What I Learned in London

When I close my eyes and try to think about what happened in London all I see is a blur. Four years ago after China I was very disappointed in the outcome of my match. I lost it all in the last few seconds and my dream of becoming an Olympic Champion disappeared in the blink of an eye. I was 28 years old and I had committed myself to being an Olympic Champion since the second I graduated college. I wrestled everywhere I could and I trained with anyone I could to try and become the best I can be. Training from 2002-2008 will be an experience I will remember for the rest of my life. It was hard work and it took a lot of dedication to be able to travel that much and train at that high a level. I was not ready to retire after 2008, but I was never able to get back to where I was before 2008. I do not look at the last four years of my life as a failure; it was during this time that I learned the most about the sport. I have not made much money over the last four years, but the experiences and knowledge I have will be with me for the rest of my life. I believe 100% in my heart what I have learned in the last four years will help me become one of the best coaches in the nation. There are not many coaches in this country that have coached an Olympic Champion, and even though I was not one myself, I know someday I will coach an athlete to become one.

So here is what I have learned in the last four years and at my time in London.

Preparation

Preparation is the key to becoming an Olympic Champion. You cannot do this sport part time and think you will become a champion. We are competing against professionals who are state funded and have full time coaches making sure they are on the right path, and that they are prepared to win when the whistle blows. This takes a lot of effort from the athlete, coach, and support staff. One of the keys to our recent international success has been the addition of the Regional Training Centers (RTCs). The RTCs have been instrumental in fundraising for the senior level athletes so they can live on a small salary and focus solely on training. As an athlete with goals of winning world and Olympic titles you should have no worries other than training. Training occupies your whole day when you are doing it right. You have to live like an Olympic champion from the time you wake up for breakfast to the moment you fall asleep. I have seen some of the best coaches and athletes prepare for world level competitions and each aspect is a commitment that occupies your life for the moment. As a coach you have to know everything about your athlete, and you must have a relationship that is built on trust. I saw this when I lived in Russia, and I saw this in London with the personal coaches of the US athletes. The problem we have in the US is that there are not enough coaches that are able to take the time it requires to develop a world class wrestler. I understand why this is a problem, for almost all of the coaches that helped with the freestyle team this summer they have full time jobs coaching at universities. Their ability to retain their job relies on winning and losing at the NCAA level not the international level. That’s what makes the coaches that can help special; they sacrifice their time away from their families to help an athlete whose performance

has no impact on job security. If it were not for these coaches we would not have had the success we had at the Olympics.

The more senior level athletes we can have training in a full time freestyle environment with a coach they believe in will increase our medal chances. This is the exact same model that has been making the eastern European countries successful for decades. It seems like simple logic, having more athletes that are properly trained will create more depth which is the key to having success year in and year out. From an athlete’s point of the view the easiest way (if you can call anything in this sport easy) to win is to train full time and be consistent in your training. What the RTCs do is put together a group of athletes training for the same cause, and they provide a coach who has a plan for them to follow. As I know from personal experiences as an athlete and as a coach this still does not mean you will have success. That’s what makes sports so great, they are not easy and we have to fight tooth and nail just to win. There will never be any guarantees in athletics, but it is a choice to put yourself in the right situation to win. There is a lot of sacrifice involved when trying to become the best, but having others go through the same regiment will increase your chance of success. This is what makes the RTCs the future of our freestyle program.

Now I have to congratulate Zeke Jones on the job he has done with the freestyle program over the last four years. It is not easy managing 21 athletes on the national team every year. He has to make sure that they are getting everything they need to progress as a wrestler. He also has to have a relationship with the coaches at the RTCs where the national team members are training. On top of managing all these people and their individual schedules, he puts in more time studying film than I have ever seen. As I am sitting in front of the computer, I guarantee Zeke is in front of his computer screen breaking down all the film from the Olympics. He will have stats for the entire tournament before a week goes by. This type of information is extremely useful as we get ready to set our plans as a national team gearing up towards Rio. When Zeke first came to USA wrestling he and I butted heads once in awhile. We talked a lot and he knew I was one of the senior leaders of the team so we never let little things get between us. He has always asked me my opinions on things, and has even liked some of my ideas. I remember sitting in his office when I was a resident of the OTC and I really had concerns regarding my training. I trained at the University of Michigan for 11 years before moving to the OTC and it was not what I expected once I got there. On top of not liking the training as a resident athlete, I thought the team’s training was very bad leading up to Denmark in 2009. This was my opinion coming from a person who had made a world and Olympic team already. Zeke saw it as a coach of the whole national team who after the Olympics in 2008 became a very young team. 2009 might have been the first time in the history of USA Wrestling where every world team member was on their first team. We talked in his office and he expressed to me that he understands that my needs as a 29 year old veteran were very different than the young kids we had on the national team. He laid out his four year plan and asked me to help him since I was a leader on the team and people did look up to me. He told me that day and

many times after that I will make a great coach because I have an understanding of the sport most athletes do not have. These past two summers I have had the opportunity to help our team prepare for the worlds and Olympics. When Zeke asked me how the training went before Turkey and London, I told him they were the best training camps I have been around. Part of the reason was the guys on the team were sold on the training and they believed in it, and everything we did was consistent throughout camp and the whole year. We had a great group of young kids attend the camps and we have a great group of leaders coming back, so I see no reason why we will not have the same success next year. It should be our countries goal to win the team title next year as well as the World Cup. One of the most important parts of being the national team coach is making sure you are finding the future and letting them learn the system so when it is their time to make a team they are ready for the grueling training that comes with it.

Embrace the Olympic Movement

The day before I headed over to London, the wrestling room at the University of Michigan had an addition put on. At the far end of the room the Olympic rings now hang for everyone to see, and they are big! I am not stupid and I know here in America the NCAA tournament is king, but it should not be the end of the road. We as a sport have to sell the idea of becoming an Olympic Champion to our young wrestlers; this doesn’t mean they should abandon their goals of winning NCAAs. When I lived in Russia the kids dream about becoming an Olympic champion from the time they go to their first practice. We can have the same attitude in this country and it should be promoted. A young wrestler should want to win states, they should want to win NCAAs, and they should want to win world and Olympic titles. If we do not have these goals then why should we put our lives and bodies through hell during training and competition? Becoming an Olympic champion is not an unattainable goal for American wrestlers, we have had plenty of champions and I think we can have many many more.

America needs freestyle wrestling to complement our already popular folkstyle. The NCAA tournament is a huge event both on TV and at the arena, and all around the country state tournaments are selling out. If we want to continue to grow as a sport in popularity and gain television exposure then we have to have success on the biggest stage. The Olympic Games is as big as sporting events get, this was my second Olympics and I am still in awe as to how many people were in London from all over the world. If we are able to ride the success we had at these Olympics throughout the next four years our sport will get plenty of media coverage during the Rio games. Not to mention I already know the super secret location of next year’s Beat the Streets event, and I am positive this will expose our sport to many new fans and media outlets. Plus, it is on the Fila website that the USA is up for the 2015 world championships. We as a sport are headed in the right direction, but all of this relies heavily on our existing fans. We have to stop being our own worst enemy and support the sport we love, we can’t bash freestyle because it is different than folkstyle. It has always been different than folkstyle but when the US was winning the most in the 80’s and 90’s, it was not about the style. It was about us vs them,

USA vs Russia. Freestyle wrestling is not that different from folkstyle anyways, and to top it off it is still USA vs Russia. As a fan of the sport one can spot a great scramble or takedown and appreciate its beauty. I am a big fan of Kyle Dake and I was able to spend a lot of time around him this summer during our national team camps, but if he is able to win his 4th NCAA title this year he will not be on the Today Show like and were. The Olympics matter and doing well in the Olympics will only strengthen college, high school, and youth wrestling around the country.

Watching the Wrestling

The Olympic Games that just took place in London might have been one of the most exciting tournaments I have ever witnessed. The wrestling was outstanding, the music between the matches engaged the crowd, and the arena was packed with crazy fans. I learned so much from watching the wrestling and seeing the tournament play out throughout the day. It was totally different than my experience I had in Beijing. In Beijing I was only focused on myself as a wrestler. The best part about watching the Olympic Games (besides talking and sitting next to Tom Brands for a whole day) was seeing how each wrestler was able to become successful. This visual of the best wrestlers in the world reaffirmed that my coaching philosophy is going to produce world and Olympic champions, as well as other medalists.

Here are a few of the things that I picked up in London watching the tournament, in no particular order.

1) Having a good low stance will increase your ability to win matches. I am a 100% believer that every wrestler will have a different stance; this makes sense since wrestlers come in all shapes and sizes. What I learned while watching in London is that a wrestler must have their normal stance from the outside, but once you engage in the tie up the stance needs to be lowered. The best analogy I can think of is watching two big horned sheep going to battle on the side of a mountain. These animals lower their heads and fight for the best position. Towards the end of the match this skill becomes even more valuable when time is running out and you have a lead. For the past four years Zeke Jones has preached with short time left on the clock it is better to be too low and give up a front head lock then be too high and give up a leg. This is why when I am training the athletes that wrestle for the Cliff Keen Wrestling Club we make this a focus of our everyday training. This is a skill that cannot be learned just by doing it once. The only way you will be able to learn this skill of getting in a low stance and fighting off attacks is to do just that each and every day. We do live situations everyday where one athlete is only offense and one is only defense and the point is scored when the offensive guy gets his hands locked around the legs. It only makes sense to train for this scenario every day after watching how important it was in London. 2) Having a “go to” shot you can score with on anyone in the world. I have been able to watch some of the matches again on the internet, but I have not been able to analyze them like I need

to. I can say this with confidence, because I have been picking up on this stat for a few years now. The wrestlers who win at the highest level have perfected a “go to” shot. It is nice to attack both sides of the body, but when the biggest match is on the line you need a shot you are confident will work 100% of the time. When I finally get a chance to sit down and watch all of the matches again I want to find out what percentage of the time each medalist scored with the same offensive move. I am guessing it is 85% of the time or more that they use the same shot to score offensive points. I was really bummed out when lost at the Olympics; I know how much winning the gold medal meant to him and I saw how hard and focused he worked towards his goal. After leaving the Olympics I became much more optimistic about Jake and his future. It is very rare for someone to have the ability to score as many offensive points as he does against the best wrestlers in the world. He is never going to make any excuses as to why he lost, and neither will I. The only thing I wish we were able to do with Jake before the Olympics was to put him in more situations. His preparation leading up to the tournament was not perfect, but in wrestling it will never be perfect. He was just not able to get consistent enough training day in and day out to put himself in all the different scenarios that he was going to encounter at the Olympics. A big part of being successful is having a body that allows you to train without injury, and for this year Jake fought through many different setbacks. I am excited to help him become a world champion next year, and if we can have consistent training in all the areas from his single leg to “shut down” defense I know he will win. We all already know he can score the points when he needs to, it is just a matter of cleaning up his mistakes that will give him the extra edge he needs. 3) The real wrestling starts when the hands lock around the leg. This is something I have known for awhile now, but it showed how true it was in London. When I say this I do not mean offense or defense specifically, but just wrestling. The way I structure my practices, I make my athletes do many situations each and every day. I composed a list of the most frequent situations to the least frequent situations and I go through this list every week that we train. Some situations I do more than others based on how frequently they will come up in matches, but I never stray from the list. Wrestling skill is based on how you learn and perform over time; I am not looking for any short term fixes. I am prepared to prepare my athletes for anything and everything they will face in competition. If you want to be the best prepared wrestler in the world you have to make sure you are putting yourself in every situation possible while training. By doing more situations during training than matches you will learn both the offensive and defense techniques and tactics necessary to handle anything thrown your direction. When you are wrestling the best in the world they will have some of the best defenses in the world, so when looking to shot you must not be afraid to create your own opening. We need to get to the point where it doesn’t matter what kind of shot we take because we will know how to finish from every position as long as we get our hands locked around the leg. If this was a war, then the front line would be

when the hands get locked around the leg. The battle for the match will be won or lost in this position and we have to be ready. 4) Learning to defend is a skill we need to work on as a country. I think this is a skill that needs the same attention on a day to day practice plan as offense. The reason I believe this was stated above. I have to study the stats to know how correct I am, but the best guys in the world are scoring with the same offensive move almost all of the time. I am sure they are working on attacks to compliment their top shot, but when the time comes you will go back to what works. Defensively we are not in the same situation as on offense. Our offense is picked by us and is perfected by us over a long period of time. We do not have that luxury on the defensive side of the sport. We cannot control what shot our opponent is mastering so in order to be prepared we have to master all the defenses and make sure each is at a world class level. There is also no better feeling then having your opponent in deep on the leg and you grind out a defensive takedown. This skill will separate great wrestlers from good wrestlers, and the mental advantage you gain from being hard to score on is too big to put in words.