Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Practice schedules are tight. Youth wrestling coaches must get a lot done with little time and resources. As a result, assigning young wrestlers homework may be the best way to get them to develop their mental skills with the least amount of disruption to the normal practice routine.

Specifically, there are 5 mental skills youth wrestling coaches should use homework to reinforce:

1. Focus and concentration
2. Regulating emotions
3. Self-Awareness
4. Self-talk
5. Goal Setting

Coaches can assign homework in the form of worksheets, video review, or conducting interviews.

For example, the coach could select a snippet of a historic olympic or college wrestling match / interview for the wrestlers to watch on YouTube. The homework could direct the wrestlers to watch for a specific mental skill (such as focus or regulating emotions) that either helped or hurt the wrestler. Then at the next practice, the coach could spend 5 or so minutes discussing that mental skill with their wrestlers using a Q&A format.

In addition, coaches could:

• Create worksheets for setting goals and review the completed worksheets with each wrestler one or one or in a group.
• Have the wrestlers interview each other to ask what their teammates think their biggest opportunity for development is.
• Request each wrestler search YouTube for the best motivational videos or pick out the best motivational songs. Then email those ideas to the coach. During the next practice, the coach can create a playlist and play each of those suggestions.
• Assign each wrestler a different historical sports figure (wrestling or non-wrestling). Then have them research the behaviors that made that athlete special and present their findings to the team.

It’s a fact that young wrestlers are not being encouraged to develop their mental skills as much as their physical skills. It’s up to youth wrestling coaches to change this, one homework assignment at a time.