Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Many people think resilience is just a synonym for toughness. While resilience does require toughness, being resilient requires much more.

First, resilience is both physical and mental. Physically, your body must be capable of bouncing back from suffering, pain, and exhaustion to persevere in the face of adversity. Mentally, you must face adversity with the mindset of a survivor and not a victim.

Second, resilience is both tactical and strategic. Tactically, one must have the ability to execute in real time through the adversity of the moment. Strategically, resilience requires big picture thinking with the ability to think multiple steps ahead of your short term problems.

Wrestlers like Jordan Burroughs, Kyle Dake, David Taylor, and J’den Cox wouldn’t have made it this long in the sport without resilience. Every youth wrestler who dreams to be held among one of the greats must learn how to approach training, practice, and competitions with resilience.

Below are 5 signs your wrestler is on the right path.

1) They Believe that Hard Work Will Eventually Pay Off

Wrestling is one of the hardest sports on the planet. Everytime wrestlers step on the mat their strength, endurance, agility, and courage are put to the test. To be the best requires countless hours of drilling, lifting, sparring, running, and pushing beyond the limits of what was once thought impossible. The fact of the matter is to get to that level of training takes time and consistent hard work.

What makes this even tougher is a wrestler can work harder than ever, and still not reach his or her goal. If your wrestler has faced a situation where they gave everything they could, failed, and still kept working hard after that, then he or she is on the path to resilience.

2) They Weigh the Pros and Cons

When your athletes have to make a decision, do they think through possible good and bad outcomes? If so, this is a sign they understand the relationship between cause and effect or what psychologist call an “internal locus of control“.

In other words, this type of athlete doesn’t depend on hope, luck, or other external factors to achieve success. Instead, they depend on facts, analysis, and planning to achieve success. In turn, they are able to see how their actions lead to a hard fought victory or an unexpected loss, which is essential to being resilient.

You’ll know if your athletes are on the right path if you see them making smart decisions like:

• Choosing practice over playing video games in their free time
• Eating healthy daily instead of depending on hard weight cutting
• Going to bed on time instead of sneaking to stay up late on their phone

3) They are Willing to Delay Gratification

Resilient athletes have the long view and as a result are willing to delay gratification. In youth wrestling, a sign of this is those kids who prefer to compete against older or heavier kids in practice. They want the challenge now because they know it will pay-off later. These type of young wrestlers also prefer to compete and lose at national tournaments over winning first place at local tournaments.

These are just a couple of signs that show that your child is willing to sacrifice in the short run to reach a goal in the long run. They are also early signs that your child is on the road to being resilient in life.

4) They Keep Their Composure

The ability to recover from emotional let downs is a critical component of resilience. Anyone who’s ever been to a youth wrestling tournament has witnessed a child having a meltdown. Most times these meltdowns come after losses at these tournaments, but I’ve also seen them occur as a result of a tough practice. Either way, they’re often inevitable and always embarrassing for the athlete, their parents, and their coaches.

You’ll know your child is becoming more resilient, when he or she is able to lose or endure an extremely intense workout without crying, acting out, or shutting down.

With that said, if you’re child recognizes the need to work on keeping their composure, and you see him or her taking steps to improve, then it’s safe to assume they’re on the right path as well.

5) They Don’t Make Excuses

Victims make excuses and victims aren’t resilient…

A victim mentality is the enemy of resilience. Thinking that you don’t have control of your own successes and failures removes personal accountability.

A clear sign that young wrestlers are building resilience is that they don’t:

• Make excuses for losing,
• Complain about wrestling older kids, kids who cut weight, or who are stronger, and
• They don’t ruminate when a referee makes a bad call.