Mindset Lesson from Cael and Dake

Something I learned from Cael Sanderson & Kyle Dake this weekend:

Ask Why in Wrestling as a Coach and as a Wrestler. Cael talked about how he has learned to ask why as a coach and it has helped his teams tremendously. He said you have to understand your wrestlers and when dealing with them you have to understand if you are doing things for yourself or if you are doing them for the wrestler. So many times we get caught up with our own agenda and we lose sight that each athlete is different and we need to ask ourselves why we are acting a certain way with a given athlete. We must make sure that we as coaches are always acting in our wrestlers best interest rather than our own.

As an athlete Cael said we must ask ourselves Why we want to accomplish certain things and even simpler why we want to wrestle? As a coach Cael recruits guys who love to wrestle and have the right attitude. He wants wrestlers who are doing it because they love to compete not because their parents want them to wrestle or any other reason. Cael wants wrestlers who love to be in the big match- guys like David Taylor and Ed Ruth. If you ask yourself Why and are wrestling for the right reasons, for yourself, for the love of the sport, you will work harder, get better, win more, and get the most out of yourself.

Kyle Dake also said that all wrestlers need to ask why. Why are we drilling this move, why are we doing this strength training, etc. It is imperative that coaches communicate WHY they are doing different drilling/technique/lifts. Wrestlers must understand WHY they are doing these things. For instance, if we are doing speed drilling for conditioning you need to know/communicate that. If you are “play wrestling” as Cael calls it, you need to know that you are doing that to feel out positions. If you are doing reverse hypers, glute hams, or Romanian Deadlifts you need to know that you are doing them to work the MOST IMPORTANT muscle group in wrestling- the posterior chain (lower back, glutes, hamstrings). Don’t just take it from me, the PSU Strength Coach Shawn Contos said this weekend, “If you want to build stronger athletes, start by training their posterior chain.” The bottom line here is- IF YOU WANT TO MAXIMIZE YOUR POTENTIAL YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOUR DOING.