Hard Work vs. The Mental Battle in Youth Wrestling
I can’t quite let go of this Instagram post written by 2x NCAA wrestling champion Isaiah Martìnez. As I wrote yesterday, Martìnez believes that hard work is actually the easy part. The hard part is winning the mental battle. Furthermore, this mental battle encompasses mindset, knowledge, creativity, and innovation.
While I couldn’t agree more, I know this is an unpopular perspective. Especially among the parents of youth wrestlers who travel to national tournaments. The majority of these youth wrestling parents who are pushing their kids to wrestle at an elite level are all about blood, sweat, and tears. It’s all about wrestling live for 2 hours straight and grinding kids down to a pulp to prepare for national competitions.
Although this “rise and grind” mentality works in the short run, ultimately I think it’s counter-productive. A youth wrestler who actually enjoys wrestling is much more likely to embrace the grind later in life. Whereas a youth wrestler who grinds in the short run, is less likely to have the stamina to grind when it matters in high school and beyond.
In a perfect world, youth wrestlers would spend much more of their time understanding the fundamentals of the sport. I would constantly reinforce things like positioning, action/reaction, and awareness in fun sparring sessions instead of using 2 hour live wrestling sessions to ground and pound grittiness into a wrestler.
Once a young wrestler learns to love the mental battle of positioning, action/reaction and awareness, then they can focus on grinding harder. Taking the reverse approach is possible, but it’s also more likely to lead to burnout.