I really like wrestling. I think I picked it up at the first Manifest—there was an impromptu wrestling event, and I ended up wrestling for like 40 minutes straight. I woke up the next day happy but very sore.
While wrestling, you’re maximally exerting every muscle in your body (though briefly). I’ve spent a lot of time cross-country running and playing tennis—they’re both much more endurance sports, where you need to be able to perform for ~1hr. When I wrestle, I get maybe 60 seconds of pure effort where I try to get a pin through brute force and a bit of skill. It’s quite invigorating!
In wrestling, as in life, I tend to focus on rushdown, approaching the opponent with maximum forward momentum and trying to get a pin immediately. This works poorly against opponents with a good defense. At the most recent Manifest, I ended up wrestling a friend of mine who had done Aikido for a decade—when I charged him, I suddenly found myself thrown ten feet across Rat Park. I laughed, got up, and charged him again. (I lost but had a great time).
All games are the same
A realization I had often while wrestling with people:
Oh wow, we’re navigating through the tree of possible game-states! This is basically chess but with an element of mechanical skill and physical strength!
My goal is to find a route through game-states and his counterplay that ends with him losing
I have no idea how to route between any game states at all
Oh hey, I lost
You have all these intuitions about how to behave and they’re mostly wrong. Talented wrestlers will maneuver you into a position, and you’ll try to squirm out, and then they’ll use your momentum from squirming to pin you further.
It reminds me of when I played Smash Bros (a movement-heavy fighting game) relatively seriously—less experienced players had extremely obvious habits that were simple to exploit, and I could get a lot of mileage off of “oh, he’ll probably jump while recovering, so I’ll throw out an attack above his current location”. Less fun to be on the other end!
Humility
Wrestling is an incredibly humbling sport. As a newcomer, you show up to a lesson and spend the next two hours getting utterly destroyed by every other person at the gym. This persists for about the first year or so (though I haven’t made it that far myself). There are few experiences as grounding as getting pinned in ten seconds, and regular doses are quite helpful for those prone to megalomania.
Venting
Wrestling is an incredible way to release anger. I think there aren’t really acceptable releases for aggression in normal life, especially for men (which is part of why people love to play enraging video games and will utterly flame people out during them).
I, personally, am quite prone to anger, but there are very few situations in my life where expressing anger makes a situation better and not worse. Unfortunately, I’ve learned over time that suppressing anger leads to it permeating your life in various ways, and your anger will come out at the worst possible times. Exercise is a good outlet for this generally, but boxing and wrestling are a much more concentrated dose of this—you’re put in a situation where your goal is to physically defeat another person, and are expected to put maximum effort towards that.
I think more people should start wrestling—I’d certainly appreciate more people to roll with around Lighthaven.