How to Know a Young Wrestler Has Fell in Love with the Sport
Folkstyle wrestling is one of the hardest sports for kids to play because kids don’t actually “play” wrestling. They just wrestle. Moreover, wrestling is extremely physically demanding and it’s often more satisfying than fun.
Therefore, when a youth wrestler first starts in the sport their parents are usually doing a lot of pushing. Other than those kids who grow up in wrestling families, wrestling is something kids must learn to love.
The reality is a young wrestler won’t become their best until they fall in love with wrestling. This is when the parent stops pushing, and the young athlete starts pulling. This is the moment parents know they can invest in the sport, and it won’t go to waste.
The sign of this love of wrestling comes when a young wrestler starts choosing hard work over fun. Instead of just instinctively choosing fun, they start thinking through the possible good and bad outcomes that will happen because of their choice. This is a sign they understand the relationship between cause and effect or what psychologist call having an “internal locus of control“.
In other words, at this point a young wrestler understands that their success doesn’t depend on hope, luck, or other external factors. Instead, they depend on facts, analysis, and planning to achieve success. In turn, they can see how their actions lead to hard-fought victories.
So, you’ll know a wrestler loves wrestling if you see them making smart decisions like:
- Choosing practice over playing video games in their free time.
- Eating healthy and working out daily instead of depending on last minute weight cutting or wrestling at a non-optimal weight.
- Going to bed on time instead of wasting time so they can stay up late.
With this in mind, there is only one way for a young wrestler to get to this point. This is by getting the opportunity to make decisions on their own. If a parent always tells their child exactly what to do, then the child will never develop their internal locus of control, and in turn will never learn to love wrestling. Parents must remember love is a decision. Correspondingly, if there is no opportunity to choose there can be no opportunity to choose love.