, which means you might not have a ton of options when it comes to actually working from it.
This is why you need to train finishes specifically when training, or else you are going to be sloppy when you try to go from them in actual competition. Luckily we have one of the best wrestling coaches with us to show you one of his favorites.
In this video, Zack Esposito goes over how you can finish a high single leg.
Who is Zack Esposito
Zack Esposito is a former NCAA champion. He competed for the legendary team at Oklahoma State University, finishing his tenure at the school as an athlete with an overall record of 120-12 with the cowboys. He later went on to become an assistant coach for OSU and help coach a bunch of athletes to reach greatness in the sport of wrestling.
High Single Leg Finish
The video starts off with coach Zack getting a standard single leg on his partner. From here Zack says that he likes to reach for the flank position. He says that he does this because it forces you into a good position even if you had a bad one to start with. The flank forces you to bend your knees but keep a good back posture.
From this position you are probably going to find it hard to finish as your opponent is going to hop away from you to maintain distance, at least if they’re good that’s what they’re going to do. So what you are going to do is clear your opponent’s leg from in between yours and then pull it up.
From here your opponent is going to have a worse sense of balance, especially if they aren’t that flexible.
Coach Zack says that a common thing that he sees younger wrestlers do is try to bring the leg all the way up to the shoulder and work from there. While this isn’t the worse idea, he says that what he’s really looking for is getting the leg up.
Zack says that the ideal finish, at least for him, is to get the leg between your body and your elbow and bend it up. You want to have your forearm against the calf so you get more pressure and bend your opponent’s knee.
From there you grab the back of your opponent’s head with your free arm. From there you can pull them to that arms side and trip out that leg.
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