Wrestling Tokyo - Mark and Peyton

Mark (M):  Peyton and I both contributed to this post.  I'll do my semi deep dive here.  This was a great experience both from a cultural and wrestling point of view.  

- Masa, pictured below when he took us to a national level tournament in Tokyo, introduced me to the coach at Iran Wrestling Club and Figure four.  He was awesome and took a lot of time to come with us to various practices.  I'm pretty sure he was "vouching" for us.  He had brought his son to some of my practices in VA many years ago, so he knew me as a coach.  

The first time we returned to a practice, Masa would call to make sure the coach was good with us.  Turns out, this is part of the culture.  All of the coaches were more than happy to have Peyton back.  His wrestling, and behavior made him a desired participant.  I'm still so proud of how far his wrestling has come this past year.  

- Overall differences between US and Japanese wrestling.  The practices were longer, they lasted 2.5-3 hours, and all but the high school practice had a lot more live - even more live than my practices.  The practices mostly consisted of games or gymnastic warm-up and then a ton of live.  The practices are hard.  

- Wrestling is less mainstream in Japan, so the people who wrestle take it seriously and wrestle year round "no one in Japan does it just for fun".  It showed - the kids Peyton wrestled were legit good.  It was good for Peyton and his partner, just different styles.  They only do freestyle here, so they did things Peyton is just not used to.  In the US at Peytons age, they look like folkstyle wrestlers doing freestyle, here they look like freestyle wrestlers.  I get this. I did well at Judo, but I was always a wrestler who did Judo.  They did moves on Peyton that he wasn't familiar with that you would not do in folkstyle, but make perfect sense in Freestyle.  

- None of the coaches, or anyone, ever raised their voices.  All of Peyton's partners came off as great kids.  I really can't say enough about both the coaches and the wrestlers. 

- Two of the coaches were Olypianians and another was on a world team.  They were also outstanding coaches.  

From Peyton:

A unique and fun experience in Tokyo was wrestling.

The day after we got to Japan, we went to a high school wrestling practice. At the high school they also had Judo and Karate which are much bigger sports in Japan.

P: The next place we went to which we came back to a few times was Iran Wrestling Club. The coach there got a silver medal in the Olympics and his son won a Japan national championship. 

M: This wrestler is the coaches son and won Japan championship; he hit high level stuff fast, really fast.  They gave each other solid practices, it was a contrast in styles.  Peyton struggled with his speed, and he struggled with Peyton's strength--neither of them struggled with endurance which is saying a lot because that is a big time strength for Peyton.  All in all this wrestler was really really good.  I loved the coach, great guy, teaching technique (worked well with Peyton), and obviously know his wrestling.  Very hard practice (more live than I've ever seen...and I do a lot of live).  

P: Another place we went to was figure four wrestling club.  We went there twice. They had a tournament towards the end of practice and there were some adults wrestling in it too.

M: The wrestler next to Peyton took 3rd in Japan, and was absolutely outstanding drilling partner (I plan on using the video I got as an example of the way you should drill).  When wrestling live, his timing was incredibly good.  

P: Before practice a bunch of the other people came around and had me memorize their names.

P: Before practice we got lots of mat panels then placed them around then put on the cover of the mat.

P: One other wrestling club was AACC wrestling. It was on the fifth floor of a building that had shops and casinos in it. It is attached to a Golds Gym and is right next to a boxing ring.

P: These are the coaches there.  The one in the black shirt's brother is a UFC fighter and the one in the green shirt is very good and wrestles with Spencer Lee sometimes.

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