Sneak Turk With Pat Downey
As any person who has ever wrestled before will obviously know, you can end up in some pretty weird positions during a match. It’s the highlight reel scrambles that entice people watching as well as the wrestlers in the match. These are the moments where you get to show off some funk, intuition, and skill all at the same time.
However, it is the plain old basics that can win or lose a match for you. It does not matter how good someone thinks they are; if they can’t handle the basics, they aren’t going to be able to make it to those fun moments of advanced scrambling. A prime example is being on top of your opponent once you have them broken down. You may be coming off of the thrill of a takedown and find yourself having no idea what to do. All the while, your opponent on bottom is doing everything in his power to be able to escape.
In order to prevent giving up an escape point to your opponent, you need to keep them down. Also, there is no point of being on top if you aren’t looking to score with some back points or even get a pin. With that being said, the bottom man knows that you’re going to be trying something, so why not throw him off guard. Gain an advantage. Confuse him to give yourself the competitive edge. Do something he doesn’t know about. Be sneaky.
In Pat Downey’s instructional video package, The Air Downey System, he gives the perfect solution for this situation as well as many more. However in this specific position, in order to be able to keep your opponent down, throw them off guard by doing something that feels foreign to them, as well as get yourself in the best position for success, Pat goes over the Sneak Turk. A great tool to add to your arsenal of top position offenses, the sneak turk can be done easily to set a wrestler of any skill level up for great success. Check it out!
When on top of your opponent when they’re flat on their stomachs, you could very easily implement the effective sneak turk to avoid the helpless feeling that you get when not knowing what to do. As Pat Downey showed in the above video, this sneak turk is an easy move to be able to split the hips of the person on bottom. This is a very optimal position for back points or even a pin.
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Pat shares his precision technique, the same one that led him to win 2 high school state championships as well as NCAA D-1 All American status, to teach the careful ins and outs of this move. To begin executing the move from the top position, you must hook your right leg under the bottom man’s left leg. Once you have that securely hooked, Pat shows that you must start flaring his ankle out. That is a key element of the move, as it allows you to slide your left leg under theirs.
This is when you begin to gain the advantage over your opponent because this is a rather obscure position that most wrestlers haven’t ever been in. That being said, though, you aren’t totally safe here. You could easily end up in a compromised situation if you don’t watch your weight. Pat makes sure to emphasize that you keep your weight on top of the bottom man’s back.
If you fail to do this, they have nothing keeping them down, so your opponent can easily come over the top with you on your back. To make matters worse, if this happens, the turk that you were trying to sink in ends up being the other way around. The opponent’s leg that you were hooking ends up between yours with them on top of you. As any wrestler will know, that is not a good position to be in at all. However, follow the tips of the 2019 Final X and US Open Champion by keeping your weight on your bottom man and this will not be a problem at all.
So with your chest on the other man’s back, your right leg still over their left leg, and your left leg under his left leg that you have hooked, you’re in a great position. From here, all you have to do is scoot to where your left leg (the one under his left leg) can reach to be able to go on top of his right leg. Once his right leg is covered by your left, all you have to do is kick his hooked leg over by stepping over with your right leg. At that point, his hips are split, you have a turk in, and you are in a great position.
Master this move and you can be on track to have as much success as the man teaching it. With as many hardships as he has had, Pat Downey has had to fight hard to make the name that he has, and that passion is present in his teachings. The sneak turk is barely scratching the surface of great material that Pat teaches in his instructionals.
Learn how to be as tough on the mat as the man himself by checking out The Air Downey System!