The Off-Season - If You Can Call it That

I hope that your health and fitness endeavors this spring - whatever they may be - are going well.  Lots of wrestlers are off doing other sports, but many are still wrestling.  Both of these approaches are perfectly fine, and I can't stress that enough.  I want you to do whatever sport(s) you love most.  When I was in middle school I did cross-country, track, and soccer in the off-season, and only went to a handful of off-season tournaments.  During my first two years of high school I did cross-country in the fall, wrestling in the winter (duh), and gymnastics in the spring, and also tried to hit a fair amount of open tournaments and practices, but it became increasingly difficult to balance multiple sports simultaneously as I began to set the bar higher in wrestling, so I decided to focus on wrestling my junior and senior year.

It was a tough decision, and my other coaches were quite disappointed, especially my cross-country coach, but I justified it to myself with the fact that one of our school's best runners stopped wrestling sophomore year to focus on cross-country and track.  However, when I think about the flip side, how can we expect the football coach to encourage his players to wrestle if we don't encourage our guys to play other sports?  One of the benefits of being a three-sport athlete is the cross-training received from doing different activities, and cross-training is one thing I may not have done enough of.

I did miss cross-country and gymnastics from time to time, as well as being buddies with all those teammates, too, but still feel that I made the right choice.  I loved wrestling far more than any other sport and I couldn't get enough, so why not wrestle year round?  I think that the decision to wrestle in the off-season (and the regular season for that matter), should be entirely up to the wrestler, not the parents, or the coach, or anyone else.  I was fortunate in that my parents never were overbearing when it came to sports, and the decision to specialize in wrestling was entirely mine.  I think that was about about the right age for me to do it, but that could be totally different for other individuals.  Kids should try different sports to find out what they like. If they don't switch things up they could burnt out, but I was unique in that I rarely ever felt burnt out because training for wrestling was my favorite hobby.

The most crucial element that I hit right on the head each off-season was dedication, as well as discipline and responsibility.  The off-season is different in that no one forces you to go to tournaments, camps, clinics, or practices, so I had to take it upon myself to seek out good competition.  As soon as the winter season ended I'd find the schedule of off-season tournaments and I'd choose which open mats I was going to work out at.  My own high school held practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I'd drive to other practices on Mondays and Wednesdays, sometimes as far as forty minutes away.  On the weekends I'd travel all over Chicagoland for tournaments, sometimes two in a weekend.  I had a separate calendar in my room just for keeping track of my training sessions and competitions.  If you're planning on wrestling this spring, I want you to create a schedule right now so that you don't miss important events, such as state, regional, or national qualifiers.  If you're having trouble finding your area's list of off-season tournaments or practices, ask your coach or ask around the wrestling community.  Be aware that your state may have freestyle and Greco-Roman tournaments listed in a separate place, so keep on top of that, too if you want to try the international styles.

I realized while writing this that I had far more to say than one post worth of material, so check back for more off-season tips regarding summer camps, workout volume, freestyle and Greco-Roman, weight control, and more.  Until then, follow the US Olympic Trials this weekend, which will be televised on NBC Sports Network on Sunday from 4-7 PM and Monday from 3-6 PM Eastern Time!

Fill out that calendar,
Jeff