Is Wrestling Worth It? All Possible Pros and Cons

There are many options to choose from when it comes to combat sports. All of them seem pretty interesting to learn. One of the most popular combat sports out there is wrestling. It has been around since the ancient Greeks. It is a sport that has many benefits but also some downsides to it. There are many mental and physical advantages of training in such a sport. 

Wrestling is a great sport that you can start even when you are young or if you haven’t done any combat sports before it. A couple of significant benefits are that you will have a strength increase and an overall performance increase. You will learn to discipline yourself and work on your body and mental well-being. Check out a list of the greatest freestyle wrestlers in history. 

Physical Fitness

One of the most incredible things about this sport is that you will be in fantastic shape in your fitness level will rise as you continue to progress. During your wrestling training, you will focus on your functional strength, explosiveness, speed, and power.

Another very important thing is your cardiovascular endurance. You can be the biggest guy in the gym and order the most muscular guy, but if you do not have the endurance to last for more than 10 minutes, you will get finished.

As well as in other combat sports, strength is not the only thing you will need. You need to learn how to use your strength wisely, so you don’t spend it all in the first round. 

Wrestling is an excellent exercise for your entire body because you must use all your limbs in a fight. You cannot just use your upper body or just your lower body. They need to work together to finish your opponent. 

You would still have to go to the gym and practice weightlifting to improve your strength, but that is not the only thing you need to do. You also need to practice with your body weight so your tendons can get used to your opponent’s resistance and the quick movements you will make during a match.

Mental Strength

We all know that physical exercise improves mood and self-esteem, as does wrestling. By practicing wrestling your mental well-being will become better and you will toughen up in that sense. Because this is a really tough physical activity, it will tire you out more than, let’s say, going to the gym, and by that, you will not have a lot of stress for the rest of your day. 

Another great thing that wrestling improves is cognitive functions. As we said before, you must use both your upper and lower body to succeed in this sport. You do that by practicing your mind-muscle connection, and it’ll get better over time. You will become much faster in controlling your entire body.

Doing any physical activity or wrestling will also reduce anxiety and depression symptoms. That is because you will feel tired after a hard training session. Still, you will also think that you’ve made significant progress and are doing something important. You are building your body end. You’re also learning an essential skill that can be used in real life. 

You’re putting in hard work and will become proud after any training session. Your body will also start to look better and gain self-esteem. As we all know, many people have low self-esteem because they think they are too fat or maybe they don’t have enough muscle. Wrestling is a sport that will build your body correctly, and you’ll start to feel better about yourself after looking in the mirror.

Healthy Lifestyle

As you get serious about any sport, or in this case, wrestling, you will need to change your lifestyle a bit so you can be better at the sport you’re doing. We all enjoy going out for drinks, eating fast food, and maybe not paying too much attention to our sleep and other things we do during the day. Still, you will have to change that if you want to improve your work. 

We all know that nutrition is a big part of any sport; without it, you cannot succeed. To improve your nutrition, you must be full of proteins, vitamins, and carbohydrates. That means you would have to reduce alcohol, junk food, and other things slowing down. Your body will thank you for it. 

Once you start implementing a proper diet you will feel much more energetic, stronger, and overall better about yourself. One of the most overlooked things is the number of hours you sleep. Many people think you can still be successful in any sport if you just sleep for a couple of hours a day, but that is not true.

Even if your nutrition is the best that a person can have, you will not get the desired results if you do not sleep enough. You will feel lazy and not motivated, and you will not do good in your training sessions.

It is important to sleep 7 to 8 hours a night because that gives your body the recovery it needs so you can have a productive day after you wake up. Sleeping longer than that is also not good because you will feel lazy again.

Increased Calorie Burn

Wrestling is a great sport if you want to lose fat. It is one of the highest calories burning sports out there. Wrestlers can burn up to 400 calories in just a 6-minute match. You can lose up to two to 1000 – 2000 calories in one training session. Wrestling is excellent for you if you are struggling to lose fat or just like to eat a lot. 

However, that doesn’t mean that you should eat whatever you find. That just means that you can eat more of the things you should, which is a high-protein meal. The protein that you find in food is not too low in calories.

By practicing wrestling, you will be allowed to eat a bit more, but you should still stick to a proper diet in order to build your muscles the way you should. 

The great thing about wrestling is that you do not need to worry about the caloric deficit as much as, for example, bodybuilding. It is because you burn many more calories during a single training session.

Control and discipline

Wrestling is a great sport where you will learn how to discipline yourself. In fact, almost all sports do that. The main reason is that you will have to get up every day and be on time for your class. Another thing is that you will need to listen to your coach and do what they say. 

After getting into a routine, you will notice that you will become more disciplined for other things in your life. When it comes to controlling yourself many combat sports help you out with that. If you see professional fighters, you may notice how calm they are and that they don’t promote violence.

That is because they learned how to control their ego during training sessions.  

Injuries

Now, as with any other combat sport, you will find that injuries are a big part of it. After a particular time, you will have damage to your fingers, hands, wrists, legs, tendons, and more. Your back and shoulders, arms, and ligaments will probably start hurting.

That is a normal thing however in sports like this where you have enormous pressure on your body. Now you’re probably thinking, how don’t bodybuilders get hurt as much? That is because wrestling is an explosive sport, unlike bodybuilding, where you have prolonged movements even though they are performed with high weight.

In wrestling, you must be quick to get up or catch your opponent and throw them. Your body will get thrown around, and you will need to use a lot of strength to throw somebody else around. You will also have to control your opponent while there spazzing or trying to get you off them, which takes a lot of strength from your ligaments.

Even though this is a thing that happens to most of the athletes out there you can still do a couple of things to improve it. You need proper nutrition filled with many vitamins to help your body recover quicker. 

You would also need to do a lot of stretching and mobility exercises to keep your body’s flexibility so your muscles don’t tear. If you are starting wrestling, it’s safer to go slow in the first couple of months. 

If, let’s say, you haven’t done any combat sports before, your muscles will need a bit of time to get used to those explosive movements. After that time has passed, you can be more explosive because your muscles will gain the necessary flexibility. That is because your body needs some time to adjust to the situation it is in.

Making Weight

Making weight is a crucial thing in any combat sport. Athletes are divided into their weight divisions, so it’ll be fairer. You will often see many athletes cut up to 15 to 20 kilograms for their fight, which is really hard for your body. Especially when you have to fight after you’ve done that. 

What most athletes do is dehydrate themselves. Good nutrition is essential because, with it, you will be able to cut fat, but there is still water weight that you need to cut, which is really hard. You should not do that if you do not plan to compete because your body will feel weak, and you will be pretty tired. 

Not just that but your ligaments and tendons will also be weakened, and you have more chances to hurt yourself. Dehydrating yourself is done a few days or maybe a week before your contest. That is certainly not a healthy thing to do, but it is a thing that most athletes do to make weight.

When you’ve done this a certain number of times, the health of your body will decrease. As mentioned before, your tendons and ligaments will be weaker because of it, and you may have back problems when you are older than if you didn’t do that.

Financial Struggle

This is another sport where you will not have as much financial success as you hoped. Most of the competitions professional wrestlers would do are during their college years. Those wrestlers are at their peak of physical performance but, unfortunately, are not paid well. 

Many schools started to decrease funding for wrestling athletes, so logically many of them switched sports. Now wrestling is not too popular to watch, which is probably why those athletes are not getting as much money. International competitions, however, are paid well. That doesn’t mean that you should stop wrestling. 

Wrestling is important in many combat sports and has an excellent real-life implementation. Many MMA fighters use wrestling to their advantage. Such examples are Khabib Nurmagomedov and Henry Cejudo.

Infectious Diseases

Wrestling is a full-contact sport meaning you will always have your opponent’s skin touching yours. Now that is common for many combat sports like MMA, Brazilian jujitsu, and even wrestling. Maybe you think that getting your opponent’s sweat on your face or your body is disgusting, but that’s the least of your worries. 

Because your opponent’s bacteria mixes with your bacteria, it can create a skin disease that could be really serious. The most common skin disease in full-contact sports is ringworm. Now you shouldn’t panic if you get this disease because it can be cured easily. You can use many creams for this skin condition, and they will make it disappear after some time. Another thing that you should do is keep your hygiene. 

A wrestling gym can be a dirty place. Not because it is not clean but because many students will roll around in sweat, and it will be smeared all around the area. You should take a shower after your training because you do not want your opponent’s bacteria on your skin.

Slow Growth

You may have noticed how many professional wrestlers are not that tall. Many of them are below the average height. That comes from the pressure that is being put on your body.  

Athletes who start training wrestling when they are young have more chances of not surpassing the average height of a man. That is because they sustain enormous pressure, and their body compresses over time.  

The thing that you can do is try to decompress your body as often as you can by hanging down on the bar. Wrestling is one of those sports where it is unimportant whether you are tall or short, so you do not have to worry about that.

Conclusion

Whether it’s a combat sport or not, each sport has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes there are more pros than cons and the other way around. Even if there are many downsides to some sports, you should keep on doing it if that is something you love. Wrestling is just one example. 

There are many health benefits to it, physical and mental. Even if you do not plan on competing, you should still consider doing some sport to keep your body healthy and capable. It’ll boost your self-esteem and make you feel better about doing anything after you gain confidence.