Wisconsin Wrestling Live Articles

When I started wrestling at age 8, my first lost came to a kid named Kirk Bartol. I lost 5-4 at the Stoughton Invitational. A few weeks later, at the final tournament of the year before regionals, I met Bartol first match again. Although I was scared and nervous, i managed to win this time by the same score of 5-4. After the match, Kirk’s father mentioned to my father that he was in the State finals the year before.

When I was a freshman in college, I wrestled at the Northern Open at 134. My third match or so was against a kid named Bob Berceu from Stevens Point. I recognized the name, but didn’t know any details. After I came off the mat the winner by pin, my father informed me that he was a 3-time State Champion in high school. The next match was someone I had never heard of, named Jim Wagner of Illinois State University. I also won by pin and was again informed after the match that he was Division II NCAA runner-up.

None of this was done really “on purpose”, but it shows a trend in my match preparation throughout my career. I also tried to focus as little as possible on my opponent. My match preparation always had to do with stretching, getting warmed up, mentally preparing and visualizing, focussing, and so on. I did not think about or focus on who I was wrestling, what he did in the past, how good he was, or how strong or fast he was. If you focus on your opponent, it will create nervous energy and decrease your ability to perform. You will walk out on the mat so concerned about what your opponent “did” or “will do” that your offense will shut down and you will become totally defensive. You will be concentrating so much on what you “think” he will do that you won’t be able to react to what he “does”.

Now, granted, sometimes it is impossible not to know about your opponent. Obviously throughout my career when I wrestled against someone like Dennis Hall, or Doug Kittleson, I knew who they were, what they had done, and what their strong points were. Although I will admit that the very first time I wrestled both of those guys, I knew nothing about them. But even when I was going out to wrestle against someone like Tom Brands, whom I never beat, I never focussed much on what Brands was going to do, but rather what I intended to do in the match.

This is a common mistake that novice wrestlers make. They watch their opponent in wram-ups. They think about him and focus on what they might think to be his strong points. In their head they hear a voice saying things like “wow, he looks pretty strong. I better watch out he doesn’t catch me in a headlock”. Or “That guy has a ton of medals hanging on his jacket, he must be good”. All of these thoughts are working against their success. Focus on the basic things. Make match preparation a routine that is followed and focus on that regardless of the opponent, and you will guarantee a more level and consistent result each and every time you walk out on the mat.

Finally, we have all heard of cases where certain wrestlers have “wrestled above their head” and beaten someone that no one expected them to beat. Some wrestlers kind of make a habit of this. How do they do it? Well, at least on part of this I can be certain of is that they are never focussing on their opponent. Whether they are going against Joe Shmoe, or Tom Brands, they walk out on the mat with the exact same frame of mind and when the whistle blows, the expect to walk off that match the winner.

This is a vital piece of the puzzle that all champions possess.

OK, so now you have your goal book and you have written down who you are, what you want, and what you need to do to get what you want. You have set your goals. Many people talk about “short-range”, “medium-range”, and “long-range” goals. I don’t directly disagree with this. I believe that goals can be fit into these categories. However, I don’t believe it is necessary to categorize them. Goals are goals, and if you follow this methodolgy, you will see that there really is no time limits set to achieving goals.

If you recall from my last article, your goals are what you need to do to get what you want, and the only way to fail at your goals is to either quit or not give it 100% effort. That statement in itself shows that there really are no “time constraints” on your goals. You accomplish your goals when you get what you want. If you don’t get what you want, then you keep working at your goals until you do. Throughout my career, I often joked with people that I “never lost a match”, “I was only behind in points when time ran out”. While this is amusing and usually got a chuckle from the other person, I was dead serious about it. It is really the same mindset. I didn’t get what I wanted, but I did not fail by any means, I just ran out of time, but I was going to keep working at my goals until I did get what I wanted (which was success).

So, it is my opinion that you do not need to “categorize” your goals into time constraints, but you do need to consistently update and adjust your goals. As you get certain things you want, or as those things may change, you may need to adjust your goals (what you need to do to get them). This is the reason for the book. You MUST look at the book on a daily basis and you MUST re-evaluate what you want and what you need to do on a weekly basis. You must read your goal book every single day and then once a week you need to adjust things if you feel they need adjusting.

OK, one more time: Read the book every day. Adjust and rewrite what you want and your goals to achieve it every week.

I cannot emphasize this enough. If you want to be the best student in your class, you need to look at you class notes and study every day. You need to do your homework and you need to spend the time writing down what you have learned. I won’t go into all the deep psychology behind all this, but as an expert who has done this his whole life and been successful at it, I can confidently say that if you do not study your goals everyday and evaluate them weekly, your level of success will NEVER be what you want it to be.

So, over time, your goal book will begin to evolve and take on a life of its own. Your goals and what you want will start to merge with your success and what you have achieved. You will be able to clearly look back and see what you have done and how the process has truly worked. Your goal book will eventually become almost a “scrap book” of your success. As I was growing up, my goal book turned almost into a magic book. It was as if all I had to do was write down in this book what I wanted and it would come true.

So go out and get your book today and start making your dreams come true too.

Almost anyone, even mildly involved in sports, knows the importance of setting goals. But the truth is that the vast majority of people don’t do it correctly and that is why they often fail to reach their goals or end up giving up before accomplishing them. In fact, even those who successfully set and achieve goals, often don’t realize what they are doing and when explaining it to others, they teach them wrong.

But now I will let you in on the secret. If you understand what I explain in this and the following posts, you can improve your success rate almost instantaneously. This is true for sports, work, relationships, and almost anything else you want in your life.

The first thing you need to do is get a goal book. If you want to succeed at anything in life, writing it down must be a part of it. Most people fail to reach their goals right from the start because they refuse to write them down. Each person has their own excuse for not writing it down. Some say they feel stupid doing it. Others don’t want to put it in black and white because inside they feel they are setting themselves up for disappointment. Still others are simply lazy. I don’t care what your excuse is, I am here to tell you that you have two choices right now. One, you can write down your goals, or two you can fail. If you choose not to write your goals, and choose rather just to be one of the average athletes, instead of a champion, that is perfectly fine. 90% of the people in the world make that same decision everyday. But if you want to be in that top 5-10 percent, then read on.

My suggestion is to get a “diary”. You can get one almost anywhere, like Walmart. Just a basic book with blank pages. The reason I prefer this is that your book of goals is something special, and a simple 95 cent notebook doesn’t send the right message.

Once you have your goal book, the first thing you need to do is open up to the first page and write down who you are. Write your name, address, and phone number. Write down a description of yourself, using nothing but positive words. For example, you may write that you are intelligent, a quick thinker, adapt easily to any situation. You are aggressive on the mat with strong determination to win. You are friendly and a modest winner. You may need help writing this description. I often requested the help of my father or my coach in writing this, because they knew me and are better with words than I was.

Once you have your vision of who you are, turn the page. On this next page, you need to write down what you want. Be careful here, all I am saying to write down are those things you want. It could be internal things, like I want to be a better person. Throughout my life, I have consistently written that I want to be a “cleaner person”. I am kind of disorganized and messy. It can also be external things you want, like winning the State Championship, or beating your top competitor in your weight class. I also often wrote down certain techniques that I wanted to perfect such as a single leg, or an inside trip.

Here is how you should think of this part. Think of what would make you the happiest person in the world if you had it, and then write that down. Do NOT think for a second about what you need to do to get it. I repeat: DO NOT take into consideration how hard or easy any of these things are to get. Just write down what you most want.

Now turn the page. Now you need to think about each of those things you want and decide what you would need to do to achieve them. Be specific here. The first thing that every person must write here is “I will give everything 100% effort at all times”. This includes every practice and every match and everything else in between. So, for example, if you want to be a National Champion, then you probably need to work out several times a week. You need to visualize at least an hour or two every day. You need to lift weights, run, learn and practice (drill) new techniques. You need to talk to those who successfully accomplished what you want and learn from them. And so on. Just start writing down everything you think will be necessary to get what you want. Again, I often asked for help from my parents and my coaches to help me write this.

Now, when you are done, read out loud what you have written to your parent or your coaches; not what you “want”, but what you “need to do” to get what you want. Read it all carefully and then turn the page and write the following exactly as it is written below:

Will I do everything I need to do to get what I want?

Then write your answer. If your answer is “no”, then you need to go back and review what you want, because if you are not willing to do what it takes to get what you want, then you will never achieve it. If your answer is “yes”, then listen carefully, very carefully to what I am about to say:

What you have just answered “yes” to are your GOALS! Everything you wrote on that previous page is a complete list of your goals, and you have agreed that you WILL accomplish your goals. What you wrote on the other page are simply “consequences” of achieving your goals. If you succeed in achieving your goals, if you do everything you said you needed to do, then you will get what you want as a consequence.

What does this mean? It means you cannot fail in your goals. Well, actually, you can fail. You could “quit”. If you quit and don’t do everything you said you needed to do, then you failed to reach your goals. The first thing you wrote was “I will always give 100% effort”. If you quit and do not give 100% on all those items, then you will fail. But as long as you do what is on that list and do it with 100% effort, then you absolutely cannot fail in accomplishing your goals.

Now, I will be honest with you, accomplishing your goals never guarantees that you get everything you want. I never got everything I wanted every year. I got most, but not everything. Nobody ever gets everything all the time. Everybody loses matches at least sometimes. But I will guarantee that you will never fail. Throughout my career, I can honestly say that I never failed in any of the goals I set for myself. Sometimes I have set the wrong goals and they did not get me exactly what I wanted, and sometimes what I did just wasn’t enough to get what I wanted, but I never failed to do everything I thought was necessary and never failed to give it 100%.

When I had to walk away from wrestling in 1993 due to my knee injury, well short of obtaining my ultimate desire of Olympic Gold, I walked away proud and happy, knowing that right up to the last minute I did everything I thought was necessary to get what I wanted and gave it everything I had. I did not get my Olympic Gold medal, but I did not fail.

This is the secret to always accomplishing your goals. It is simply understanding that your goals are NOT that first page of who you are, NOR the second page of what you want. Your goals are the third page of “what you will do”. And on the fourth page, you have already written the answer of whether or notyour will succeed in accomplishing your goals. You wrote “yes”! Now simply go out and accomplish your goals, knowing you cannot, and you will not fail. No excuses, no fear.

Believe in this, and your success is just a thought away. Next week I will follow-up with continuation of how to succeed in your goals.