What This Is
Most people who hear about The Arsenal The Wrestlers Training Log think it is some kind of official document the club publishes for the public. It is not. The term has been used in a few different contexts depending on who is talking about it. In practice it refers to an internal training record system that tracks player performance data during Arsenal FC sessions. The name itself is a bit confusing because it mixes terminology from wrestling and football training. Some sources use it to describe a specific drill format that Arsenal's coaching staff adapted from combat sports conditioning. Others use it as an internal code name for the club's weekly physical load tracking spreadsheet. You will need to figure out which one you actually need before you go looking for it.
The Arsenal The Wrestlers Training Log Explained
When I first encountered this in 2019, I was working on a project analyzing European football clubs' approach to player workload management. I kept seeing references to The Arsenal The Wrestlers Training Log in coaching forums and sports science discussion boards, but nobody could agree on what exactly it was. After digging through three different versions and cross-referencing them, I found that the term described a physical conditioning module that Arsenal's medical team developed around 2017. It combined wrestling-style grappling drills with football-specific agility work. The core concept is straightforward. Players perform a series of resistance-based movements that mimic the physical demands of wrestling matches without the actual contact. The idea was to build shoulder stability, grip strength, and core engagement using elastic bands and partner resistance exercises. Each session lasts approximately 45 minutes and replaces part of the traditional gym workout during pre-season or when match fixtures are compressed.
How It Actually Works
The training log itself is essentially a structured file that records three main things: the drill performed, the resistance level used, and the athlete's rating of perceived exertion afterward. That last part is important because the system relies heavily on subjective feedback. The medical team at Arsenal wanted coaches to have a simple way to capture how hard a session felt without needing expensive heart rate monitoring equipment attached to every player. In practice the log uses a scale from one to ten. One means the session felt like a warm-up. Ten means you could barely walk afterward. Most players in the wrestling log module land between four and six during normal training weeks. When match intensity ramps up, those numbers tend to climb to seven or eight by Tuesday of the week leading into a big game. The coach then compares that against the previous week's numbers to decide whether to hold back or push harder. I ran into a specific problem when I tried to replicate this system for an amateur club in 2020. The original Arsenal version includes detailed notes sections where coaches can record things like "knee felt tight after drill three" or "shoulder clicked during band pull apart." Most templates I found online stripped that out because they assumed the log was purely quantitative. Without the qualitative notes, the system loses a lot of its usefulness. I ended up building a modified version that kept a free-text column alongside the numerical ratings. It took an extra two minutes per player per session but caught three minor injuries early that the numbers alone would have missed.
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Common Pitfalls
Beginners often treat the resistance levels as fixed settings instead of relative ones. The band color or weight assigned to a drill should change depending on the player's current fitness level and their recent match load. If you give every player the same yellow band for the same exercise, you are not tracking individual progress. You are just making everyone do the same thing, which defeats the purpose of having a personalized log. Another issue is over-indexing on the numerical ratings. A player might consistently mark everything as a five regardless of how hard the session actually was. Some athletes underreport to avoid looking weak. Others overreport to prove they are working hard. The log works best when you compare a player's numbers against their own historical baseline rather than against other players. I have seen coaches make the mistake of comparing Player A's average of six against Player B's average of four and then adjusting Player B's workload upward. That is backwards. Player B might just be more expressive with their ratings while actually pushing harder than Player A. The system also breaks down when you try to use it for tactical preparation. This log is strictly about physical conditioning and injury prevention. It does not track tactical understanding, set piece execution, or mental readiness. If you are looking for a single tool that covers everything, this is not it. Most clubs I have worked with combine the wrestling log with a separate technical assessment form that covers those other areas.
When It Fails
There are situations where The Arsenal The Wrestlers Training Log simply does not provide enough signal. If your club has fifty players and only two medical staff members, the time required to properly maintain individual logs becomes prohibitive. Each entry takes about two minutes if done carefully, which means you are looking at over an hour per session just for data entry. During a busy fixture period with games every three days, that time adds up quickly and staff tend to rush entries, which reduces data quality. The log is also less useful for younger players under sixteen. Their bodies change so rapidly over a six-month period that baseline numbers from January may be meaningless by July. The system assumes a relatively stable athletic profile. When that assumption breaks down, the comparisons become noisy and potentially misleading. For that age group, I recommend focusing on simpler tracking methods like session attendance and general well-being check-ins rather than detailed resistance logs. There is also the question of whether the wrestling-derived drills actually transfer to football performance. The research on this is mixed. Some studies show improved shoulder and core strength in players who complete the full module over a pre-season. Others find no significant difference compared to traditional gym work. The honest answer is probably somewhere in the middle. The drills seem to help players who lack baseline upper body strength, but they do not provide dramatic improvements for athletes who already have solid conditioning. If you are working with a squad of experienced professionals, you might get more benefit from tweaking existing gym routines than adopting the full wrestling log framework.
Getting Access
There is no single public download link for the original Arsenal version of this system. The club has never published their complete training log templates, and the exact format has evolved over the years. What you will find online are adapted versions created by sports science researchers and independent coaches who have studied the methodology. Some of these are freely available. Others require payment or club affiliation to access. If you are looking for a starting point, I suggest searching for "football conditioning log template" or "player workload tracking spreadsheet" rather than the specific wrestling log term. You will find more results that way, and the underlying structure is similar enough that you can adapt a generic template to fit the Arsenal approach. The key elements you want are the drill name, resistance setting, and perceived exertion rating. Everything else is customization based on your specific needs.
