The 2011 Greco Roman Wrestling World Championships
September 17, 2011 | 
Author My experience this year at the world championships wasn’t what I had envisioned. I felt great leading up to the tournament. I was well rested, confident in my training and ability to win, and I was having fun wrestling. Unfortunately the day of competition I wasn’t able to do what I needed to do to win the matches to allow me to have a winning wrestling tournament. I lost first round to Sweden’s Jimmy Lidberg. He made it to the finals which pulled me back into the tournament. Then, in the wrestle backs, I beat Tunisia, and I lost my next match before the medal round to Belarus. It was disappointing, but I was able to glean a few lessons on what I will do next time in my preparation for my competitions.
1) The first lesson is to not change too many things right before or at the competition. When you are doing something at the elite level, you are always looking for things to do that will help you to gain an advantage. I got some advice that I really took to heart and tried to apply. I am not saying that it wasn’t good advice, but the time of implementation was not ideal. I was really focusing on trying to wear my opponents down to get them tired, but the way I was going about it was not ideal for me. I spent too much time hanging on my opponents head trying to wear him down instead of making more attacks at an angle. When an opponent makes attempts to defend themselves, that is when they get tired not when you bang on their head. If you are able to bang the head and make combinations out of it into an attack, that is when you will be successful.
2) I needed to trust myself more. Again I take 100% responsibility for my training, competition, wins, and losses so I am not saying that I lost because of what other people did. In the matches that I lost, I didn’t stick to what I usually try. I will usually try to go for a gut wrench and later try to combine it with a lift. Many times the gut wrench can work as a great set up to the lift. However, at this tournament the corner was telling me to lift. Instead of testing my gut wrench first and then going to my lift, I went straight to the lift, and the attempts weren’t solid enough to produce any points. Perhaps I might still not have scored even if I did try to gut wrench first, but in the very least I wouldn’t be wondering later if it would have made a difference or not. So make sure to stick with your style and your game plan. Changing things in the heat of the moment is not always a good idea, but hey then again sometimes improvisation is what pays huge dividends.
3) Don’t rush things. A lot of things can happen with a few seconds on the clock, and it is crucial to take the time to use every one of those seconds effectively. I tried a lift in my match against Belarus, my back was up against the wall, and I needed to score or I would lose the period anyway. I lifted him, but as I rushed the throw, I got countered and lost the period. If I would have taken a split second to readjust the throw might have worked, or it might have failed, but once again I wouldn’t be thinking about it afterwards. I also saw some photos of that match, and my opponent clearly hit me with a leg foul. If I would have thought for a second after the failed attempt, I could have challenged the call. That at least would have given the officials the opportunity to review the action and determine if it was a leg foul or not.
So the tournament didn’t go as well as I had hoped and planned, but sometimes that is the nature of competition. I have plans to move forward, and I have concrete things to improve. When you win you party, and when you lose you ponder. I want the pondering now to pay off with some partying in the future.
Ten Years Ago
Ten years ago I was wrestling at the University of Nebraska, and I was lifting weights in the morning at the Bob Devaney sports arena. It was the same building where our wrestling room was, and it was the same place that we wrestled most of our meets in. The radio was on tuned to some sort of rock station, and while the radio hosts were talking, they suddenly focused on the topic that a plane had flown into one of the world trade center builidings. From how they first mentioned it, it sounded like a small private plane had hit the towers, and they were wondering how someone could have been so stupid as to fly into a large building in Manhattan. I finished my workout, showered, and went over to the athlete’s center to have breakfast at the cafeteria. When I arrived, that is when I realized how serious the situation really was, and I watched with everyone else as the two towers eventually came down. I was in shock and disbelief that something like that could happen on American soil. I tried to go through the motions of the rest of my day.
The day passed and I was again watching the news watching the aftermath of the horrific events. The one thing that sticks with me is seeing the many people who had missing family members and friends with cardboard signs and pictures trying to locate them with the help of the news. I couldn’t help but think how I would be feeling at that moment if my family or friends had gone missing. There was no way that I could possibly understand what those people were experiencing at that time, but I know that I hurt inside and started to cry. I remember thinking about my two brothers who were serving LDS missions at the time. One was in Puerto Rico, the other one was in the Dominican Republic. I prayed for both of them to be safe. I prayed for the people who had lost someone in the terrorist attacks, and I prayed that those people who weren’t found yet could somehow still be alive. I prayed because that is all that I felt that I could do.
Now ten years later, I think about the lives lost and how I felt watching all of those people in search of their loved ones. I would like to think that there is some healing that has taken place, but I imagine that there is still an emptiness that I cannot truly comprehend. Now with two children of my own, just the thought of losing one of them scares me to death. Once when my oldest daughter was still a baby, I ran some errands with her in the back seat. My wife usually always had her, but I had taken her for a little ride. It was supposed to be fun. I got out of the car locked the doors and walked into Walgreen’s to fill a prescription. I came out shortly after, and I saw my daughter fast asleep in her car seat. I had left her in the back the whole time without even remembering that she was with me. In that moment I thought of how both of our lives and my wife’s could have changed in the blink of an eye if something had happened to her. I felt horrible and scared that something could have happened, but I was also relieved that nothing did. I can’t imagine the pain that would come from losing a child. I hope that is something that I never have to deal with.
I am very far away from the United States. I am in Turkey. I am getting ready to wrestle in the world championships. I weigh in today, and I wrestle tomorrow. I wish that somehow wrestling could fix things. I wish that somehow wrestling could heal all of the broken hearts that resulted from that tragedy a decade ago. I know that it can’t, but I would like it to at least help a little bit. I want to win for America. I want to win for my wife and kids back home. I want to win for me. I want to win.
Posted in Traveling and Competitions | 
Tags: 9/11, greco roman wrestling, Justin Ruiz, olympic wrestling, world championships | 
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First Day In Istanbul
The team made it to Istanbul without any problems. We left our hotel in Komotini this morning a little after 8 a.m. and we arrived to our hotel in Istanbul around 2:30 p.m. Fortunately for me I was able to sleep a little bit on the long bus ride. I don’t think that the drive would have taken as long if it weren’t for the need to stop at customs leaving Greece and entering Turkey. To be honest with you I have definitely had worse bus rides. Near the end of the trip we figured out that the bus was equipped with a dvd player, and someone threw in a movie. Too bad we hadn’t realized that we had dvd capability sooner.
We are staying at the Wow hotel in Istanbul. You might be thinking “Really the name of the hotel is Wow?” Yes the name of the hotel is Wow. I must admit I am impressed with this place. The rooms are clean and pretty modern. We have internet access in our room, but we have only one ethernet port and no wifi. I am sure glad that I remembered to pack an ethernet cable before I left home. Otherwise these next few days could be pretty long ones. They have a nice workout facility and sauna right here in the hotel, and as far as I can tell the food is good. They have a couple of palm trees planted right in the middle of the lobby, which is something that is new to me, but I can dig it.
There are just a couple more days until I get to weigh in, and then one more after that until I can wrestle. Waiting is the one part of wrestling that nobody really teaches you about. You go to practice every day, and you work on technique, strength, conditioning, mental toughness, etc.. But, there really is no way that you prepare for waiting other than waiting. Then it all comes down to how you can control your thoughts leading up to the competition or being able to put your thoughts on hold and focus on other things so you don’t wear yourself out before the competition. My personal strategy is to try to stay as loose as possible leading up into a competition. One of the benefits of having my family travel with me when I am in the U.S. is that it gives me a chance to relax and play with my kids. In fact at the 2010 world team trials in Council Bluffs, my family and I went to the zoo in Omaha on the day of weigh ins to do something fun. It was hot enough out that I was able to lose some weight walking around, and I had a good time. Hopefully they have something here in the city that would be interesting to see tomorrow.
When I walked into the lobby downstairs I saw a booth set up with information on the tournament. Wrestling is pretty popular here is Turkey so I am expecting a great turnout to the competition. On one of the banners that they had set up advertising the tournament, they had written “The lions of the wrestling mat.” I had never heard of that before, but I like the sound of it. Have you ever seen lions fight on nature shows on tv or youtube? They are pretty intense. One year when the U.S. nationals were in Las Vegas, my wife and I went and saw a movie about lions at an Imax theater. The movie was pretty good, and I had a new found respect for the “king of the jungle” (even though they live on open plains). With this being the world championships and everyone looking to qualify for the Olympic Games, I am sure there will be some epic battles between all of these “lions of the wrestling mat”.
Another Day In Komotini
Here is another video from my experience in Komotini.
Updates From The US World Team In Komotini, Greece
So I have some good news and some bad news that come with this post, but let me start with the good news. Training has been going well, and I am feeling pretty good about the upcoming tournament. My weight is where it should be, I am healthy, and I am looking forward towards competing next Monday. This summer has been a long grueling one with a lot of time away from home and family, and I would really like to see the sacrifices that I have made pay off in this tournament. As a whole I feel like our team feels pretty confident in their ability to perform well at the world championships, and I think that everyone has made some extra effort to ensure that they have managed their weight correctly this year. I think cutting weight is one of the things that can make wrestling quite a challenge, however, it is also one of the aspects of the sport that helps to develop self discipline. So I guess that all you can say is that it is what it is, accept it, and keep getting ready for that scale so that you can compete.
The facilities that we have been training at have everything that we need. There are three full size wrestling mats, and a sauna. That is pretty much all that we need right now. We have been doing short intense goes and as of yesterday, we are at the point where the practices are open now. I like the open workouts because it gives each athlete the opportunity to fine tune what he thinks he needs to be ready for the upcoming competition. We have all been training so hard in preparation for this that there really isn’t a whole lot more that can be done between now and the next couple of days so the focus has been weight management, relaxing, and getting mentally prepared for the world championships.
With the down time that we have had in between practices I have been filling my time with reading, the internet, and talking with my family on skype. When I first started traveling on these international trips, there wasn’t a whole lot of easily available internet access that would allow me to keep in touch with everyone back home. I remember spending so much money on phone cards to call my wife, and now with the advancement of technology, it has been really easy to get in touch with my wife and two daughters back home. My youngest is ten months, and she is starting to stand up on her own. We will see if she takes her first steps before I make it back from the world championships. If she knew why her daddy was out of town, I am sure that she would understand. This year is a big year.
The year before the Olympics is always a special one because there is an even greater sense of urgency and intensity at these big tournaments. Everyone is pushing hard to qualify their weight class for the Olympics, and this tournament is one that you can get the weight class qualified. If you finish in the top 6, your weight class is qualified for next year’s Olympic Games in London, England. That helps take some pressure off of you for the start of next year with some of the other Olympic qualifying tournaments. Anybody that qualifies their weight class here can start preparing for the Olympic trials knowing that the U.S. will have an opportunity to send someone to wrestle at that weight.
Well I know that I told you that I had good news and bad news. I updated you on the good news, so now here is the bad news. Unfortunately, one of our teammates, Jake Fisher, broke his foot in one of our training sessions. He will not be competing in the world championships this year. I feel bad for him because I know how hard he has worked and how much he has sacrificed to make another world team and have the opportunity to represent the U.S. We will miss him competing with us this year, but I am confident that whoever takes his place will represent the country and the weight class well. Jake also wrestles for the New York Athletic Club as I do, and it is especially difficult to see him not being able to compete this year. I wish him a speedy recovery, and I hope to see him back competing again soon.
Justin Ruiz and the US world team in Komotini, Greece
Here is some video from my trip so far in Komotini, Greece. Keep checking back for more updates.
Posted in Traveling and Competitions | Tags: greco roman wrestling, Justin Ruiz, komotini greece, olympic wrestling, wrestling camp | No Comments »
A Trip To The Aegean Sea
Justin Ruiz takes a day off at the beach
We had the day off from training on Sunday so the team took a trip to the beach. We traveled by bus for about 30 minutes to get to the Aegean sea, and when we arrived some of the workers at the beach set up a pair of sun umbrellas so that we could sit in the shade and relax. The sun was pretty strong when we got to the beach so for the most part I kept a shirt on and a hat on, however, I did take a couple of dips into the sea to cool down. There is no point in getting a bad sunburn this close to competition. As you can tell from the photo I have been outside in the sun to go swimming probably a total of three times this summer. Usually after a couple of burns at the start of the summer I am pretty good to go when it comes to spending time in the sun so usually I am not too concerned about getting burnt, but it’s different this time.
There were quite a few people at the beach, and there were a lot of them that loved playing some sort of paddle ball game. From what I could tell, you had to stand in the same place and you would hit a tennis ball back and forth with a couple of medium sized wooden paddles. I don’t know how you scored or if in fact they were trying to score. In tennis you obviously want to blast the ball out of your opponent’s reach, but this game was quite different. Some people played this game for hours while we were at the beach. I really wish I knew the name of the game that they were playing.
Near the end of our stay at the beach, a couple of teammates turned their attention to crab fishing. There was a crab or crabs that had been pinching a couple of the guys in the water, but nobody really knew what it was until it got a pretty solid grip on Joe Betterman’s toe. After that they started a search in the water to see what was going on. With the help of a borrowed net, they were able to catch the culprit and bring him out of the water. One of the beach workers was holding the crab for all to see and take a picture of it when out of nowhere this little fat kid, who also was crab fishing, came and yanked the poor crab out of the beach worker’s hands. It was a pretty raw deal for the crab being that he lost both of his claws where the worker was holding him before the kid came by, but the kid gathered up the crab in a plastic bag with the claws. I can only assume that he took them home, boiled them up, and had a nice meal.
After we left the beach and got back to our hotel, everybody had some dinner and hit the sack. There is just something about the sun that can really wear you out, especially when you are playing outside. Dinner was great just like every other meal has been here. I really enjoy the whole Mediterranean diet. The food has been amazing here. Last night they had some feta that they baked up with some crushed red pepper and some tomatoes, and it was incredible. I really need to look into finding some Greek recipes when I get home. Opa!
Posted in Traveling and Competitions | Tags: aegean sea, greco roman wrestling, Justin Ruiz, olympic wrestling | No Comments »
Training In Komotini, Greece
In preparation for the World Championships in Istanbul, Turkey, the U.S. men’s greco roman wrestling team is training in Komotini, Greece to acclimate to the time change, and make some last minute preparations. I left my home in Orem, Utah this last Wednesday, and to be honest with you, it has been a bit of a blur since then. Everytime that I travel internationally, I get thrown off by the time change, my sleep cycle is off, and I really just forget what day it is. I guess today is Saturday, and I can’t believe how fast this week has gone by.
The flights weren’t too bad. However, to be completely honest with you, as long as the flight takes off and lands safely, I do not have anything to complain about when it comes to flying. I lost a brother in law in a small plane crash a little over two years ago, and ever since then traveling via airplane has not been my travel of choice. However, it does save a lot of time especially when you are considering crossing the Atlantic ocean. I can’t imagine traveling on a boat for days on end. It would get pretty tiring very quickly, unless it was a really awesome cruise ship. Then you might be able to talk me into it.
We are staying at the Arcadia hotel, and it is a nice hotel. The food is good, we have air conditioning, and we have internet access. There is also an outdoor pool to relax in so we are pretty set for the most part. I spent some time in Greece for the 2004 Olympics as a training partner, and I loved my stay here. Other than the wrestling, my favorite part of the trip was being able to go visit a couple of the islands and ride scooters around and relax at the beaches. It was a whole lot of fun. I don’t really see myself venturing off to any islands or riding any scooters either this time around, but I am sure that I will enjoy my stay nonetheless.
As far as training goes, we are still easing into it after having traveled a long way to get here. Yesterday, everyone was free to do as they’d like in the morning, which for me meant some light calisthenics and some jump rope, and in the evening we played a pretty intense game of hand ball. My team lost pretty badly, and near the end of the game, I was trying to figure out why they were beating us so badly as we had some good athletes on our team. Then I began to count the number of players on each team and things began to make a lot more sense. We were out numbered 9-7. All of a sudden I realized we were having a hard time stopping their fast breaks as well as being swarmed by their defense when we were taking shots on their goal. They played hard and did a good job in defeating us so I won’t use us being outnumbered as an excuse for losing because we did hold the lead early on in the game, but I will say that this morning, after we evened out the teams that my team was victorious. Coincidence? Maybe, but I am sure that we will still have some more hand ball games to come while on this wrestling trip.
This morning we did some light drilling after our hand ball game, and my expectation for this afternoon’s training session is some hard wrestling to get every body’s heart rate up and tune our conditioning. At this point in the season you should definitely be ready to compete at the world championships. There aren’t a whole lot of things to change up this close to the big show so we ease back on the training a little to get rested up and get everyone’s weight down. Fortunately for me, I don’t get too heavy for my weight class, and that allows me to eat a lot of food. Most people that spend much time with me are pretty amazed that I eat as much as I do without being too heavy. I guess I can thank good genetics and hard work for that.
Being that today is Saturday, I am sure that after evening training that we will have some sort of excursion into the city as well as tomorrow we may have some sort of fun trip planned. We really just take it day by day with everyone doing their own thing to pass the time in between. I have stayed busy reading and watching movies as well as making checks on facebook every now and then. With the nine hour time difference and my family’s schedule, we tend to skype at night before or after my girls’ naps. In case you didn’t know, I have a two year old and a ten month old. My 10 month old stood up on her own yesterday, and she has been crawling for a couple of weeks now. My guess is that she will be walking by the time I get home. Thank goodness for modern technology that will allow me to see her take some of those steps while I am here.
While I am here in Greece and in Turkey, I will be making updates so keep coming back to check them out.
Beat The Streets Summer Wrestling Camp 2011
Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to teach at a wrestling camp in upstate New York for the Beat The Streets program. It was an awesome experience. Below are some of the videos from some of the sessions that I taught.
Posted in Training | Tags: beat the streets, Justin Ruiz, olympic wrestling, wrestling camp, wrestling technique | No Comments »
A Wrestling Trip To Radom, Poland
This summer has been extremely busy, and to stay consistent with what I have been doing all summer, I am on the road. Monday I flew out of Alamosa, CO, where I was able to spend a day with my family in between a camp in NY and this tournament, and finally arrived in Radom, Poland for the Pytlasinski International wrestling tournament. I have wrestled in this tournament before, and it always provides some very high level competition. I am really looking forward to getting some more wrestling matches in before the world championships in September in Istanbul, Turkey.
The longest flight of the trip from Denver to Frankfurt wasn’t too bad. I was able to get some sleep on the plane, which is something that doesn’t always work for me, but I was really happy to get some rest. I am noticing a decline in the number of flights that I have taken where each seat has it’s own television screen that will allow you to entertain yourself. I guess everyone is cutting back. Kungfu Panda 2 was on, which did seem like it would be a good entertaining movie, but I was just too tired to watch it.
In Frankfurt I paired up with Dremiel Byers to go on a quick food run to a market just outside of the airport. Every time that we have a layover in Frankfurt, you can bet that Byers will stop at this same market to get himself a slab of the ribs that they have at the deli of the small grocery store. I didn’t try them, but I am betting that they are really good being as the last time that we stopped in Frankfurt he brought back two buckets full that were later confiscated by the customs agents as we entered the United States. I think that was the most disappointed that I have ever seen him, but that is another story. He got his ribs, I got some water, and we were on our way.
Our next stop was the Sheraton across the street from the airport. He thought that the rest of his Army team mates had gone to their fitness center to get a workout in during our five hour layover. His team mates weren’t there, but that didn’t stop us from getting into their fitness facilities. We asked upstairs at the check in desk if it were possible to pay a fee to use their fitness facility and sauna, and their reply was that it was not possible and if we were going to use the facilities that we would have to pay for a night’s stay at the hotel. That didn’t seem like a very enticing option for us so we went directly to the fitness facility to see if we could get in. When we arrived at the fitness facility their response to our question of “Can we use your facility for an hour or so?” was the same as it was upstairs. Fortunately for us Byers was persistent and explained the situation that we were two Olympic wrestlers on our way to a wrestling tournament and we just wanted to use the sauna for a little bit. The manager eventually obliged our request, and we were soon relaxing in a nice hot sauna in a very classy spa area. If you have ever stayed at a Sheraton Hotel, you know that everything there is first class, including their sauna. It was one of the most pleasant layover experiences that I have ever had.
Usually traveling leaves me tired, irritable, and hungry, but after spending time in the sauna and relaxing on one of their heated reclining chairs, I felt refreshed. I drank plenty of water with sliced lemons and oranges and had some hot herbal tea. The staff even gave us a couple of bananas and were just as kind and accommodating to us as if we had actually been paying customers. It was a great way to start the trip off.
Eventually it was time to catch our next flight to Poland. We left the sauna and got on a plane to Warsaw. After we arrived in Warsaw, we had to catch a bus to drive to Radom. We waited for about an hour and a half before the bus finally showed up, and it was one of the shortest most peculiar rides that I had taken in quite awhile. After we had loaded all of our luggage on the bus, everyone was pretty happy that we would be riding in a large bus that would presumably take us to our destination. We were quite surprised as we had barely left the airport when we pulled over to the side of the road and were instructed to exit the bus and pack ourselves into a much smaller van that had pulled up behind us. It turned out that the nice comfortable bus that had picked us up was really too good to be true, and we all piled up into the van that would take us to Radom. After having been traveling internationally for years, I wasn’t surprised by this sudden change of events. Small weird things and inconveniences have pretty much become accepted as standard on any of these trips. I got in the van and immediately fell asleep. I was exhausted.
I finally made it to our hotel after well over 24 hours of traveling from Alamosa, and I was hungry. I had grabbed a snack earlier in the Warsaw airport, but my stomach was telling me that I should fill it up soon or it was going to have a mutiny. The hotel restaurant was closed, and the only available option was to order a pizza from a nearby pizzeria. Ordering pizza can be scary in a lot of countries because you never know what you are going to get. I have to admit the absolute worst pizza that I had one time was actually in Poland at their Olympic training center. It was a mess of bread and cheese, and they had used ketchup as the tomato sauce to keep everything together. It looked horrible, but I took a bite just to hopefully prove myself wrong. Unfortunately I was not wrong, and I mouthful of pizza ended up in the garbage as well as the rest of the pizza. I was very happy when the pizza that I ordered in Radom showed up, and it was normal. In fact, it was great and they had even included and extra side of pizza sauce and ranch dressing for dipping. It was a great way to end a long day of traveling. I popped a Tylenol pm and was out like a light. I didn’t wake up until the next morning at 11 am. I was really happy that I was able to get a good night’s sleep.