The ready position, also known under the more intricate name “collegiate style top woman advantage position”, is a ladies wrestling move which is never used in professional wrestling. The ready position is only used in freestyle women’s wrestling and in some competitive mat matches where the parties agree beforehand to incorporate the ready position into the rules.

The ready position is basically meant to offer one of the wrestlers an advantage over her opponent. Whether the advantage is supposed to be a mere conservation of a previously existing stance in the battle, or a punishment for one of the wrestlers involved depends on the rules in place. In freestyle wrestling matches for instance, if the two wrestlers leave the combat area of the mat at the initiative of the girl on the bottom, they will be brought back to the center and the girl on the bottom will be sent down by the ref to reflect the situation which existed before the interruption of the hostilities. In competitive mat wrestling, the girls often agree upon special rules concerning the ready position. The girl losing the first fall may begin the second fall on the bottom of a ready position as punishment.

The ready position has one of the girls (the one on the bottom) on all fours, completely exposing her rear and back to her opponent. She only has to maintain the position until the action gets underway. As soon as the match restarts, she’s free to do whatever she can to defeat her opponent.

Possible escape: skilled freestyle women wrestlers have ways for escaping the ready position. In freestyle wrestling, a reversal (escape from the bottom) is scored with 2 points.

Rating: the ready position does indeed get the girl on the bottom into a pretty dire predicament, so in that respect I suppose it is efficient. Other than that, we can’t really talk about efficiency when it comes to the ready position.