View Video – 3 Most Important Characteristics A Wrestler Needs to Be Their Best

I want to talk today about the 3 Most Important Characteristics A Wrestler Needs to Be Their Best. Coaches can play a huge role in helping their wrestlers in attaining them.

Let us talk about the first ingredient that a wrestler needs. The “Technical Aspect”. If you want to reach your potential in wrestling you have to be technically sound. How do you improve your wrestler’s technique…? Get them to camp, watch videos, and have them drill new techniques repeatedly until they get confident with them.

Dan Gable always said, “We learn and drill new technique in the off season, we wrestle during season”. As you can see technique is one ingredient that is needed.

The second thing a wrestler needs to have is horsepower or strength. There is no substitute for strength. If everything is even during a match, I will take the kid who is stronger to win. You might have better technique than me, but if I am stronger, I can always catch you and pin you. Most coaches know how important strength is but fail to make a commitment with the kids in the off season.

I had my guys lift at my office 3 days a week from the Monday after the state tournament to the start of practice in November. Once season started, I backed off to 2 days of lifting per week. In season lifting is for maintenance, after season lifting is for getting strong. I think a lot of coaches overlook lifting because as soon as the season is over, they walk away from wrestling and tell their wrestlers to lift on their own. Your committed kids will lift, but most of your kids won’t.

I would write up the lift for my team every day and then I would jump in and lift with them. I wanted to hold them accountable as well as keep an eye on the team. When season ends wrestlers think they have all this extra time and freedom. That is when they can get in trouble. I wanted to always keep them focused, and lifting with them 3 days a week kept them more accountable to the team.

The 3^rd ingredient that a wrestler needs is by far the toughest to teach as a coach, but I believe this is the most important… some call it attitude, guts, heart, the will to win, mental toughness. This is the X-Factor in the wrestler. What makes a kid get a take-down in the last 10 seconds of a match on his opponent to win by a point? You can throw technique and strength out… it was the “attitude” that got the take-down.

My brother who was a 2X NCAA Champ always said, “The amount of confidence you have is directly related to how hard you work”.

Let us really break that down and say that again.

“THE AMOUNT OF CONFIDENCE YOU HAVE IS DIRECTLY REALTED TO HOW HARD YOU WORK.”

The harder you work, the more important the goal becomes. The more important the goal becomes, the harder you work. What happens is you get the snowball rolling down a hill and it can’t be stopped. I am convinced that coaches can get the snowball rolling but the individual must make the commitment.

When I was the Assistant Coach at Purdue University, I read a story about the Study of the Mind. The study absolutely shocked me. I tell this story all the time at my summer camps.

A psychiatrist brings in a guy to do an experiment on. There is a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood between two chairs. The psychiatrist sits down on one chair and the guy sits down on the other chair. The plywood that is between the two chairs has a hole in the center of it. The psychiatrist tells the guy to put his arm through the hole in the plywood. The guy cannot see the psychiatrist, the only thing that the psychiatrist can see on the guy is his arm. The psychiatrist picks up an ice cube and starts rubbing it right on the guys forearm. As the psychiatrist is doing that, he keeps telling the guy repeatedly, “I’m slowly burning your arm, hang tough, I’m slowly burning your arm”. The guy tells the psychiatrist that he is hurting and is in pain. After about 8-10 minutes, the psychiatrist throws the ice cube away and wipes up the wet spot on his arm. He tells the guy to come back and see him tomorrow morning.

This is what shocked me. The next morning, the guy comes in and the psychiatrist looks at his forearm. Right where the psychiatrist was rubbing the ice cube was a blister. What you must understand about this story is this. The ice cannot cause the blister. What happened was that the psychiatrist convinced the guy that he had something that was burning his arm and a blister formed. Do you know where he convinced that guy? He convinced the guy in his head, so his body reacted.

How does this story correlate to coaches? It is simple. If a psychiatrist can convince some guy that he is burning his arm with a piece of ice and a blister forms. Then, coaches think of what you can convince your kids of doing. I am convinced that you are game changers with your kids.

Next week for “Wisdom on Wednesdays” we are going to be talking about Building Team Unity.

Stay safe and keep training hard.

Remember, “Noah didn’t wait for his ship to come in, he built one”.