Dictate Your Feelings

It was a non-stop action week for me, including a great day of kayaking the Mackinaw River yesterday, but I didn't get quite enough sleep.  That all culminated Thursday night when I watched the midnight showing of the last Harry Potter with a group of college students down here.  I only got about four hours of sleep before work on Friday, yet I wasn't hurting too much at the office.  I could have easily acted like a zombie all day, but I decided that I was going to feel well-rested.

One of my favorite sayings is: "Let your actions dictate your feelings, don't let your feelings dictate your actions."  If you're in practice or a match and you tell yourself you're tired, you most certainly will be.  If you're cutting weight and tell yourself you feel like garbage, you're not going to feel any better than that.  But if you tell yourself that you feel energetic, your body tends to follow along with that notion.  What's more, your opponent will get the message too, and you may even start to make HIM feel tired.  Instead of panting on the edge of the mat between periods with your hands on your knees, improve your posture, get your breathing under control, and hustle back to the center of the mat.  Look alive, put a pep in your step, and act as if you aren't tired.  "You have to fake it till you make it."

However, under ideal conditions, I would not recommend skimping on sleep.  There are many different suggestions for the amount of sleep an athlete needs, some as much as 9-10 hours, but for anyone who has to balance school, work, wrestling, family, and other personal commitments, this just isn't doable.  Near the end of my sophomore year of high school I read a wrestling column that advised 7-8 hours of sleep a night.  I found this to be satisfactory and practical enough to squeeze into a busy day.  It also allowed you to go to sleep one hour later on weekends and wake up two hours later, getting 8-9 hours of sleep.  On school days I went to bed at ten and woke up at six, and on days off it was eleven and eight.  I found the weekend schedule to be a good compromise that didn't mess up my internal clock for the upcoming week.  The fact that the recommendation was a range also left some wiggle room when things got hectic; I would always shoot for eight hours, knowing that if I missed I'd get at least seven.

Look alive,
Jeff