Low Single Leg Set Up With Helen Maroulis
The single leg is the most fundamental takedown in all of wrestling and there's a ton of good reason for it. First and foremost, it’s overall pretty easy to learn and it teaches a lot of good wrestling fundamentals. The second is that while it is hard to score, it is a pretty solid entry on your opponent and you can work a lot of different things from the position.
The third and the reason we are going to focus on here is that the single leg has a ton of variations that you can do. Head inside, head outside, you can go low, high or medium. With so many options you need to learn a few.
Luckily we have one of the best American wrestlers of all time to show us one variation of a single leg.
In this video Helen Maroulis goes over the low single leg variation
Who Is Helen Maroulis?
Helen Maroulis is an American freestyle wrestler who started out training in folk style. In 2015, she won a gold medal at that year's World Wrestling Championship. She also won a gold medal at the 2011 Pan American Games. Finally, In 2016 at the Rio Olympics she became the first ever American woman to win a gold medal in freestyle wrestling.
Low Single Leg Breakdown
The video starts off with Helen talking about the importance of being able to wrestle both off of ties and from space. Everybody is probably going to have their preference of where they like to work from, however the ability to do both is important because you are going to run into situations where you are going to be forced to do one or the other. You might also find yourself not being able to properly work from one position and thus you’ll need to work from the other.
Off of that thought, Helen goes into talking about the low single because it is one of her favorite techniques. She says that it is because it is very low risk and once you get really good muscle memory, it becomes very easy to get.
What Helen does to practice this technique is she has her partner stand in a square stance in front of her. From there she is going to target the leg that is opposite her lead leg. This means if you’re standing with your left leg forward ,you’re going after your opponents right and vice versa.
From there you and going to low your level, it is called a low single after all. Make sure that you're not curving your back to get low. Remember to keep good posture and squat down to get a lower level. You also want to be on the ball of your rear foot instead of just flat. This will load you up so you can explode into your shot.
From here you can decide between the many options you have. Options like a standard low single or a sweep low single depending on what you want.
Learn More From Helen Maroulis
If you like this technique breakdown and want to learn more from world Wrestling champion and Olympic gold medalist Helen Maroulis, then you should check out her complete video series “Flipping The Switch: Transitioning From Folkstyle To Freestyle Wrestling by Helen Maroulis” available exclusively on Fanatic Wrestling!