10 Ideas For Better Preseason Training - Monday, September 6th, 2010

There is no secret to being the best, or what’s really important, being the best YOU can be. Here are some ideas on how to approach practice as the season is now just around the corner.   There are no secrets to being your best.  The truth is few are willing to do what it takes.  Here is a quick list of ideas to help you.

1-       Live it.  Be diligent and determined.  Wake up every morning and think “what can I do today to move closer to my goal?”  Then plan your day accordingly. 

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and God gives abundantly to industry.  So plow deep while the sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.”     —Benjamin Franklin

Decide what you are going to do, and do it.  If you decide you are going to win, make that decision and charge ahead as if you can’t fail.  You will be more committed to your goals if you believe you are going to be successful.  Tough decisions will no longer be tough if you are committed.  If you don’t believe in yourself, act and think as if you do, and eventually you will.

“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”  –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

2-      Find the best workout partner you can find every day.  Most wrestlers find someone they can pound on.  Even if you are getting hammered, with a positive mindset, the better your workout partner is, the better you will become.   You can’t sharpen on a knife on a piece of cheese.  But you can sharpen a piece of cheese on a knife.  Terrible example…but you get the point.

3-      Work on your areas of weakness along with your areas of strength.  Most wrestlers want to work only on what they are good at. 

“It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that.  It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”   –Bear Bryant

4-      Drill correctly.  Drill how you want to compete.  Finish shots, chain wrestle, drill set ups, and if you are the drill partner land like a cat instead of falling on your belly or back.  Develop the correct habits.  You will do in matches what you do in practice.

“Nothing is stronger than habit.”  Ovid

5-       Get to practice early and be excited to be there.  Being early helps to get into the correct mind set and shake off outside distractions.   That’s how you get focused and remember the purpose of practice.  Make progress.  Be happy to be there.

“Energy is equal to desire and purpose.”  –Sheryl Adams

6-      Instead of wishing and hoping for success, the wrestlers that are going to win do something about it.  They work.

“Many of us spend half of our time wishing for things we could have if we didn’t spend half our time wishing.”    –Alexander Woollcott

7-   The best wrestlers understand that practice is just that…practice.  They experiment and work on the things that they need to make progress.  There is no other way to learn then to try.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”                    –Aristotle

See the big picture and understand that making mistakes is part of making progress.  Most wrestlers are too worried about not losing in practice to try new things.  Therefore, they continue to do the same things and will inevitably get the same results.  In a month, no one cares who won in practice.  But the wrestler who is trying to get better will quickly pass up his teammates and likely reach his goals.    

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”  Albert Einstein

8-      Don’t just “clock in’ and go through the motions. Use the short time at practice to get better and prepare to reach your goals. Make sure practice is more difficult than your greatest competition.  Most wrestlers work hard but just hard enough to get by.  Are you preparing to win the easy matches or to beat the very best?  

“I am wondering what would have happened to me if some fluent talker had converted me to the theory of the eight-hour day and convinced me that it was not fair to my fellow workers to put forth my best in my work…If my life had been made up of eight-hour days I do not believe I could have accomplished a great deal.”  –Thomas A. Edison

 Do more.

9-      Prepare for the difficult and critical moments in your careers.  If you want to be tough in matches, be tough in practice.  The difference between a mentally tough guy and the average guy isn’t much, it’s just being strong a few moments longer.  It is just focusing on what you can control and doing the best you can with those things.  Mentally weaker people focus on things they can’t control.  It’s these moments that dreams slip or that dreams come true.   And it’s the daily choices of pushing past fatigue and obstacles in practice that will decide how you will respond to pressure in critical moments on the big stage.  There are no surprises in competition.  People don’t just miraculously become “a gamer” in the critical moments in life.  They prepare every day for those moments.

 Prepare.

10-    Have fun!  There is nothing more fun then working hard towards a worthwhile goal.  Enjoy it.

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