Carolyn Wester is the founder and head coach of Wrestling Prep and the creator of Body Leveraging and Sequential Muscle Order (SMO), proprietary coaching systems she began developing in 2005 and has spent more than two decades refining through the actual coaching of combat athletes.
Carolyn entered the sport of wrestling at age 42 and built an unconventional coaching career from the ground up—progressing from developing young wrestlers to coaching nationally ranked athletes, Olympic and World-level wrestlers, UFC fighters, and professional MMA athletes.
Her work became part of the elite MMA environment through American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) in San Jose, where she has coached wrestling and worked in an environment that has produced some of the most accomplished fighters in the history of the sport.
Carolyn has more than two decades of experience translating wrestling into MMA and has coached and cornered professional fighters at the UFC level, including serving as a UFC chief corner. Her work is not based on theory developed outside competition—it has been tested while preparing athletes to perform at the highest levels of combat sport.
Body Leveraging is fundamentally different from gymnastics, mobility training or general movement coaching. Carolyn analyzes the mechanics occurring inside an athlete’s actual sport-specific technique—how the body is positioned, which muscles are being recruited, in what sequence they are firing, and how those factors affect leverage, force, velocity, impact, and control.
That analysis allows Carolyn to work with an athlete on a technique they may already perform at an elite level and find efficiencies that have gone unnoticed for years. An accomplished wrestler and coach who worked with Carolyn estimated that changes she made to his signature technique improved it by approximately 20%.
Carolyn does not teach athletes to replace their existing systems with hers. She can work inside wrestling, MMA or jiu-jitsu techniques an athlete already uses and change the underlying mechanics so the athlete can execute those techniques with greater efficiency, leverage, and power.
One of the defining characteristics of Carolyn’s coaching is her ability to see extremely small mechanical details in real time—often identifying why an athlete cannot consistently reproduce a movement and giving them a correction they can immediately test and feel.
Although Body Leveraging was developed through wrestling and combat sports, demand for Carolyn’s work has expanded beyond them. During the past several years, she has been approached about applying the same principles to athletes and coaches in professional baseball, collegiate football, and the NFL.
Andrew Morgan began training with Wrestling Prep under Head Coach Carolyn Wester in the summer of 2013 and has continued throughout, and has served as a coach for many years. Currently, he is a Spartan Combat RTC Athlete at Cornell University and a Coach.
Drew has a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA): Trust and Wealth Management, Campbell University, a Master of Business Administration (MBA), Campbell University, and a Master of Accounting (MACC), Campbell University. He is a 3X Academic All-American, First Team NWCA All-American, NCAA Covid All-American, Southern Conference Champion 2020, 2X California State Placer, NHSCA Senior All-American, Flo Nationals All-American.
Bryce Wolcott is a long-time educator and wrestling coach who supports Wrestling Prep through behind-the-scenes content production and technical operations. He first brought his athletes to Wrestling Prep in 2013 and was immediately drawn to Carolyn’s innovative and principle-based approach, which aligned with his background in science. Bryce can be reached at: bryce@wrestlingprep.com