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 […]
Category: Coaching wrestling
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 […]
It’s not too late, summer lifestyle pays winter dividends
I see some many high school and college kids that want to get better but they are making decisions that won’t help them get better. I promise you that staying up late, playing hours of Fortnite (or any video game) and otherwise living a sedentary life style, punctuated by a couple hours of working out […]
How To Take Care of the Body and Mind this Summer
Heal up the body and mind. If you have had any injuries go see a doctor of osteopathy (DO), a quality physical therapist (myo-fascial release) or sports psychologist to ensure that they really heal up. The mind is just as important as the body. The next step would be to strengthen the formerly weak […]
10 Things for wrestlers to work on over the summer
Make the Changes necessary to reach your goals. I promise that it won’t be easy. So you can dive into the pain of growth or delay the pain of failure until next season. The choice is yours. Good luck. Be a multi sport athlete. Take a competitive break from wrestling but still get some […]
Back Doc to Athletic Stars: Stuart McGill Interview
I recently had a long talk with Stuart McGill. Nearly 2/3’s of Americans and north of 80% of athletes suffer from low back pain at some point in their lives. Serious athletes are especially susceptible to lower back troubles. McGill has worked with many of the top athletes in the world. We mainly talked about […]
Navigating Recruitment: Some Next Level Truth for Parents and Wrestlers
I’ve seen the college recruiting process of boys from almost every angle. The rules of the game are complex and changing all the time. This can be the hardest part of getting to the next level. It is filled with NCAA regulations, most of which don’t help the student athlete. The path is rocky and […]
Quitting
It’s not about getting taken down or knocked down. It’s about getting back up and what that teaches you. Quitting is a behavior learned early in life. There are many causes but almost everyone that really examines quitting sees its incubation in childhood. Showing children how to work hard and persevere through a challenge […]
Wrestlers: want an edge? Get more Sleep.
Everyone is looking for an advantage. Some athletes are willing to experiment with drugs, supplements, diets and esoteric training to get an edge. What if I told you that the gains achieved for athletes by sleeping more were equal to the gains of many performance-enhancing drugs? Would you believe me? Well you should. There […]
Coaching over the Coach
I’ve probably coached hundreds of kids over the last 4 years. Beyond that I’ve been involved in various forms of education for decades. One of the biggest struggles that I’ve faced is when a parent coaches over my back. I make no promises of being a perfect coach but I have helped close to […]
Like your Coach? Thank his wife*
*If you’re a young unmarried coach with no kids, keep walkin’. It’s that time of year. Most youth and high school championship seasons have ended and the college season is reaching its crescendo this week. Coaches across the country are breathing a sigh of relief. It might be a happy or sad sigh depending on […]
7 ways to get better even when you loose a match or tournament
1. Watch film of the match to see what you did wrong. Was the match lost before or during the wrestling? Make a plan to improve those areas. If this were easy everyone would be doing it. Write it down and put it a copy of it everywhere so it’s in your face several times […]
