Media for Martial Artists 2

Let’s talk about the near infinite rabbit hole that is Youtube.

To say that there’s a lot of material on Youtube would be an understatement. There is footage of every sort of sportive or real world fight you can think of. There are channels that analyze fighters or fighting styles. There are seas of instructional videos of varying qualities. I have no hope of providing a comprehensive overview for anyone. For now, I’ll just tell you what I’m watching.

I didn’t start grappling until I was in my 20’s and, having trained with a number of wrestlers, I regret not having wrestled at school. Luckily, Youtube has a rich collection of old wrestling instructionals that people have uploaded from VHS tapes. The production values are often comically dated but there’s a lot of material with elite wrestlers demonstrating high percentage techniques.

Here are three videos by Dan Gable, arguably the greatest competitor and coach in the history of the sport:

This next series does a good job of clearly breaking down a great number of techniques and the instructor is so simultaneously awkward and comically earnest that I can’t quite believe he isn’t an actor doing a bit.

There are some nice details on the basic tie-ups in this next video.

Here is a 2-part Freestyle wrestling syllabus with patchy sound.

…and here is a 3-part video series on Greco-Roman wrestling.

While everyone is at home under quarantine, a lot of my acquaintances have been posting on social media asking for suggestions about what TV shows they should binge watch to pass the time. For what it’s worth: this page contains my current watch list.