bang-ing in little rock

It has been sometime since I wrote. I have to feel it, other wise the words just don’t flow. The season thus far, like any season or athletic program, has had encouragement and frustrations. We still have not put our best team together and sadly never will this season. Some of it may have been in our control but most out of our control. Most of it is just what happens on any team, in any sport. I personally am a coach who struggles with the uncontrollable and when you’re dealing with thirty 18-23 yr olds there are a whole lot of uncontrollable. But that comes with the territory. The biggest hindrance with us this year has been injuries. I look around at other programs and know we are in good company. After 3 recruiting classes we have a solid group of guys. But some weights lack depth and when your top guys are out, unfortunately it shows up in touch downs during dual meets. This is tough and takes some time to build depth in your program, regardless of the sport.

Conference duals: We had a great day at Luther College. Going 4-0 was just what this program needed. I have to commend these guys for just going out there and taking care of business. I also know the other teams on Saturday have several injuries but it’s certainly the nature of this sport. The THING that plays a big part in any team’s success is momentum. It, like negativity, is contagious and we were able to get some much needed momentum in our duals. I will say that the coaches in this conference are top notch. I would never underestimate the potential of any of these guys.

A lasting impression: There were a few guys Saturday that ended up having more points on the board when time ran out, so their hand went up. But much to there consternation they were greeted with an ear full from me. Of course we want wins. But how we win is also important. In my opinion if we out wrestle a guy most of the match but in the end leave our opponent with hope and day light, this concerns me. The impression you leave is crucial and once again sprinting thru the finish line is always to your advantage. We want opponents to dread a future match not look forward to it. Once again never let up, never give anything away.

Enemy called average: Is average ok? Well that’s up to you to decide. I am not talking about results here, I am not talking about talent. I am talking about the same thing that we as coaches talk about again and again and that is genuine effort. Average effort is not ok; I do not believe this should ever be acceptable because unlike talent, effort is in your control.



January: In the life of a wrestler is a very tough and enduring piece of time. A prison stretch may prove to more appealing, well with the exception of a few activities. Most programs have there athletes back the day after Christmas preceding a month on campus when hardly anyone else is around, it is day in and day out, often 2 a day practices, barren dorms, weigh maintained and looking ahead at the toughest month of competition while having been at it for 3 previous months. This is a grind. But also there are so many pay offs to this type of sacrifice and dedication. The pay offs go far beyond winning matches, they likely unravel themselves over time and show up in so many others areas of ones life. I am of course biased but have been to 4 different universities and have carefully watched other teams train and nothing really compares to the training in our sport period. I am not saying others do not work, I am not saying others are not dedicated, I am not saying others do not sacrifice. I am saying this sport stands alone in all around requirements on a daily basis.



The following is what I see we at BVU need work on. But more than that at least one and often all of the following examples rears it’s presence in everyone’s head at one point or another. It’s definitely sand in the machinery. One if not all of these are what your up against in this sport and the mental aspect is across the board. If one can learn to manage, balance, and put one foot in front of the other, boldly walks thru it, you can concur the world which is often an easier foe than concurring yourself.



Making the weight
I totally believe we are in a sport that requires much much more maintenance than other sports because of the “weight issues”. In my opinion it makes other sports appear much more manageable, although I know that if I was coaching another sport there would be obstacles that I could not know unless I was in that very position. But having to make a specific weight is and always will be an issue. It is one of those things in life that is difficult because it calls on discipline to the tenth power, discipline of something we need for survival. Now there are better ways than others to do it, as we talk about all the time, but none the less one of the most difficult things one will ever experience on planet earth. What I have found about discipline is that it often is asleep, it takes long naps, and some times it has not been awaken for years, maybe it’s on vacation. But it is there, some where. It tends to takes frequent naps in all our lives.

The issue with weight cutting are somewhere along the line that you have to have the right combo. If the combo is 10-20-30 and you come up with 10-20-29 or 9-19-30, now both of those are close but will not open the lock. Sometimes when it comes to weight management getting close to the combo is miles ahead of most.

Do you have to cut weight????????

You can wake up in your life with enormous talent and be good that way. You can work hard improve, build skills and be good that way. You can lift, build your body up, work proper skills and focus your time and energy on nothing but improvement. You can rehearse success in the minds eye, walking off the mat with your hand raised. You can do all this and still have to cut weight to fit in the team dynamics. Or you can simply buy the lie that you need to cut a lot of weight to be successful. The fact is you don’t. Things to look at are: Do you have the power to compete up? Does it work in the team line-up? Do you have the discipline to get your body fat down, fuel correctly and hold up thru the season? The other thing that is often over looked is that you do not have the same body in Jan that you have in Oct. Because of our sports such aggressive training you are going to shrink down, lean out, it’s just a fact. And with that you may think that you have built into the next weight class but 1- 2 months later it is clear you are out sized. Which brings up another question. Does your skills combat and over come your opponent’s size? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It does not take long to figure it out. My personal opinion is very few can just compete at their natural weight. Actually anybody can compete at their natural weight. But can they be successful? Is it best for the team? Does not cutting weight allow an athlete to just be plain lazy? In some cases YES. And in many cases because they cut it incorrectly they become inert and lazy anyway.

You will never see all athletes compete at their natural weight, many get their body fat up so high that they are not healthy at their “natural weight”. Again losing weight is not the evil. I have been at this a long time and it’s almost always flat out improper methods, procrastination, and the athletes lack of discipline and refusing to believe to lose weight you actual have to continue to fuel your body. Athletes still, for the most part, refuse to by in to fueling the last 48-24 hrs prior to weigh in. I actually attached an article at the end about how the cycle continues to defeat the wrestler.



Basic skills: I bring this up all the time, the truth does not change. There are certain laws that render specific results, be it weight cutting, basic skills or mentality as I will mention later on. Let’s take the law of gravity for instance. If I drop a meat sandwich from my hands it will fall to the ground, not 99 out of 100 times but all 100 times period, no exception. It never slips up; I mean you don’t see pigs flying on occasion because gravity made a mistake and forgot to apply gravity to pigs that day. As certain as I am that we will never see pigs fly is as certain as I am that basic skills will win out over funk and deviating from core positions of strength. Very few guys are home run hitters, most of us are not, most of us score with base hits, be it in base ball, wrestling, or life. We do our best to instill basic core skills and if athletes will buy in and practice this, their winning potential goes up. They just have to hold themselves to standards when they don’t feel like it, when they are fatigued. These are two crucial times that will make all the difference. I am not saying that an exception will not come along and exercise all kinds of gymnastics and make it work, because there are certainly those guys out there. But the percentage of guys who make this work is very small and they are exceptions to a very solid rule. This is another description that can be applied to all of us in any arena but certainly fits right now in that a lot of times in life things may not make sense and we think this or that is stupid. We don’t see the significance. But there are those telling us that we need to do this in order to get that. Sometimes we are ill advised. But many more times if we follow the direction of those that have gone before us, those that have been or done what we desire to do, we may not get the blue ribbon but will get the best opportunity for success. We all know that there are only a few guarantees in this world. But we need to trust and believe much like most of us do in a god or higher power. You often have to follow the unseen to get the seen. Life only unfolds 1 sc, min, hr, day at a time. It’s like driving in the dark. The head lights in our car only shine out a few hundred feet and we can drive from Florida to Minnesota in the dark, a few hundred feet at a time. Now that is a lot of few hundred feet but its how most good things unfold a little at a time.

Mentality / lack of confidence: this continues to be the biggest obstacle not only with wrestlers, athletes, but people. A lack of self confidence or true belief in oneself is the biggest illness in this world. I see it all the time in athletes and people period. Why do we continue to compete, go thru life, limit ourselves with thoughts that have safe boundaries. We sell ourselves short in most instances time and time again and we think that this is just the way it is or has to be because this is the way we have always thought. We do not exercise our given choice to believe. We would never let someone take advantage of us as much as we do to ourselves. Mark twain was right when he said “our biggest enemy resides under our own hat” why given the choice would we not think, visualize, a favorable outcome. I think we all understand the law that “thoughts become things” we bring to life that which we focus on. We can and do bring to life our dominating thoughts. But it seems to happen so slow, so subtle that we do not detect the damage, we keep it on a channel which slowly defeats us. I like the analogy that when we flick thru channels on our TV we don’t stay on channels that are uninteresting or not to our liking. What do we do? We change it. Now it may seem much easier to do with a TV clicker but we also have the ability to change the channel of our minds as well. But it takes work, desire, awareness, persistence, a plan. What I do know is our thinking is a choice. We each do our own thinking and if we are not getting desired results it is most always likely our thinking, our mental 6 string guitar is out of tune. Easier said then done. But how can we expect to win in life if we don’t see it, think it, and expect it. We will create what we think about most in due time. My point is with athletes as a whole is that we end up competing at ½ speeds, mental parking break on because we fear losing. We begin to compete to not lose instead of win. What’s the fear? Maybe self worth. I see these guys thinking if they win they are good for a short time, if they lose they are not. This is erroneous. All out effort is admirable, it warrant’s respect. I have seen many guys win and have no respect for them, have seen many lose and respect them. Why is that? Effort. People respect effort. When are athletes going to realize that your worthy because you dare to step in the ring. You are worthy because you go all out. We all want to win but it is dam near impossible to win when you simply don’t believe and you have swam day in and out in the pool of doubt. Having belief comes from what you give and think on a daily basis, “ever thing counts” but I just see too much doubt in athletes period. They say all great truths are simple, we complicate it. Understand that your going to go out there on the mat, your going to come off the mat, you have 50% chance that your hand will be raised, if it does= you advance, if it does not you may be disappointed but the tournament will carry on, Sunday will follow Saturday, your family will still love you, and night will follow the day like it always has. Nothing really changes, life goes on and so will you. We need to find someway to get our athletes to break free, to some how compete unrestricted. That does not mean you will not have doubt, it means you compete in spite of it. Most of these guys have competed 100, 1000 of times. How do we become more scared with more knowledge and experience? We have somehow managed to put the batteries in wrong and matched the positive to negative which will result in nothing, turn the batteries around, re line them and guess what, whatever it is now works. We use to say it to our guys at Minnesota all the time “you can get a fresh start whenever you want” it’s on you, unhook, take the heavy back pack off you have been carrying and travel light, this is what will aid you greatly regardless of the arena.

Fear: fear of fatigue, fear of getting beat. This affects everything. It effects how offensive one is, which affects your point total, which affects your results. We often compete with a mental parking break on. Where did we learn this? Can we over ride this? YES. The answer continues to lie in the last place we often look and that is within ourselves. Tell someone sometime “what they think” and they will likely get offended with a retort of “you don’t know what I think” but do you know? And if you do know than why would you sabotage yourself? it obviously not to your benefit. They say all great truths are simple and yet we complicate it with complex solutions. Bottom line is you have the final say in your choice to believe or not to believe in your success. Simple formula: Problem-YOU / Solution-YOU.



Gilligan: It does not really matter what age you are chances are you have heard of Gilligan, in reference to the show Gilligan’s island. I have to say even as a kid I hated Gilligan. I watched this show everyday after school for years hoping that today was the day they would all be rescued and it never happened. I mean every episode I remember was about them getting off the island and as a kid I had hope only to be let down time and time again by Gilligan. And what about Ginger, Maryann, skipper, professor and the Howells, how could they continue to tolerate Gilligan, they had to see that he was all that stood between the island and being rescued. Gilligan should have had an accident. The one thing I took for granted as a kid but question now is how mentally disturbed they all were, I mean they never left there character or whom they were back in the states. Mary ann. continued to be a farm girl, ginger a Hollywood movie star, the professor always doing something in the science arena, skipper wanting to lead and control, and the Howells continued to act as millionaires. If they were so rich why were they on a little piss ant ss minnow for a tour anyway? They should have had there own yacht. They should never have gotten on, why were they all there? And with all the people who somehow found there way to the island how could they get off but those 7 unbelievable unlucky saps never could. My favorite episode was when the rock group “the misquotes” were there and of course were almost Beatle look alike, also I have to admit I did dig ginger didn’t know why than but I do now. Anyway those days of something so obvious that could keep all us kid’s attention for years will likely never be duplicated. I question if they really wanted off the island, I mean was it really that bad? A tropical island, low stress, seemed to have plenty of food, what about Gilligan’s and skippers shirts never faded, always and red and skipper’s always blue, same thing everyday, they slept in it, even slept with their shoes on. One question I always had was why did no one ever really get with ginger? Come on guys


If you have gotten this far than to the delight of many I will not return to BVU next season. I will state for the record BVU is a great place with great people. The guys on this team gave an awful lot and deserve a lot of credit. The good thing is that they will all be rewarded somewhere along the line in life. You cannot pay this type of price and not benefit. People come and go in life all the time. And you can look at it anyway you want, it’s personal. But it can be a win / win, let me explain. If someone come into your life and you don’t like them and they go away = perfect. If someone comes into your life and your sad to see them go, than it likely means your brought something to their life and their world and for that we can all be grateful. Athletic director Jan Travis and President Moore went the extra mile for me while I was here and appreciate it greatly. As for my future in wrestling? In or out of wrestling is fine with me. I know there have been some rumors about UNI. I have never talked to them and they have never talked to me. This would be a tough job, not impossible but very tough. No thanks to Brands and Sanderson. And why it was announced now? Simply to salvage a recruiting year. Kids will not come to a school if they do not know who the coach is. So it was announced now to hopefully turn things around so a new coach can be named. BVU is a great place and for anyone to ever say you can not have success here is totally erroneous. Winning is more about what is above the shoulders than a location. Last year there were all-americans from roughly 40 institutions in D3, so that is a lot of spread out success. I wish the best to BVU wrestling now and the future.


Posted by SchwabM [Wrestling] ( January 29, 2008 06:25 PM ) Permalink | Comments[2]