One thing that I like to share with people, especially at wrestling clinics, is that goals are important. They give us direction, they give us clarity, and they also help to provide motivation to continue working even when things get difficult or don’t seem to be going your way. With a clear goal, you can look at it and be reminded of why you are working so hard, or why you should be working harder. However, I think one of the best parts of a good specific goal is that it gives you a deadline to get something done.

When we have a specific deadline, it is much more likely that we will get something done, and often times we will do whatever it takes to get it done on time. For some reason, we like to meet deadlines. Just think about when you were in school and you had a paper due. Sure sometimes you waited until the night before to finish it, but the thing is that the paper got done. It may not have always been the best paper, but it did get finished and turned in, which is better than having nothing at all. If your boss gives you a deadline to complete a project, you are going to do whatever it takes to get it done, because even if you don’t like your job, you do like the money that they give to you for going to work every day.

I am good at getting things done when people ask or tell me to get them done by a certain day, perhaps you are as well. The key is to get good at doing the things we tell ourselves to do by a certain time frame. If we can hold ourselves to our own deadlines, then we are definitely on the path to accomplishing our goals. What’s your goal? When will you accomplish it? Good luck on your path to success.

At the end of practice, I tell myself that I only have to do one more rep. It might be strength training, it might be extra cardio, or it might be one extra repetition of executing a technique, but I tell myself that if I just do one, then I can be finished. This helps me to stay after practice, because surely I can do just one. However, almost always, the one will turn into multiple sets or repetitions, but sometimes that biggest battle is just doing the one. Do one rep after practice, make one last phone call, read one more chapter because over time, it all adds up.

If you leave the practice room when the coach says that practice is over, are you gaining that 2%? If you leave work right at closing time, are you getting ahead of your competition? If you just ask superficial questions, are you going to have the best possible relationships with those you love and care about? Invest a few extra minutes to become the best you can in your chosen field. You owe it to yourself.

It was my first year of college, and we were doing preseason workouts. After everyone had arrived to practice for our conditioning session, the coaches told us to grab one of the folding metal chairs that were by the side of the track. I grabbed my chair just like everyone else, and I was wondering what we were going to do with it. The coaches then said that we were going to be running for a mile while pressing the chairs over our head. We couldn’t set the chair down, and we had to keep it pressing up and down over our head. The task didn’t sound too challenging at first, but after I started into the routine, I realized that it would be a long mile. I was shocked to feel how early my shoulders burned out, and felt like they were on fire. I kept the chair moving, but I do remember a stretch of the run where I was trying to just keep the chair bouncing off the top of my head to make it a little easier on my inflamed shoulder muscles. I remember the sound that the chair made as it kept hitting me in the head. At the time I guess that I didn’t appreciate the exercise much. I was just happy after I had completed the mile run. However, now that I look back, I guess that I learned that I can do hard things. I am also confident that you can do hard things too.

I have been thinking lately about training schedules within the sport of wrestling and coaches. I have had a lot of great coaches over the years. I really feel like I have been blessed and fortunate to have good coaches that have helped point me in the right direction. At this point in my career, I have had to take a little more responsibility in my own self coaching, and thinking about ways to get better. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I have been teaching a lot more wrestling at this stage of my career. Anyway there are a couple ideas that I think might be helpful.
1. If you don’t feel like doing something, do something else that you want to do as hard as you can – I know that people always say that in order to be successful, sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do. I get that, and I understand that, but perhaps you and I could be more productive doing something we really want to do. For example, if I don’t like to run, but I really want to wrestle hard for my conditioning, then why not just wrestle? Why fight yourself so much and have all of that negative energy come up and taint your workout.
2. Change your training split so that you can get more out of your workouts – This is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. The current split goes like this, Monday 2 a days, Tuesday 2 a days, Wednesday 1 a day, Thursday and Friday 2 a days, and once on Saturday. With the current rules, you only compete for 1 day in international competitions, so why would I train for so long on 2 consecutive days. Also some of those 2 a days include weight training on the same day that you are wrestling, and when does that ever happen in a competition. I think that it would be a great idea to play with a 2-1-2-1-2-1 split. This would end up being that the days you are doing 2 a days you are just wrestling those days, and the 1 a days are for strength training or conditioning. That way you aren’t squatting in the morning or doing cleans in the morning and then having burnt out legs for your wrestling in the afternoon because really getting better at wrestling is what you’re training for, not to have a good squat or a good clean. I think that by having a little more break between your wrestling days would help you to be more intense while your wrestling as well, and you would have more recovery time to help avoid overuse injuries. Anyway, those are my two cents for the day.

Years passed, and while sitting in a church service in Orem, Utah, I was fortunate enough to bump into Mark again. We caught up with each other and set up an appointment to meet and talk about my training. I am glad that I was fortunate enough to meet up with Mark and spend some time talking with him. It is always nice to get some new input as well as remember a few of the things that helped you to get you to where you are at. Anyway I feel like I received a shot of adrenaline into my wrestling career. We have kept in touch, and he has provided me with some useful suggestions.

One of these suggestions was to read the book Mind Set by Dweck. This book has been one of the best books that I have ever read that not only relates to wrestling or sports, but it relates to everything. I know that through the years that I have spent as an athlete, I have heard coaches preach about the importance of mental toughness. Sure you have to be tough. Sure you have to have a strong mental game, but the way Dweck has been able to describe a pair of mind sets that people tend to have, it has really made me evaluate how I think about things.

When you don’t reach your goals, do you see it as a failure, or do you see it as a chance to learn something? How you look at the instances when you don’t succeed the way you set out to can have a huge impact on your future performance. If you get caught up in the “fixed” mindset, you are likely to see your failure as the type of person who can’t succeed. You base your utility on that one single performance. However, if you have the “growth” mindset, you will look at the failure as an opportunity to learn and get better. The book goes into greater detail about these two mind sets, but it is definitely thought provoking. Do you fail or do you learn? The choice is really up to all of us.

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How much time are you spending on the fundamentals? It doesn’t matter what field or industry that you are in, there are certain fundamentals of what you are working at that need attention. It is human nature to often times look for the new or flashy fad that they think will bring them success. However, the truth is that the better you are at fundamentals, the more success that you will achieve in whatever you are working at.

I have taught kids all over the country, and it is always easy to pick out which kids are really going to succeed. The kids that will have the most success are the ones that stick to the basics and repeat them over and over again, trying to find the perfect way to execute the same old boring move day in and day out. They are able to focus on a couple of things and get really good at them. On the other hand, I also see kids who jump from one move to the next without really mastering any of them. I don’t blame them because I have definitely been in that situation before. It is much more fun to practice the new, slick, fancy move that looks really cool when executed as opposed to working on the same thing that you worked on the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. However, it is also a lot more fun to win than it is to lose, and the more that I focus on doing the basics correctly and better than my competition, the more I win.

I really think that the key is just sitting down and deciding, “Ok. What do I really want to be good at?” Then, after you have made up your mind, you need to go do that thing over and over and over again. Then, the next day, you need to get back up and go do that same thing over and over and over again. Will it be hard? Of course it will be, but that is the same reason why you will value the skill so much after you have mastered it because you will know that you worked so hard for it.

Stay focused and become great at something. The world needs and is waiting for you.

I read that scripture this morning, and it gave me a little push. I definitely needed it. While climbing the mountain of success, because it is a climb, there are always going to be different valleys in between the peaks that you ascend. For a lot of people these valleys might be failed businesses, failed relationships, illness, or myriad of other things. In the life of an athlete some of the great valleys to be conquered are losing matches and injury. When you lose a match it definitely is not pleasant, however, you do have the opportunity to get back out on the mat and start working to correct the mistakes that you made while you were wrestling or you might work harder developing your skills in crucial positions. When an injury occurs, depending on the severity of it, you can’t always jump right back on the mat. That is the situation I am in today, and I am not really happy about it.

I hurt my shoulder about a week ago, and at first I thought that I had just strained some muscles and that after giving it a little bit of rest, ice, and massage that I would be back on the mat training for an Olympic title. Unfortunately I haven’t really recovered the way that I had planned. I was supposed to be leaving on a plane tomorrow to travel to New York City for an international wrestling tournament, but that isn’t going to happen. I saw the doctor on Monday, got an MRI on my shoulder yesterday, and today I am waiting for that phone call to find out what exactly the problem is in my shoulder and how I can go about getting it better. It seems like such an interesting trait of people to not truly appreciate what it is that they have until that thing is taken away from you. I think that health is definitely one thing that I take for granted. I might be going through some tough workout and thinking how painful and uncomfortable things are in the moment, but now I am wishing that I could put myself through those mini torture sessions. Now the torture that I am putting myself through is waiting for the phone to ring so that I can talk with the doctor. I hope that she says, “Well you strained some muscles so take it easy for a couple days, and you’ll be good as new.” That might not be a very realistic expectation.

One thing I can expect to do is to work to have the right mindset. Injuries suck, but that is part of sports and also part of life. There have been plenty of times when I have stepped out on an icy road and slipped. I usually am able to catch my balance, but then I think, “What would have happened to me if I was 85 years old? I would probably fall and break a hip and freeze out in a parking lot somewhere.” That would be horrible, but I am sure that it has probably happened to someone. So now I am trying to focus on what is in my control to get healthy again in as little time as possible. I am supposed to fly to Belarus on Monday for a training camp and tournament so I am really going to have to get things together quickly. I need to focus on my rehab. I need to focus on my rest. I need to focus on doing everything I can to be able to keep climbing that mountain. I’ve seen valleys before, and I am sure that I will see them again. However, right now, I just want to get to another peak.

I have been wrestling for most of my life. I haven’t had a whole lot of day jobs or work experience like most normal people in our society do. I have learned to work my butt off, and I have learned what it takes to be great at something. The answer obviously is time and effort. However, for years I remember people talking about how wrestling prepares you for life, and how after you have wrestled everything else in life is easy. Most of the people that would say these things were wrestling coaches and they were trying to get their kids to buy into their program or the sport or whatever. I have always been pretty busy looking at how wrestling applies to wrestling, and I haven’t taken a whole lot of time to look at other things in life and think to myself “I think that this wrestling lesson applies to what it is that I am doing.” The other day though I was thinking about the importance of making scoring attempts in wrestling. The more attempts that you make, the more points that you will score, but I had never thought about how that applies to life.

When you make scoring attempts in wrestling you obviously take your lumps if it is a brand new move that you are trying to execute, but as you at least make the attempt you learn how to scramble and recover if for some reason you end up in a bad position. Eventually you learn how to execute and when to execute and things to watch out for. Over time you do the move over and over again, and you become the expert. Then you feel using that technique against the very best people in the world. It isn’t a really complicated process, but it does take time and effort. Then I realized that you can take that same model or idea and apply it to anything in life or business or whatever. You get good by trying to do whatever it is that you want to do. People don’t just start out good at sports, school, business, music, etc… They get good by practicing and everyday trying to do just a little bit more or do a little bit better. If you do this day in and day out, think about how good you will be at it at the end of 5, 10, or even 20 years. So I guess the whole moral of the story is to figure out what you want to be good at and start doing it. Even if you are horrible at it right now, even if people tell you that you are crazy, even though you have no experience or background in that thing, start today. As you make the attempts you will get good at whatever it is that you want to do, and you will be happy that you made the effort because at the end of the day you will have made something of yourself.