Yeah it really just boiled down to them being bad coaches. Now that I'm a bit older and have coached (jiujistu, wrestling, weight lifting) I can see that they were morons who thought "doing something hard" equated to good practice. No, you stupid niggers. If you want us to get stronger, have us do weight training. If you want us to be better wresters, have us drill techniques. Doing something arbitrarily difficult because "reasons" doesn't do fuck all, and as you stated, is likely to get people hurt. The head coach was demoted to a high school coach some years later, so that was some solid vindication that quitting his shitty team and the culture being built around it was a good decision. Too bad for them too, I was definitely one of the top 2 freshman they brought in that year. Wrestled in a few of the open tournaments and did really well, losing only to juniors and seniors but holding my own against them.