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.

This is the first article of an ongoing series of articles about wrestling techniques. As the articles go on I will include video to aid in the explanations, but I felt it was important to pass on what I have learned regarding wrestling technique over my 15-year career in the sport.

First off, I want to start by saying that there are way too many specific techniques and variations that no single person can teach you everything you need to know to be a champion. You need to seek out anyone and everyone and pick and choose those techniques that best fit your style to be successful. But never try to imitate another wrestler in style and technique. Every single person is different and no single style will work for everyone. So develop your own style and then choose the techniques that best work for you.

 That being said, I want to focu this first article at the beginning. In terms of technique on the feet, what are the three first moves that any wrestler is taught? Of course, they are the single leg, the high-crotch, and the double leg. These are probably the three highest percentage moves at all levels. This means that these three moves are the ones that score more points than any others on the feet. This is why they are taught first. No wrestler will ever be complete without these three moves.

     But most coaches make a huge mistake when teaching a beginner wrestler by first teaching the single and high-crotch. Although these are probably higher percentage moves than the double, they are also more complicated because of the number of defenses to them. In addition, the double leg is a higher percentage move for younger wrestlers (up to age 12 or 13. This is because young wrestlers have a much more difficult time defendin a leg attack when both legs are secured.

Therefore, always begin with the double and perfect it before anything else. If you, or your young wrestler is under the age of 13, focus an entire week to nothing but the double leg, and watch the incredible leap in success the following Saturday. And here is what you need to teach:

1. Set up. For young kids, and often even older kids, the easiest setup is often the most successful. Simply take a step back. The natural reaction of your opponent will be to step towards you. As he is stepping, while the foot is in the air, you go to step 2. Don’t worry about hands, or pops or chops or anything else. Nine time out of ten, kids do not defend attacks correctly with their hands and rely solely on the sprawl. Adding any other setup which includes using their hands will only lead to complication and ineffective results.
2. As the opponents foot is stepping towards you, change levels and take the penetration step. Now, it ia extremely important that this penetration step is done correctly, and 99 of wrestlers do not do it right. If you are right handed, you should be leading with the right foot in your stance (never use a square stance. ever!). You are going to step with that same right foot and attack with the the right arm and shoulder on the penetration. In the case of the double, you left hand is also reaching out to snag the other leg.
3. Penetrate through your opponent, reachine both arms out to snag behind the knees of each of his legs. Now, this is vital for success. You must have a singular thought in your mind as you are taking that penetration step. Either drive him off the mat or drive him to the ground for the takedown. There can be absolutely no other results. You cannot stop driving unless you go off the mat and hear the whistle or you get the takedown. Stopping penetration means he can counter and win.
4. When I was young they used to teach to penetrate with the right foot and then continue driving and step with the left and then right and so on. We used to practice by taking penetration steps from one end of the wrestling room to the other. If you are doing this, STOP! This is teaching incorrect and unrealistic technique. It will never happen that way in a match, so don’t teach it. In addition, there is no resistence, so you are teaching them to penetrate with their body position too upright. In w real match, that upright penetration will get immediately stopped because it does not have enough inertia force behind it. I believe one of the best ways to teach driving penetration is to have a partner stand on a towel. The attacking wrestler then takes his shot. The partner leans in with one leg slightly in front in order to counter-act the force of the drive. Then the attcking wrestler gets on his toes, buries his shoulder and drives his partner across the mat, as he slides on the towel. This is much more realistic and will teach them the proper way to drive.
5. Finish by going for the fall. Every single technique must be “finished”. One of the biggest mistakes (besides learning moves only as “pieces” instead of “wholes” and stopping half way through them) is that wrestlers learn moves as individual techniques rather than series. When you finish the double and the opponent falls to the ground, you cannot “stop the technique” there. You must immediately jump to a half, or a body lock, or a head-lock. It doesn;t matter what, but a takedown should always, always, always be immediately followed with a hard attempt to pin.

So summarizing:

- step back and wait for the opponent to step forward
- as he steps, change levels and take the penetration step with a singular thought: drive to the ground or drive off the mat, no other possibilities exist.
- drive from your toes like a defensive line-backer driving through to get a sack, on your toes using your legs. The legs NEVER stop moving
- as your opponent falls to the mat, immediately jump into a pinning combination

The last step?  Get you hand raised!

The season is coming to a close and the freestyle season is beginning, and many ask, “what sould I do if I want to do better next year?” Should you continue competing throughout the freestyle season, or should you take a break and come back again freash next fall? Maybe you should spend the spring and summer focussed on strength training. Maybe you should attend camps and clinics to learn new technique. What really is the best thing to do in spring and summer to become a champion?

Well, when I was in kids wrestling, there was no “folk style” season. My season began in February and ended in July. I usually then took a break until September or October and then simply had daily “practices” and “workouts” until it began again in February the following year. In high school, I would end my high school season and almost immediately begin freestyle and greco-roman competition. Maybe I might take a week or two off completely, but most likely I would still go out for a jog or do some weuight lifting.

I would try to attend at least 2 camps and maybe 2 or 3 clinics every single year. I felt it was absolutely vital to my success to try and learn as much about the technique of wrestling as I could. Maybe I wouldn’t use everything I learned, although most of it I actually was able to add to my abilities through effective visualization and drilling, but it would also show me all the possibilities out there so that I could be prepared for almost anything when I got on the mat with any opponent.

I learned early on that it was possible to win the vast majority of matches simply by knowing techniques that your opponents did not know, or did not know well enough. If they were unfaniliar with the technique, it was unlikely they would be able to effectively counter it. I recall that before my junior year in high school, I obtained a video on the “half-nelson series”.  Now, I know EXACTLY what you are thinking… Half-nelson?

Yes, I learned the half-nelson when I was 8 years old. In fact, it was the first move I ever learned. But this was a whole new series of how to use leverage and angles to effectively apply the half-nelson at a higher level. I worked on the series throughout the off-season, and when the season started, I began using it in my matches. One-by-one I was able to score and pin opponent after opponent with a simple half nelson because no one had ever seen it applied in this way. No one knew how to effectively counter it.

This is a huge avantage that you can gain over your competition in the off season. I highly suggest camps, clinics, training videos, books, or whatever you can do to increase your knowledge of wrestling techniques while in the off season. But this is not enough by a long shot. In my opinion, off season competition is vital for anyone who wished great improvement and success. Does this mean you can’t be a State Champion without wrestling freestyle? No. It has been done and will be done again. Will your chances by 100 times higher if you wrestle freestyle? There is no question. I cannot think of a single wrestler that was on the first string with me at the Univeristy of Wisconsin, nor one single wrestler that was first string in any division I school that did not wrestle freestyle in the “off season”. Competition makes you better. Period!

Finally, what about the other stuff, like drilling and weight lifting. This is what I did on MY real off season. In that time from August to about October, I spent my time increasing muscle mass, keeping in good condition with nice easy 3 or 4 mile jogs, and drilling. Most of the drilling I did was through visualization, which is a whole other topic for another post, but I would also drill against an invisible opponent on our mats in our garage, or even get with my buddies maybe once a week to drill and go over the new techniques we had learned.

 Bottom line, champions are not champions from November to February. I never stopped wrestling. I stopped competing for a while. Maybe slowed down. I would take the pressure off by just having nice easy practices, or just lay down on a lawn chair while getting a tan and visualize for an hour or so. But I always had one simple thing nagging me in the back of my mind:

While I am drilling these new techniqes, or visualizing, or lifting weights, or going to camps… While I am doing all these things, my opponents are eating ice cream and playing video games. And when next season comes, I will be the one getting my hand raised, and they will be wondering why they weren’t able to compete with me.

 Even to this day, some 15 years after my last competition, I smile when I think about that. If you are smiling too, then you know the answers to the questions I raised at the start of this post.

Be the Champion, and everyone will be dumbfounded trying to figure out how the heck you did it.  Good Luck!

Nothing in life is free! I am sure we have all heard this expression as well as a hundred more just like it. The point is that if you want something you need to work for it, but there is much more underlining this statement than just hard work. 

In order to achieve anything in life, you need to take risks. When I was a kid, like most energetic boys, I used to love to climb trees. Directly behind my house was a large Maple tree, which was my favorite to climb. Around the base of the tree, my mother has placed a pile of shale stones as decoration. I remember vividly when I was about 8 years old, climbing and swinging on the branches of the big Maple, like i had done a hundred times before, when suddenly the branch I was holding on to snapped. I began to tumble down the tree. I frantically grasped at branches trying to stop the fall, but somehow I flipped upside down and was rushing head-first into the pile of rocks below. Incredibly, on the last branch of the tree my legs caught and I hung, swinging upside down about 3 feet from the rocks.

Of course I simply swung back up and immediately climbed right back up to the spot to see the branch that had snapped and marvel at my ability to catch myself by my legs upside down! My point here is that in order to climb trees, you have to risk a major fall. No one ever makes it to the top without totally risking falling to the very bottom.

Anything you want in life that is worth having requires an equal level of risk. If you want to be rich, then you have to risk going bankrupt. If you want to be a famous actor, then you have risk being a nobody. And if you want to be a champion, then you have to totally risk not achieving that champion level.

True champions never have fear of this risk. They know the risk is there and they understand what it means, but they do not fear it. The reason they do not fear the risk, is because they do not see the risk as a possibility to fail. If a champion starts a business and the business goes bankrupt, a true champion will never say that the business failed. rather, he will say that the business did not achieve success this time, but next time he will succeed. The only way a champion ever feels like a failure is if he quits or if he feels he did not give it everything he had. Since neither of those will ever happen, regardless of the outcome of the risk taken, a champion can never fail.

So, whatever it is you want in your sport or in your life, never hesitate even for a second because of the risk. Everything has risk. And great accomplishments require great risks. But no matter what the result, whether you make it to the top or fall on your head, you can never fail if you think like a champion.