devonwrestler's blog

I would say that I have scaled down my wrestling activities over the past few months, the reason being at least in part due to having got injured at one of the Grapevine meetings that I attended the best part of a year ago. Generally I do enjoy these meetings, indeed they are what got me interested in wrestling to begin with. On this occasion I wrestled with a young fit fast moving wrestler. Nothing wrong with that of course and I don't think we were too much mismatched since I was a bit taller and heavier. But at one point he accidentally wrenched my elbow in a direction it is not supposed to bend (sideways). I don't think he even realised it was happening since it seems that he was trapping my arm fully extended at the elbow only in order to restrain me so that he could apply some kind of a pressure hold to my neck. It was my neck that was his target, not the arm, so perhaps he was less aware of what was happening to the arm and because the elbow was fully extended it was vulnerable. Given a chance, I do try to try to keep my arms partly bent at the elbow when wrestling. He actually wasn't succeeding in hurting my neck very much at all but I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my elbow and instinctively screamed 'stop', but I guess the damage was already done. It is not a serious injury, at least not in the overall scale of things. Months later I don't notice it most of the time, but if I do strenuous exercise with that arm, say digging with a spade, (or of course any competitive or semi-competitive wrestling) I soon start to feel it again.

Why am I writing this - just to urge people to play safely with this wrestling game. Assuming that neither of you want to get injured (who does), submission holds must be applied gently, at least to begin with, to allow the opponent to 'tap out' if he needs to. If it is the kind of hold that could potentially cause immediate injury, e.g. bending a joint the wrong way, then both wrestlers should recognise that the point is won once the hold is applied, there is no need to actually apply significant force against the joint. It' a sport like tennis or snooker or whatever, the idea is to score points, not maim or kill the other guy. Once the opponent realises he is in a submission hold that would injure him if applied harder, he should tap out. I guess there are also some kinds of holds where discomfort/pain is felt well before there is a risk of injury. Perhaps I have a masochist streak since I quite like that kind of hold since you don't necessarily have to tap out immediately. In that situation it is probably ok for the other wrestler to slowly increase the pressure on you while you feel a little pain and he can enjoy seeing you struggle helplessly trying in vain to counter the hold. I enjoy that situation whether it is me in the hold or applying the hold, but even so I don't think you should go too far with it.

John