Ben Askren’s answer to wrestling training after a lung transplant did not start with a double-leg, a comeback poster, or a clean medical green light. It started with a June 2025 double lung transplant after a near-fatal illness, a 45-day coma, and his own account that he “died four times.” By around March 2026, he was back around the room coaching at Askren Wrestling Academy. From there came short live looks: a six-minute practice match with a high school wrestler, then 12 straight weeks of setting new training records before returning to competitive wrestling on July 18, 2026.[1]
That is the emotional pull of the story. It is also where the guardrails have to go up. Askren was not a typical recreational athlete trying to “get active again.” He was an Olympic-level wrestler before the transplant, with decades of mat skill already built into his nervous system. His return shows that wrestling after a lung transplant can happen in one extraordinary case. It does not prove that wrestling is broadly safe after a lung transplant, and it does not turn a transplant recipient into someone who can ignore transplant rules.
The Real First Step Is Permission, Not Conditioning
The cleanest mistake a wrestler can make here is treating clearance like paperwork that arrives after the hard work is done. In Askren’s case, the clearance was the story. He said his doctor initially told him that wrestling again “was not going to happen.” The doctor’s position changed only after seeing that Askren was already wrestling in practice and then approving the competitive return under specific conditions.[2]
That sequence matters. A transplant physician is not just worried about whether an athlete can finish a round. The bigger questions are whether the new lungs are functioning well enough, whether the immune-suppression plan is stable, whether infection risk is being controlled, and whether the athlete understands that a room full of sweaty bodies is not the same environment as a treadmill test.
Askren also described infection precautions that sound boring until you remember what is at stake. He said he masks in crowds, not because masking is part of a wrestling brand, but because crowds are a real exposure problem for a lung transplant recipient.[2] That kind of discipline is not separate from the comeback. It is part of the comeback.
What Doctors Need To Know Before Wrestling Enters the Picture
A sports medicine opinion on Askren’s return drew a useful line between wrestling and higher-strike combat sports. Dr. Brian Sutterer argued that wrestling carries less direct head and chest trauma risk than MMA or boxing after a transplant, but he still treated objective VO2peak testing as essential before clearance.[3] That is the right kind of caution: not a blanket fantasy that all grappling is safe, and not a lazy “never” that refuses to measure anything.
VO2peak is not a toughness score. It gives the medical team a way to see how the heart, lungs, and muscles handle increasing work. Wrestling is ugly from a cardiopulmonary standpoint because the athlete does not get clean, predictable effort. There are scrambles, breath holds, isometric squeezes, sudden shots, and awkward pressure. A good training room can make a hard athlete look ready. Objective testing is there to catch what the room might miss.
| Checkpoint | Why it matters for wrestling |
|---|---|
| Transplant physician approval | Confirms the athlete is not making a unilateral return decision. |
| Objective cardiopulmonary testing | Shows whether the body can tolerate rising work, not just easy drilling. |
| Stable infection plan | Accounts for crowds, partners, travel, skin contact, and shared facilities. |
| Controlled training progression | Keeps the athlete from jumping straight from rehab confidence to live chaos. |
| Clear stop rules | Gives coaches and clinicians authority when symptoms or exposure risk change. |
The Rehab Ladder Comes Before the Wrestling Ladder
Before anyone talks about hand fighting, sprawls, or live goes, the baseline is ordinary post-transplant physical therapy. Columbia Surgery’s lung transplant rehabilitation guidance starts with monitored mobility, walking, breathing work, posture, strengthening, and a gradual return to daily function after surgery.[4] That is not glamorous work, but it is the floor. A wrestler who cannot respect that floor has no business asking for the ceiling.
The wrestling progression should sit on top of that medical progression, not replace it. In practical terms, the path looks less like a motivational montage and more like this:
- Basic mobility and breathing work under the transplant rehab plan.
- General strength and conditioning cleared by the transplant team.
- Coaching, demonstrating, and limited mat presence without live resistance.
- Light technical drilling with selected partners and strict hygiene rules.
- Short, controlled practice matches only after objective testing and physician sign-off.
- Competition, if approved, treated as a one-time exceptional return rather than a new normal.
There is evidence that exercise can help lung transplant recipients improve functional capacity, but it is not wrestling evidence. A Cochrane review found very low-certainty evidence overall, while reporting improvements in six-minute walk test performance from multimodal training at 3 months and 12 months.[5] That supports supervised training as part of recovery. It does not support live wrestling as a standard rehabilitation tool.
From Coaching to Drilling: Where the Room Starts Getting Risky
Coaching is the first wrestling-specific step that makes sense because it lets the athlete re-enter the room without pretending to be competition-ready. The athlete can watch movement, cue positions, demonstrate slowly, and rebuild timing in small doses. Even then, the room has to be treated differently after a lung transplant. Partners come with germs. Mats come with skin problems. A packed tournament comes with crowd exposure. The infection plan has to be as real as the practice plan.
Light drilling is where ego starts lying. A wrestler can convince himself that a few stance-motion rounds are nothing, then turn a single underhook exchange into a fight for position. That is why the early drilling partners matter. They should be experienced enough to stay calm, clean enough to be trusted, and mature enough to shut down a round instead of testing the transplant recipient’s pride.
The move from drilling to a practice match is not just “a little more intensity.” It changes the problem. Now the athlete is reacting under fatigue, resisting pressure, absorbing body weight, and making decisions while breathing hard. Askren’s six-minute practice match against a high schooler is important because it shows a controlled bridge between training and competition, not because every transplant recipient should go find a high school wrestler and copy it.[1]
The Official Guidance Still Says Contact Sports Are the Problem
This is the tension that cannot be smoothed over: official guidance remains cautious about contact sports after lung transplant. NHS Blood and Transplant advises lung transplant recipients to avoid heavy contact sports, specifically naming sports such as rugby and martial arts.[6] Wrestling belongs in that conversation because bodies collide, partners drive pressure, and the athlete cannot fully script what happens once resistance starts.
Askren’s return sits against that guidance, not comfortably inside it. The only responsible way to read the case is as an exception made after physician review, visible training evidence, and an athlete with an unusual athletic base. If the medical team says no contact, the answer is no contact. If the team says “maybe,” the next step is testing and staged exposure, not an open mat.
Even more aggressive conditioning research does not erase that line. A 2024 narrative review reported that high-intensity interval training appears safe in stable solid organ transplant recipients, but it also noted that the included studies lacked a priori adverse event definitions.[7] In plain training-room language: there is some encouragement for hard conditioning in stable transplant recipients, but the research is not a permission slip for live combat sport.
A Practical Return Path, If the Transplant Team Allows It
For a wrestler cleared to train, the work should progress by exposure, not by emotion. The early goal is not to prove toughness. It is to give the transplant team and coaching staff enough clean information to decide whether the next exposure is justified.
| Phase | Mat-room version | What should stop progression |
|---|---|---|
| Rehab base | Walking, breathing work, basic strength, mobility, and daily function work | Unresolved surgical, respiratory, infection, or medication concerns |
| Conditioning base | Physician-cleared strength training, easy aerobic work, and monitored effort | Poor test results, abnormal symptoms, or inability to recover between sessions |
| Coaching return | Watching practice, giving cues, limited demonstration, no live resistance | Crowd exposure concerns, illness in the room, or fatigue that affects recovery |
| Light drilling | Low-resistance technique with trusted partners and strict hygiene | Partner unpredictability, skin infection risk, breathlessness, or pressure intolerance |
| Controlled live | Short practice matches with pre-set limits and medical awareness | Symptoms, poor recovery, rising infection risk, or any physician objection |
| Competition | One approved event or match under agreed limits | No explicit clearance, no objective testing, or no infection-management plan |
The conditioning work inside those phases should stay boring longer than the athlete wants. Bodyweight strength, trunk control, hip strength, pulling patterns, and easy aerobic capacity matter because wrestling punishes weak links. If a physician has cleared structured training, a wrestling-specific resource such as the 8-Week Bodyweight Strength Program for Wrestlers at Home can be a starting point for non-contact strength work. It should not be treated as a transplant rehab plan or a substitute for medical clearance.
What Askren’s Return Proves, and What It Does Not
Askren’s case proves that a lung transplant recipient can, in at least one documented instance, move from transplant rehab back to coaching, then to drilling, then to a practice match, and finally to a competitive wrestling return. It also proves that the comeback required more than desire. The doctor’s hesitation, the later approval, the infection precautions, the testing conversation, and the controlled progression are the useful parts of the story.
It does not prove that wrestling after lung transplant is generally safe. It does not override guidance against heavy contact sports. It does not give a younger wrestler, a masters wrestler, or a recreational grappler a template to follow without transplant-team approval. There are no published studies specifically testing wrestling or combat sports after lung transplant, and as of July 19, 2026, there is not yet meaningful long-term follow-up on Askren’s health after the July 18 match.
So the answer is yes, but only in the narrowest honest sense. Wrestling training after lung transplant can happen when recovery is strong enough, testing is objective enough, physicians are willing to sign off, infection precautions are strict, and the athlete accepts that one extraordinary return is not the same thing as restarting a career.
References
- Ben Askren to make miraculous return to combat sports year after near-fatal illness, double lung transplant - RAF Wrestling, Yahoo Sports
- Ben Askren admits double lung transplant almost feels like a bad dream now that he’s wrestling again just one year later, MMA Fighting
- Ben Askren Could Compete Again After Double Lung Transplant, Says Sports Medicine Expert, BJJEE
- Physical Therapy After Lung Transplantation, Columbia Surgery
- Exercise training for adult lung transplant recipients, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
- Getting back to activities, NHS Blood and Transplant
- High-intensity interval training in stable solid organ transplant recipients, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2024
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