Rules and scoring primer

The studies on this site are movement. They say nothing about what scores, and that is deliberate: three different rulebooks govern the wrestling most people do, and a stance, a level change or a sprawl looks the same under all of them. This page is the shortest honest map of where the three differ. Your coach and your federation's rulebook are the authority; this is orientation.

Three styles

Folkstyle is the style wrestled in American schools and colleges. It rewards control: takedowns score, but so does riding an opponent on the mat, escaping from underneath and reversing position. Bouts have three periods, the second and third of which start with one wrestler choosing top, bottom or neutral. Because so much of a folkstyle bout happens on the mat, the bottom studies on this site, the referee's position, the sit-out, the hip heist and the stand-up, matter more here than anywhere else.

Freestyle is one of the two international styles and the one most countries' clubs wrestle. Scoring is weighted toward takedowns and exposure, that is turning an opponent's back toward the mat, rather than toward riding. Attacks on and with the legs are allowed. Bouts are two periods of three minutes. Passivity is penalised, and the one metre band inside the edge of the circle exists because of it.

Greco-Roman is the other international style. Attacks below the waist are not allowed and the legs may not be used to attack or defend, so the whole sport happens from the waist up: ties, throws from the body lock, and mat work that turns without the legs. Of the studies here, the ties, the snap down, the front headlock and the hip lift shape are the ones with a Greco-Roman life; the shots are not.

What generally scores

In every style, taking an opponent from their feet to the mat with control scores. In freestyle and Greco-Roman, turning an opponent's back toward the mat scores, and the more of the back is exposed and the longer it stays there, the more it is worth. In folkstyle, getting out from underneath scores, and so does reversing from bottom to top. Pinning both shoulders to the mat ends the bout in all three styles, and what counts as a pin differs in duration and in what the shoulders must touch.

What this site does not tell you

It does not tell you whether a technique is legal in your style. The double leg finish study is a shape that would be a foul in Greco-Roman. The hip lift shape is a solo drill that says nothing about what a legal lift and return look like under any rulebook. The front headlock position, shown with a second figure, is a control position whose legality depends on where the arm is and what the hands do, none of which the illustration decides. Take every one of these to a coach who wrestles your style.

The mat

The mat drawn in the viewer and on the home page is the international competition mat: a nine metre circle, a one metre passivity band inside its edge, a one metre central circle with two starting lines, and a protection area outside. School and college mats in some countries use a different circle and different markings. The viewer does not say which code it is drawing and this page does.

See also the glossary for the words used here, and the page on what this app is not.