Things are still hard for people. Most of them make about 15 dollars a month. That’s right 15 dollars a month. Despite the challenges that they face they are amazing athletes, artists, and musicians. The people that succeed here aren’t the ones that have been blessed with a bounty of resources. The people that succeed here are the ones that try to do the best with the hand that they have been dealt. They can’t wait for someone to come save them because someone will never come.

In the United States right now, there are a lot of people that are waiting for someone to save them. A lot of people think that the United States government should do more to help the people. They want big government to save them instead of asking “What can I do to help save myself and my family?”

It is my humble opinion that the people that live in a free country, but think that socialism or communism would work better for everyone should take a trip to a country that has that form of government. I think that most people would quickly change their minds. If you live in the United States, be very grateful that you were born there. We have been extremely blessed to have the opportunity to live in the land of opportunity.

The ocean is right behind our hotel as in probably only 100 yards away. I love watching the waves come in and out, it is so relaxing. The other day I wanted to get in the water to swim and look at the fish. I even bought a mask so that I could get a good look and not lose my contact lenses in the water. The challenge to getting in the water is a bunch of very sharp black coral. Then with the breaking waves, as small as they are, it makes it difficult getting into the water without getting cut up a little bit.

I made my decent to the water and as a wave came up I jumped forward to fully submerge myself. Unfortunately, there was a row of coral in the water that I didn’t see. As I landed I felt the coral scraping my body, but I kept scrambling forward to get into the water where it would be deep enough to get off of the sharp coral. I finally made it into the water and was able to start swimming around.

I swam around for a little bit looking at the ocean floor watching the little fish swimming about. I was pretty proud of myself for finally making it into the water. I needed some air so I popped up for a bit, but as I surfaced and breathed in a nice gulp of air, I was hit with a wave and I swallowed a mouthful of cold salty water. I coughed a little,regained my composure, and tried to enjoy the ocean once again. I eventually came up for air again and swallowed some more water. It wasn’t fun. I looked back at the shore and determined that the ocean had pulled me out farther into the water. I wasn’t comfortable being that far away from the shore so I started paddling back to the relative safety of the sharp coral. The waves now were helping me accelerate towards the shore. I soon realized that my exiting the water would likely be as painful as was my entrance. I gritted my teeth and did my best to get out of the water with as little damage as possible. Fortunately I did make it out of the water with only minor cuts to my hands,feet, and chest. One thing I had gained was a renewed respect of the ocean and a determination to become a better swimmer. I have the mask now anyway, and I might as well use it.

Here are a couple small lessons I picked up from my experience.
1) Know your opponent.
2) Play to your strengths and not your weaknesses.
3) Know when to get out of a bad situation.

I haven’t given up on the ocean, but the next time it will be on a sandy beach with less waves and hopefully less wind. No need to try to be Jacques Cousteau, I still have some wrestling to do.

Today is a pretty light day for training and acclimation then tomorrow and Friday we will be practicing. Saturday I weigh in and compete the next day. There are some other teams here from Europe as well not to mention the always tough Cuban team. I am looking forward to the competition.

Our hotel is amazing and the food is great. The tourists do get pretty good treatment here. If I walk out on the balcony of my hotel room there is the ocean right outside. If it were a sandy beach below I don’t think that things could get much better other than if I was able to have my family here with me too. The beach is sharp rocks which to me serve as a little deterrent to get in the ocean as much as I would like to.

I will keep these posts short because of the cost of the wifi here. $50 for 8 hours and that was a deal compared to the regular $10 an hour. At least there is wifi, an I’m grateful for that.

Today starts my trip to Cuba. I am spending the night in Miami and tomorrow it is off to Havana for the Granma Cup. I think this will be my forth or fifth time to the island. This time I am going prepared with some baby clothes that some members of the church that I attend donated. The Cubans are awesome people but they face some extreme economic hardship. Whenever I think things are tight, I try to think about how blessed I really am.

The flight here was nice. In fact it was the first couple of flights that I have enjoyed in years. A couple years ago a brother in law passed away in a plane crash and since then I have had a horrible time flying. I would get gripped with an unexplainable fear that the worst would happen. Fortunately I met with someone who has helped me work through it. It is unbelievable how effective his therapy is. I will try to update regularly while I am on the road but it all comes down to how reliable the Internet connection is in Cuba.

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.

Buy a DVD
Buy a t-shirt
Get strong