and How to Not Peak

Despite what I said over the weekend, there are times when you don't want to peak.  If you're having trouble wrapping your head around it, consider this:  When you try to peak, you usually back off from, or taper down, your training leading up to the competition, and you usually take at least a day to recover from the competition.  But if you didn't have a competition that you were peaking for, you could've practiced each of those days.

For many wrestlers, the regular season is over, and the first off-season tournaments have started popping up.  Many wrestlers will hit up tournaments each weekend, and some will wrestle as many as 100 matches between now and next winter.  I believe that competitions are necessary to see new opponents and gauge where you stand, but they are not the only answer to improving this off-season.

Some elite athletes, including the legendary John Smith, actually like drilling and training more than competing.  In Mike Chapman's Wrestling Tough, Smith had this to say about drilling:

Drilling is the key to wrestling success and to longevity in the sport.  Drilling has to become habit forming.... For longevity, drilling is very important.  If you want to stay in the sport for many years, then you have to stay healthy.  Constant live goes and sparring can beat your body up pretty bad.  After the world championships, I would drill for three months, with very little sparring.  That's when I got better, and I also stayed injury free.

Imagine if you trained every day for three months without interruptions?  Hall of Fame basketball player Larry Bird once admitted: "Each year I couldn't wait for the season to be done so that I could practice each day without the distraction of games."  Maybe wrestlers could learn a thing or two from basketball players after all?

If you are going to wrestle in open tournaments, treat it just like a scrimmage practice.  Any time there is an open mat, get some drilling in.  "Train through" the competition by not tapering off the days before.  My cross-country coach would sometimes have us do this when we faced a team that we could beat easily, or when he didn't consider the race as important.  Some elite wrestling teams will have a mini practice right before a dual if they are likely to clobber the other team.  That's because, at a dual meet you just do your warmup and wrestle one match, whereas you could get in a lot more mat time in a practice.

The path to greatness in wrestling, or anything else in life, is a marathon, not a sprint.  Don't burn yourself out this off-season.  Ninety percent of wrestlers just want to go live every time they practice, but they must stay disciplined and commit to drilling for practicing their technique.  Plus, if you just go live all the time you'll get injured more often and won't be able to wrestle as much in the first place.  US Women's National Team Coach Terry Steiner had a perfect quote along these lines in the December 2012 issue of USA Wrestler: "Eating 7 apples on Sunday doesn't do the trick!.  You must eat an apple each day to keep the doctor away!"  In my opinion, you're much better off consistently drilling each day than just wrestling at tournaments each weekend.

Don't peak,
Jeff