Dan Gable's Wrestling Essentials

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Just to sit and watch these guys practice is inspiring but the thing to do is pause the video as you go and practice the drills. These are all the real world moves that anyone can do and win. You also get a feel for the speed and pace of the game. Excellent. We will wear this one out.UPdate 12/11/2014: It was years ago when we bought this and my boys watched it. My younger boy won his section as a softmore and went to states. He was ranked 1st in the section as a Junior and went 40-0. His career ended with a neck injury in practice just before supers. Anyhow this was how it all started. Buy some riding and fishing movies too, Wrestling never lasts forever and 99% of the time ends in heartbreak with a loss or an injury.

Keeps a children busy. Home schooling study in skills.

This DVD is very informative, the techniques are well executed, and the coach is very knowledgeable.

I picked up Dan Gable's Wrestling Essentials to help review/ensure a good foundation in Wrestling. The DVD's strengths lie in Coach Gable's deep knowledge and intuition of wrestling, the skill of the demonstrators (NCAA Champions) as well as the organization of the material. The content is split into standing, top and bottom positions and contains drills and techniques for each position. Coach Gable narrates the moves as the two former collegiate wrestlers demonstrate; this is followed by a clip showing the technique in a match so that the viewer can see it used in a "live" scenario.Although this is a valuable supplement, the problem lies with how the knowledge is conveyed--namely with the speed and orientation of the demonstrations. The moves seem to be somewhat glossed over without fully breaking them down to their constituent steps, making it more difficult for beginner wrestlers to emulate and practice. Essentially a technique/drill is demonstrated in real time then replayed in slow motion before moving on to the next one, thus lacking any real step by step breakdown. Additionally, the cameras mainly shoot frontal and 3/4th views of the demonstrators and Coach Gable does not use "right" or "left" to denote which hands/legs should be making the moves. This causes difficulty in the bottom/top portions since the wrestlers are almost always facing the viewer (us), making their right/left opposite to our own (if you're right handed) -- not a big deal in and of itself but when combined with the speed that techniques are run through it leads to a lot of pausing and rewinding.For the $55+ (luckily I got it used for $28) price tag I think it would have been immensely beneficial to show more back and side views of the wrestlers (especially in Top/Bottom positions) so that the viewer can mirror the moves without having to think about the demonstrators' right/left vs their own. Also, use of a telestrator (device used to allow for freehand sketches of a moving or still video as used by many sports analysts) as well as slower step by step move breakdown would maximize learning and really allow Coach Gable to fully convey the proper mechanics behind the techniques. I realize this would increase the overall time of the DVD but still would rather have seen the fundamentals done in this way rather than a greater number of techniques shown back to back without as much breakdown.

The DVD Would not play.

For wrestlers, their parents, and coaches, this is one of the best DVDs that my son and I have watched, paused, rewound, and watched again. As a former high school and college wrestler and now father of two teenage wrestlers, I cannot say enough for the quality of instructional material on this DVD.

I've only been wrestling for 6 months. This is a great DVD. Dan explains the drill or technique in words. Then we see Dans wrestlers demonstrating the drill with Dan giving commentary, then we see the technique being done in real competition. What more could we ask for?Its not cheap though $. But then I forgot the price when I saw the quality.

It is everything I wanted it to be without having Coach Gable right in the gym with me. Good info, good demos - now all I need is to use it.