Why Good Wrestlers Fail to Develop into Great Wrestlers
There are a few obvious reasons why good wrestlers fail to develop into great wrestlers. The top five of those are the ability to stay healthy, a deep love of wrestling, mental toughness/confidence, discipline/self-control, and financial support. In addition, there are the obvious physical traits that wrestlers must nurture such as speed, strength, flexibility, and technique.
Beyond these obvious things, there are those extra intangibles that separate good and great wrestlers that are difficult to identify from the outside looking in. To best explain how wrestlers develop these extra intangibles, I would like to point you to the research from renowned psychology professor, author, and “expert on experts” Anders Ericsson in his seminal book, Peak. It’s in this research were Ericsson identifies deliberate practice as the critical process one must include in their training to develop greatness.
Ericsson states that “deliberate practice is a very specialized form of practice” to improve a very particular aspect of performance. In addition, Ericsson describes deliberate practice as many hours of solo practice on specific things that drive greatness.
This type of practice requires meticulous planning. It must fit a specific athlete’s improvement needs. Moreover, this planning must draw from expert knowledge to provide the best way to improve the specific area of need.
Good Wrestlers Don’t Become Great in Group Practice Sessions
As a result, a wrestler cannot satisfy the requirements of deliberate practice in a group practice session with their team. Group practice is what Ericsson calls generic practice. Generic practices can help the overall group improve. However, generic practice doesn’t target individual performance gaps the same way deliberate practice does. Furthermore, generic practice can’t make a good wrestler great.
Therefore, the #1 non-obvious reason why good wrestlers fail to develop into great wrestlers is that they don’t have a deliberate practice process. This process requires the wrestler to do at least three things:
- Meticulously identify very specific areas in their individual performance that needs improvement.
- Get personalized help from expert coaches that can provide proven practice methods to improve those specific areas of performance.
- Spend thousands of hours in private / solo practice sessions working on getting better using those proven practice methods.