10 Things that KILL team culture: Character- Lack of athlete leadership by top wrestLack of club leadership and integrity. Coaches and kids not giving 100% effort in practice or matches. Poor practice partners – going easy on teammates. Coaches only focusing on their kids. Poor sportsmanship or kids that try to hurt fellow wrestlers. Uncoachable […]
Category: Coaching wrestling
10 Signs that you need a break
10 Signs that you need a break from Wrestling Lost motivation for practice and or competition. Goals don’t seem as important as they once did. Your body consistently aches or hurts. Can’t focus your mind. Nagging injuries are piling up and not healing. Losing matches to kids that you’ve beaten in the past. Not feeling […]
10 High Performance Habits
10 High Performance Habits Wake up at a consistent early time. Give 100% effort at everything. Deal with your most difficult challenges first. Find the lessons from failure, loss and not reaching your goals and then quickly move on. Pay attention to others and learn from their behavior. Choose your attitude. Know what is good […]
One of the Most Over Looked Keys to Match Success- Your Warm Up
Starting practice with a well thought out dynamic warm up is an important beginning to any training session. I’ll cover several reasons why a dynamic warm-up is key to performance and training longevity. Most teams that I see warm up do a static warmup which doesn’t prepare a body for high intensity activity. Pacing mat […]
It’s not too Late. Get Better in the next 6 weeks
Know why you want to get better. Example my son thinks it’s fun and that it makes him mentally stronger in all areas of life. Treat your food as fuel. Eat healthier foods. Give up all sweetened drinks. Protect yourself from mat disease better. Pick one goal a week. Try a new technique at practice. […]
Wrestlers Looking for an Edge? It isn’t Sugar!
Americans unconsciously consume more sugar year after year – why don’t we think more about it? Until this century humans didn’t really have much access to sugar. Athletes interested in enhancing performance sometimes think that simple sugars will work. I’m not sure that real science backs that claim up but that is an untruth for […]
Parents Guide to Helping Your Wrestler
Response to a Comment from Age of Enlightenment or Avoidance Great post Mike. I love the things you talk about here and the only question I have is what mirror do we use to look at ourselves (& more importantly our kids) when trying to evaluate our shared process. Every coach has different advice & […]
Age of Enlightenment or Avoidance
Starting off an article by telling you that I’m a child of the enlightenment won’t win over any new readers, but if you’re a regular you won’t be surprised by my thought process. Let me explain. If you have a goal and a current assessment based on evidence, reason will generally give you the straightest […]
The Last Undiscovered Edge: Diet and Performance
How you prepare for a workout can either enhance or take away from the exercise benefits. If you are a serious athlete or just want to improve yourself you want to make sure that you’re maximizing your workout effects, not detracting from them. Choosing the proper fuel is important, but so is the timing of […]
The Weakest Generation?
It makes sense that as life gets easier (less physical) the weaker our muscles become. Children become physically weaker from inactivity and a team of researchers who measured handgrip, arm-hangs and sit-ups found a dramatic decrease in fitness in the last generation of kids. What most parents and coaches might not realize is just […]
Step By Step Strength Training for Wrestlers By Age
General Guidelines- Prepare your child for contact and lifelong body health. Warning! Driven wrestling parents won’t think that this is enough. I disagree. My goal with this is to protect a kid’s body and have them ready for serious competition around puberty. Disguise the workouts as fun or competition with friends. Under 10 boys love […]
How to Be Your Best at the Start of the Season
Get back on your workout routine for strength, conditioning of the body and mind and dial-it-in to be lean and mean. Learn from previous years’ failures. The harder you train the harder it is to give up on a goal. Get more recovery time than you think that you need. Don’t even think about dieting. […]
Strength & Speed
If you want your strength to increase you need to grow your muscles. To grow your muscles you need to put them through stress. Wrestlers want strength with as little bulk as possible unless going up a weight class. If you are a wrestler or just an athlete you want the exercises you’re doing to […]
Strength and Movement
There has been a lot of talk about strength training in the wrestling world spurred on by Kyle Snyder showing off much of his training on social media. Many old school wrestlers and coaches were brought up with the idea that lifting weights tends to make you slower. That may have been true with the […]
They All Just Can’t Be Into You.
Have you seen the stats? Kids aren’t enrolling in contact sports like they used to. When parents wrap their sons in bubble wrap it is hard to get those same kids interested in a sport that requires rough physical contact. A young coach called me just the other day to talk about a problem that […]