Step 1. Goals

 

How far do you want to go:

What are your wrestling goals? How far do you want to go? What do you want to accomplish...For this year, next year? high school? Kid's folkstyle, freestyle, etc. 

Goals, when broken down into small steps help keep you focused with "deliberate practice". You must committed and dedicated where your brains dwells in the desire to improve. 

 

What is Deliberate Practice? It is practice with the INTENT of getting better. I use a strategy that I call, "Theory, Practice, Feedback" and I will help you implement it for continuous improvement everyday.

Theory - is what I will work on and why. This is new technique, setups, drills, positions, and strategies for improving and winning. 

Practice - I have zeroed-in-focus on what I will work on and execute it in my training and competition. Technique and strategy for how I will win. This could also be my mentality and my self talk whether before and during my training or before and during competition. 

Feedback - I generate feedback either from myself, from my coaches and training partners, and even video of your practice and/or competition.  

Ask yourself, what is the most productive thing I did last week? What was the least productive?

 

Once you have a goal for this year to be a league champ, state qualifier, state champion national champion, or longer term goal to be a 4x state champion. You want to strategize backwards thinking about what it will take to accomplish your goal. It will require more from you to be a 4x state champion than to place or qualify for state, or to make the varsity team. The question is, what are you willing to do to reach your goals? Are you willing to put in the daily repetition and grind? There will be ups and downs, good days, not so good days and challenges of adversity that create obstacles that you will need to work through. I will help you understand this to guide you in the right direction.

 

Let's set your long term goals, weekly goals, daily goals, and practice goals. I will help you break down your goals into small pieces to create small wins that are "leading indicators" showing whether you are improving everyday or not. You will start to clearly see what you need to work on. 

My philosophy for this is what I call, "EverdayKaizen" which means continuous improvement everyday. 

 

What will you focus on for practice, who will be your partner, and why?

Your goal for practice will most likely not be to smash everyone in every position. Let's get you focused on technique for a position, setups, pressure, strategy, counter offense, finishes, getting out of bottom and using bottom as an offense, getting out of legs, leg attack defense that scores points, etc. It could also be a conditioning goal or watching video or how you mentally prepare. I will help to establish mental prep so you go into competition knowing you are going to figure out a way to win by eliminating the doubt and being able to refocus yourself during a match. 

The small goals come from my feedback loop and where I need to improve based on data from performance in competition and daily practice. It is important to have "wins" for the day or for the practice. 

 

What major tournaments will you have along the way? What is your goal for the next tournament? Where do you need to get better to beat the best wrestlers in your weight class?  Who are your training partners and what do they do well? Have you wrestled any top ranked wrestlers in your weight class? How did you do last season and what are you going to do differently this season? 

Contact me at MyWrestlingCoach@gmail.com for more info or to get started!