The Prematch Talk (from May 2006)

What do you say to an athlete before a match? In particular, an athlete who is up against a superior athlete? Here are some don'ts first:

1. Just don't get pinned.
2. Here's who you'll wrestle in consolations...

Both of these statements, and many more, tell your athlete that you feel he is beat. A better approach is to try to get the athlete to understand the process of Competing. When your athlete wrestles a good kid, he has to be willing to Battle him - basically, compete with him. Don't give him anything, make him fight for every point. I don't care how much better he is, if an athlete I work with lays down for him, I will not be happy about it. By Competing, and battling for every point, he makes himself a better wrestler, win or lose.

Is he a Wimp? (from July 2006)

Is he injury-prone or is he wimping out? One of the biggest issues that coaches deal with in regard to wrestlers - how do you know whether a youngster is injured in practice, or just begging off? My response? You don't have to know. Just make sure you put your "injured" wrestlers through a separate workout (bad ankle kids can do push-ups, bad shoulder kids can do sprints or some other leg workout). Make sure its hard enough that athletes don't want to be injured - and you will see a lot of those "injuries" go away. Now keep in mind, of course, to always have a trainer or doctor check out anything that needs to be checked out and be sure about what an athlete is allowed to do - but this approach, which we adopted originally for our Intensive Camps, has worked for years for us.