Wrestling is a sport where mental toughness is constantly being preached, and it seems as if coaches are constantly looking for ways to build mental toughness. Basically when you give someone a mental toughness challenge, you are doing it to help them understand that they can do hard things, so that when they are in a tough situation or match, they will be able to arise to the occasion. Over the course of the two decades that I have been wrestling, I have been through a lot of mental toughness training. However, with that being said, I still think that I have room to grow when it comes to mental toughness. Your mind is like a muscle, and it needs to constantly challenged for it to continually improve.

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.